2.53 vs 2.8 MBP for college engineering student?

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

And do you think there will be a refresh by the next three months?

I wouldn't bet on any upgrades until September/October. That seems to be the preferred time for Apple, according to the Buyer's guide.

I'm hoping for a small bump soon-ish (mainly to allow 8GB RAM in the 15"s as well as the 17"), and it wouldn't be unheard of, but I'm not postponing getting the 2.8 as soon as the decisions/paperwork at work is going through (unless the rumours of impending updates are extremely strong, when end if that's ready).

 

[xoggyux]

I am going to college in about 3 months and I'm deciding on which one to get between the

2.8Ghz or the 2.53Ghz

I am planing to use this computer for all 4 years of college
and some gaming, photoshop and video editing from time to time.

Is the 2.53Ghz going to be enough for all 4 years of engineering program?

Is the 2.8Ghz worth it?
If its not necessary I would not want to spend the extra money.

I'd go for the standard MBP ($1999, 2.4Ghz, 2Gb, 250Gb @ 5400rpm, Nvidia Geforce 9400 and 9600 with 256Mb graphics) which is about $500 less than the one you mentioned, then i'd upgrade to a 128Gb SSD hardrive and 4Gb with the money you saved ($500+) and buy an external usb enclosure for the 5400rpm 250Gb hardrive to have it as extra storage (e.g. MP3s and videos,) except for VERY high resolution stuff the graphics will perform exacly the same as the 512Mb since is the same chip, so the only final difference would be 130Mhz of CPU speed which wont shave any sec of anything you do while the SSD can cut the boot time from a couple of mins to a few seconds, and the same for loading up programs (128Gb SSD can be found at newegg for 220-240 already, and 4Gb ram for $70, and the enclosure for $5 for a cheap one and $10-20 for a really cool one at ebay so you'd end up saving $200+ and having a more powerful machine.

 

[apolloa]

If you're using it for 4 years, go with the 2.8. By the third year netbooks will run at 2.53 or faster.

And what do you base that assumption on? I doubt they will, they'll be duel core but I think they'll still be the small easy to use lower powered computers they are today. It's cores that count now not speed.

The difference between 5400rpm and 7200rpm 2.5" drives is nil as far as speed goes. Not worth the money.

Rubbish, I know from experience that a faster HDD is way more value for money then a faster CPU. in the UK the 7200 RPM drive is an extra 34 pounds, that's on top of the 1712 pounds of the 2.53 base machine. The CPU is an extra 206 pounds. So the HDD is way more value for money and will offer better performance increase in every day stuff.
I would say buy the 2.53, I did, glad I did, I could of got the 2.8 easily but lots of people said not to bother, I'm glad I didn't now a the 2.53 is plenty fast enough.

 

[xoggyux]

It's cores that count now not speed.

Its speed what actually matter (i guess you tried to say "frequency", e.g. 2.xx Ghz)
In the other side, programs of today and probably the next few years wont be taking too much advantage of multicore since so far noone have figured out how to make both cores work properly (usually when one is at 100% the other wont go above 80% and the next wont go over 60% and the next over 40% etc) thats why a 2.2Ghz dualcore is not twice as fast as a 2.2 single core (where twice means do thing in half the time).
Ultimately are the processor's intruction what matters the most thats how a GPU @ 500mhz or so, can outperform a dualcore 2.4Ghz+++ when it comes to graphics.

 

[m1stake]

Rubbish, I know from experience that a faster HDD is way more value for money then a faster CPU. in the UK the 7200 RPM drive is an extra 34 pounds, that's on top of the 1712 pounds of the 2.53 base machine. The CPU is an extra 206 pounds. So the HDD is way more value for money and will offer better performance increase in every day stuff.

Desktop hard disks yes, laptop hard drives no. The smaller platter area is the culprit. Both the CPU upgrades and the HDD RPM upgrades are a waste of money. If the 2.4 vs 2.8 difference is enough to influence a buying decision, a laptop is probably a bad choice to begin with.

 

[eddietr]

If you had a 2.5 and 2.8 MBP and used them both for a month, most people (even engineers) would hardly be able to tell the difference. Given the same software, same chipset, same graphics cards, same RAM, HD, etc., the processor speed difference alone will be hardly noticeable outside of benchmark testing.

And it's not like you're going to get to a point in 3 years where you say "Hey, this motherboard and graphics card and chipset and 2.5" drive would be totally usable if I just had 0.2 or 0.3 extra GHz." That is never going to happen in reality.

The day a 2009 2.53 MBP is no longer usable to you is pretty much the same week that a 2009 2.8 MBP would be no longer usable.

 

[xoggyux]

If you had a 2.5 and 2.8 MBP and used them both for a month, most people (even engineers) would hardly be able to tell the difference. Given the same software, same chipset, same graphics cards, same RAM, HD, etc., the processor speed difference alone will be hardly noticeable outside of benchmark testing.

And it's not like you're going to get to a point in 3 years where you say "Hey, this motherboard and graphics card and chipset and 2.5" drive would be totally usable if I just had 0.2 or 0.3 extra GHz." That is never going to happen in reality.

The day a 2009 2.53 MBP is no longer usable to you is pretty much the same week that a 2009 2.8 MBP would be no longer usable.

Actually thats the best justification to not spend $500 i have seen . gogogo

 

[apolloa]

Its speed what actually matter (i guess you tried to say "frequency", e.g. 2.xx Ghz)
In the other side, programs of today and probably the next few years wont be taking too much advantage of multicore since so far noone have figured out how to make both cores work properly (usually when one is at 100% the other wont go above 80% and the next wont go over 60% and the next over 40% etc) thats why a 2.2Ghz dualcore is not twice as fast as a 2.2 single core (where twice means do thing in half the time).
Ultimately are the processor's intruction what matters the most thats how a GPU @ 500mhz or so, can outperform a dualcore 2.4Ghz+++ when it comes to graphics.

Utter rubbish. No software will take too much advantage of the multicores for the next few YEARS! Well, Windows 7 will, Snow Leopard will, good grief a lot of encoding programmes use them, Cinema 4D uses them etc etc etc. In fact seeing as Snow Leopard will even use the graphics processor AS WELL to gleefully say no software knows how to use the cores effectively is pretty funny. Lets not forget here dual processor machines are old, you know we had them with the first Pentium Pro's even so there have been many years for software to be written to use them and they have been. We are also not talking about GPU's but CPU's, so a chip using several CUDA cores as one GPU has little relevance to the point.
What you've in effect said is that no one should buy any multi core or multi processor machine as it's a waste of money cause no software is ever going to use them in the next few years! I hope your not thinking of games?
And even if a programme using a dual core machine runs one core at 100% and the other at 80% then obviously it is still using both cores thus giving you an advantage. In a netbook computer, a dual core CPU will make more sense, use less power and run cooler then a faster CPU. That's the whole reason they went multicore was because they couldn't make faster chips run cool enough. And as we know it's the route Intel have taken the Atom down.

Desktop hard disks yes, laptop hard drives no. The smaller platter area is the culprit. Both the CPU upgrades and the HDD RPM upgrades are a waste of money. If the 2.4 vs 2.8 difference is enough to influence a buying decision, a laptop is probably a bad choice to begin with.

The difference between the 2.4 and the 2.8 is worth it as you get more CPU cache which does make a difference ad is worth the money. The OP was asking about the 2.53 vs the 2.8. As for the HDD, well I use both and can happily say the 7200 one does make a difference every time, if your not going to buy an aftermarket HDD, or an SSD then the money is great value.

 

[nick9191]

You thought about going for the 17"? It's only 1.5lb more and is the lightest 17" notebook in the world (lighter than most 15" PC notebooks), and the screen resolution is much higher meaning more screen real estate.

 

[Tracer]

This is always an interesting argument.

I personally would consider a SSD drive in lieu of a processor upgrade, since even the biggest, fastest 2.5" hard drives will slow you down when you are doing a lot of work.

Tracer

 

[xoggyux]

Windows 7 will, Snow Leopard will, good grief a lot of encoding programmes use them, Cinema 4D uses them etc etc etc.

You mean they will use multi-core more efficiently than current OS X and Vista that doesn't mean they will use them to 100% of each core potential. Also the OS do little unless developers actually make programs that either uses the cores effectively or let the OS to control it, and such developers are hard to find since they so lazy they spend their time changing how their programs look.

In a netbook computer, a dual core CPU will make more sense, use less power and run cooler then a faster CPU. That's the whole reason they went multicore was because they couldn't make faster chips run cool enough. And as we know it's the route Intel have taken the Atom down.

You are confusing me, you saying that more core means faster processing and then you say that notebooks uses multi-core because they cannot put fast processors inside? Oh... I get it, you mean clock frequency?
Also if we are talking here about clock speed (2.50 vs 2.80) which clearly the difference is clock speed only and then you say that [the "slower" chip @ 2.5x Ghz]

use less power and run cooler then a faster CPU

then whats your prob....?

 

[deanmadoo]

More things I would use my computer with..

I will also be playing DOTA on VMware Fusion while browsing the web and IMing on leopard and maybe some video encoding all at the same time.