Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
2.6 v 2.7?
- Thread starter CleanFeed
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
kokhoong0624
macrumors regular
Fireball Dragon
macrumors 6502a
I have ordered the exact same specifications. And have been thinking exactly the same thing!!
The only difference I can note is that the 2.7 has an 8MB cache, and 2.6 has a 6MB cache.
x-evil-x
macrumors 603
I went with the 2.7 because of the extra 2mb cache. If your 2.6 will ship fairly soon, I would probably just leave it, but if your order is still several weeks away, go ahead and switch it.
That's what I'm inclined to do also (go 2.6) and spend the money on the 460 over the 450. Seems like the better bang for your buck option unless I'm missing something.
jackoatmon
macrumors 6502a
I also got the 2.6/460/1TB spec, under the same assumption as Sameulsan2001 here makes – the difference won't be noticeable.
CPUs don't really get faster anymore (haven't for years really), they just get smaller and quieter, and honestly most of the R&D these days goes into the integrated GPUs.
Now that could be wrong. But if the machine seems too slow for my use case the holiday return policy is very generous.
I'm just gonna open the box, run a super demanding task that's typical of my most intense usage, and if she works she works and if she's slow, well, I don't think 100mhz is going to fix that – it's back to the desktop!
CPUs don't really get faster anymore (haven't for years really), they just get smaller and quieter, and honestly most of the R&D these days goes into the integrated GPUs.
Now that could be wrong. But if the machine seems too slow for my use case the holiday return policy is very generous.
I'm just gonna open the box, run a super demanding task that's typical of my most intense usage, and if she works she works and if she's slow, well, I don't think 100mhz is going to fix that – it's back to the desktop!
cfourz
macrumors newbie
I almost did the same thing but ultimately kept my 2.6Ghz config (the exact same one, btw). The processor gains from even 2 years ago to now are negligible. The bottlenecks will be storage and gpu, so you've made the correct upgrades imo.
I upgraded to the 2.7Ghz cpu because there are more differences between them than just clock speed and cache. In addition to the extra 2MB of cache, the 2.7Ghz and 2.9Ghz CPUs also have the TSX-NI instruction set, Intel vPro Technology, Intel Stable Image Platform Program (SIPP) and Trusted Execution Technology. If you run heavily multi-threaded applications, and they can make use of the TSX instructions, that might be worth it. If anything, the extra cache paired with the bump in clock speed would be nice either way.
Here's a comparison of the 3 processors here:
http://ark.intel.com/compare/88972,88967,88970
Here's a comparison of the 3 processors here:
http://ark.intel.com/compare/88972,88967,88970
I'm kind of a noob on these topics, but what does the extra 2MB cache really do? And what kinds of apps will you be running that may take advantage of these extras? I'm probably ordering a 2.6/460/512 this week, but I was unaware of some of these things.
The more cache a CPU has, the more data it can store without having to go back to the main memory for operation cycles. It's not a huge difference in speed, but it does help speed up memory heavy operations. In terms of apps that could use those instructions, video encoding applications could be one. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple was using it in Final Cut Pro X to help optimize it better for their hardware. If they know most of the CPUs will have it, it will help speed up processing times. The others I'm not really sure about though.
So do we know of Final Cut uses those instructions? Also what other applications might use those? Thank you.
To put it very simply, applications that have large working data sets. But it also depends on how data is accessed and how much processing is done. The only way to answer your question for sure is to benchmark an app on a CPU with different amounts of cache.
My suggestion, if you are using the laptop professionally and are paid by work done, go for the highest spec you can possibly afford. If the top CPU shaves off 3% of time off your renders/exports per day, you might be able to take an additional project or two every few months and the extra $ for the better spec will pay off quickly. But if these time saving won't let you earn more money, then there is not much point in getting the faster CPU.
I got the top spec CPU, simply because the difference in performance is very noticeable for my work (data processing/analysis/statistics etc.) and it makes a large difference whether I wait for 30 seconds for results to be there or whether I wait for 26 seconds (given that I have to re-run the task every few minutes on average).
What an informative answer. Thank you.
[doublepost=1494860606][/doublepost]But I edit in Final Cut. Would the 2.7 affect the performance in any other way than saving me 5% in rendering time? Thanks.
[doublepost=1494860821][/doublepost]Meaning that any of these :TSX-NIinstruction set, Intel vPro Technology, Intel Stable Image Platform Program (SIPP) and Trusted Execution Technology what do they even do?
[doublepost=1494860606][/doublepost]But I edit in Final Cut. Would the 2.7 affect the performance in any other way than saving me 5% in rendering time? Thanks.
[doublepost=1494860821][/doublepost]Meaning that any of these :TSX-NIinstruction set, Intel vPro Technology, Intel Stable Image Platform Program (SIPP) and Trusted Execution Technology what do they even do?
I doubt it very much 🙂 And you'd be lucky if you even get 5%
Don't worry about any of that. Its various features that concern virtualisation, multiprocessor communication, safe execution and stuff like that. Some of these features might or might not be used by the OS in the background. And AFAIK, there is no difference in support of these features on the CPUs that ship on current MBP.
[doublepost=1494862671][/doublepost]But mentioned above was where another person that he said the he upgraded to the 2.7 especially for those functions. Thank you.
That is very interesting. So is it that the os is not using any of these functions or is it that the os uses them and it supports them in the 2.6 as well? Or is it that it uses them but they are only supported in the 2.7 and 2.8? Thank you.
Frankly, I wouldn't worry about any of those extensions. Some of them are enterprise-oriented, others are not used by the OS, and yet others (like the TSX) have a history of buggy hardware implementations and are barely supported by anything at this point.