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2.8GHz v. 3.06GHz for the 17' MBP

T

thornton93

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 19, 2009
9
0
Toledo, Ohio
Sometime this week or next week i will be buying a 17' MBP. Now im thinking of maybe upgrading the processer to the 3.06GHz 1. Now i will be doing school work on the MBP and playing World Of Warcraft. Is it worth paying a extra 300$ for .26GHz? And will i even notice the difference because im not really doing any extreme stuff?

Thank you for you help =):D
 
The increase in performance is 100 x (3.06-2.8)/2.8 = 9.3% when under 100% CPU load while the cost increase is 100 x 300/2499 = 12%. So if you pay 12% extra you are getting 9.3% extra performance when the CPU is at 100% load.

Depending on your usage it could be worth it. Clearly the bragging rights from having a MBP at >3Ghz are pretty awesome. Personally, I'd recommend the 2.8 as I doubt you'll see appreciable gains from the 3,06Ghz.
 
Unless you're encoding, or just running benchmarks, you won't see that extra clock rate being used at all. Hell, I'd take the 2.53ghz option if there was one - that's all you'll really be needing. Intel has designed an awesome CPU, one that really puts all normal computing to shame seeing as it's more limited by Hard disk read/write and ram speeds.
 
alanlindsay said:
Depending on your usage it could be worth it. Clearly the bragging rights from having a MBP at >3Ghz are pretty awesome. Personally, I'd recommend the 2.8 as I doubt you'll see appreciable gains from the 3,06Ghz.
Click to expand...

I went for 3.06Ghz in my 15" MBP because I know that one day in the future, I would have questioned my decision if I bought something less. I doubt it will make a huge difference in day-to-day usage though.
 
Get the 2.8 GHz machine. You won't notice a difference unless the processes your computer must complete take over 3 minutes long. The better processor would shave a few seconds off, at best. Under normal usage, you wouldn't notice a thing.
 
Go for the 2.8GHz model and just have the peace of mind you saved money ;)

9.2% increase under 100% CPU load is not worth it. You're paying $1.15 per MHz. $300 for 260MHz is not worth it.
 
islandman said:
I went for 3.06Ghz in my 15" MBP because I know that one day in the future, I would have questioned my decision if I bought something less. I doubt it will make a huge difference in day-to-day usage though.
Click to expand...

One day in the future your 3.06GHz CPU is going to be outdated by mobile Nehalem.

It's rarely a good idea to pay your own money for the current top spec Apple notebook if you cannot put a cost on maximal CPU performance, especially now as there's a major mobile CPU architecture upgrade coming in the next few months.

Better to spend less initially, then upgrade to the new models and total cost of ownership should be the same or less.
 
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