2.9 GHz upgrade

[macbook123]

Considering it. Any other advantages or disadvantages over the 2.7 GHz apart from the 7% or so speed increase?

 

[shadow82x]

There is also 8mb of L3 cache compared to the 6mb on the 2.6ghz (6700HQ) model.

 

[PaulWog]

There is also 8mb of L3 cache compared to the 6mb on the 2.6ghz (6700HQ) model.

edit - misread Apple's website

Yes the increased cache is definitely more useful than the increased GHz.

 

[macbook123]

There is also 8mb of L3 cache compared to the 6mb on the 2.6ghz (6700HQ) model.

But the 2.7 GHz one has the same cache, right?

 

[PaulWog]

But the 2.7 GHz one has the same cache, right?

Yes the 2.7GHz one has 8MB cache. That cache improvement may be useful for certain things beyond what a GHz increase can provide. The main purpose of going up to the 2.9GHz is to get the 0.2GHz increase. The increase in processing capabilities will be about 7% as you stated between 2.7 & 2.9.

 

[PowerUser]

You likely would never know the difference between the 2.7 and 2.9 even if you're using high end applications like After Effects, FCP, games, etc. The graphics card upgrade and a larger hard drive are far more important. However, if you just want everything, go for it (I did).

 

[monkeydax]

Yes the 2.7GHz one has 8MB cache.

How significant is this then?

 

[terraphantm]

How significant is this then?

Roughly speaking, it tends to be equivalent to having an extra 100-200MHz.

 

[brynsmith23]

Roughly speaking, it tends to be equivalent to having an extra 100-200MHz.

So I'm looking at an overall increase of 400-500MHz on a 2.9GHz over a 2.6GHz

 

[macbook123]

O

You likely would never know the difference between the 2.7 and 2.9 even if you're using high end applications like After Effects, FCP, games, etc. The graphics card upgrade and a larger hard drive are far more important. However, if you just want everything, go for it (I did).

Ok thanks. The 500 MB and 1TB drives are equally fast though, right?

 

[PaulWog]

O

Ok thanks. The 500 MB and 1TB drives are equally fast though, right?

Theoretically they are equally as fast.

When you fill up an SSD, it gets slower. Usually you want to leave at least 10% of the drive empty. I'm not sure how the new Apple SSD's behave, or generally how newer SSD's handle being filled up.

 

[Low country]

You likely would never know the difference between the 2.7 and 2.9 even if you're using high end applications like After Effects, FCP, games, etc. The graphics card upgrade and a larger hard drive are far more important. However, if you just want everything, go for it (I did).

I too went all in (almost) and ordered 2.9, 460GPU, 1TB...I may never need it but at least with this build there is no looking back and wondering "what if?" This should suit me well for 5 years

 

[Wildkraut]

I skipped 1TB, because I still have 390gb freespace of 500gb on my current iMac.
Most of my files are stored on my custom built FreeBSD server, with 10TB zfs raidz3.

 

[Patrick-Photo]

I'm going for the 2.7gHz and Radeon Pro 460. The extra vram (and 40% faster gpu) is a better deal than the 0.2gHz I would get for another €203,-.

Currently I'm working on a 2.2gHz i7 from 2011 coupled with 16gb ram and a 6750M 512MB card. This gets most of my work done with ease, now that I'm getting in to video-editting too I'm going for the extra GPU acceleration. For photo-editing my current CPU would suffice (24mp Fujifilm RAW files).

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Frankly the real world increase you get from base model to specced out model isn't worth the cost on a laptop because when you push the system hard it will throttle with the higher spec parts. Benchmarks only last a minute and don't reflect this. We can't get around this fact because throttling is part of the hardware design in Intel and AMD chips (and SSD controllers too).