2010 Macbook Pro to 2013 Macbook Air

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NanoMeko

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 24, 2009
32
0
Hello,


Are there any speed advantages to upgrading from a mid 2010 2.4 Ghz i5 4GB Ram Macbook Pro to a new 2013 i5 13' MBA with 8Gb RAM?

I do not do any heavy image/video/3d and mostly use my mac mainly for development (ios and web dev) and watching HD series and movies.
 

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NewbieCanada

macrumors 68030
Oct 9, 2007
2,574
34
Everything will load much more quickly thanks to the SSD, and there'd be less disk swapping due to the expanded RAM.
 
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loud0g40oz

macrumors member
Jun 20, 2012
44
0
NanoMeko said:
Hello,


Are there any speed advantages to upgrading from a mid 2010 2.4 Ghz i5 4GB Ram Macbook Pro to a new 2013 i5 13' MBA with 8Gb RAM?
Click to expand...
FYI, the mid 2010 MBP has the older Core 2 Duo processer, not an i5. So the speed difference will be more noticeable than an i5 equipped MBP.
 
Dwinguel

Dwinguel

macrumors member
Feb 2, 2010
49
0
Geneva, Switzerland
NanoMeko said:
Hello,


Are there any speed advantages to upgrading from a mid 2010 2.4 Ghz i5 4GB Ram Macbook Pro to a new 2013 i5 13' MBA with 8Gb RAM?

I do not do any heavy image/video/3d and mostly use my mac mainly for development (ios and web dev) and watching HD series and movies.
Click to expand...
Yes you will get a nice speed bump in terms of data transfers due to the SSD. However, for your usage I'm not sure you would get that much more than if you just bought an SSD to replace your current drive in your MBP...

Also it depends if you are short on RAM, but here again you could upgrade your current model. What does "Activity Monitor" tell you in terms of "System Memory"?
 
A

ayres

macrumors regular
Sep 27, 2010
242
13
NanoMeko said:
Usually I don't get plenty of RAM free with only my chrome tabs open, a text editor, music playing and maybe some torrents downloading.
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Slightly off topic, but looking at your activity monitor reminds me of the frustration that chrome causes... Leave some tabs open, and it runs awry... But it's such a fast and snappy browser. Safari does better when tabs are left open.
 
Dwinguel

Dwinguel

macrumors member
Feb 2, 2010
49
0
Geneva, Switzerland
NanoMeko said:
Usually I don't get plenty of RAM free with only my chrome tabs open, a text editor, music playing and maybe some torrents downloading.
Click to expand...
Okay, it doesn't look too bad but it looks like you have some paging out happening (page outs is about 10% of page ins in your case) so there is a bit of swapping. The swapping will get worse when you open more apps.

So you are a bit short on RAM even if it's not a disaster.
 
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newdeal

macrumors 68020
Oct 21, 2009
2,361
1,436
you will not notice a speed difference if you put an SSD in the pro. Doesn't even have to be a super fast SSD I have a 13" core i5 with an intel x20m SSD and it is equally as fast as my new air. In fact I am considering returning the air and just keeping the 13" pro (only bought the air due to having a bunch of gift cards to spend). Upgrading the pro to 8gb of ram is cheap so thats a non factor. My pro has 10gb because I left in one original 2gb and added a new 8gb in the second slot
 
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wermy

macrumors regular
Apr 15, 2013
205
1
Fellow iOS dev here. I used to have a 4GB machine, and I ran out of memory all the time using xcode. You should notice a huge difference going to 8GB. :)
 

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