2010 vs 2014 MacBook Pro

[Silverlink]

I’m looking at getting a refurbished 13.3" MacBook Pro Retina Mid 2014, 2.6 i5 Haswell and wondering how much better it really would be than my current Macbook, in terms of performance:

MacBook Pro 15” Mid 2010 , Hi-Res(1680 x 1050), i7, 2.66 GHz, 8 G, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M,

I’m using it for photo (Lightroom) and video (FCPX). Worth the upgrade?

 

[Mac-lover3]

I’m looking at getting a refurbished 13.3" MacBook Pro Retina Mid 2014, 2.6 i5 Haswell and wondering how much better it really would be than my current Macbook, in terms of performance:

MacBook Pro 15” Mid 2010 , Hi-Res(1680 x 1050), i7, 2.66 GHz, 8 G, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M,

I’m using it for photo (Lightroom) and video (FCPX). Worth the upgrade?

Well the Retina screen is very nice certainly for photo editing but if your MacBook Pro runs great I would stick to it til it isn't working probably anymore for you and then sell it it wil keep it's value like all Mac's

 

[fastasleep]

You could put an SSD in your MBP which would speed things up quite a bit in general and reduce the gap in performance quite a bit as that's probably the fastest thing on the rMBP that yours doesn't have. Best thing I did for my 2011 MBP which is still kicking —*I'm not planning on upgrading until the next significant revision.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

I’m looking at getting a refurbished 13.3" MacBook Pro Retina Mid 2014, 2.6 i5 Haswell and wondering how much better it really would be than my current Macbook, in terms of performance:

MacBook Pro 15” Mid 2010 , Hi-Res(1680 x 1050), i7, 2.66 GHz, 8 G, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M,

I’m using it for photo (Lightroom) and video (FCPX). Worth the upgrade?

It is only a dual core and if I remember rightly that i7 is a quad core. You really want a quad core and the better graphics and the bigger screen for those apps. I would reccomend saving for a couple more months and getting a refurb 15 inch.

 

[theluggage]

I’m looking at getting a refurbished 13.3" MacBook Pro Retina Mid 2014, 2.6 i5 Haswell and wondering how much better it really would be than my current Macbook, in terms of performance:

There are plenty of reasons to update - the retina display, USB3,
thunderbolt ports, the ability to connect two external monitors, slimmer and lighter... but going from an i7 to a newer i5 and embedded graphics is not going to be a great upgrade (especially for FCPX).

It will feel a lot faster due to the SSD - but for a couple of hundred bucks you can slam a SSD into your 2010 MacBook Pro, and for extra marks, you can fit a "data doubler" or "optibay" that lets you replace the optical drive with a second hard drive (e.g. the old one you just replaced with a SSD), and carry around far more storage than you can afford for a SSD-only 2014 MBP.

Fitting a SSD is a doddle given the right screwdriver - fitting the optibay is a bit more of a fiddle, but still a screwdriver and cable-plugging job.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

I wouldn't want to downgrade to a 13" screen either, with those uses. And I also agree that an SSD will really increase the overall speed of the machine.

 

[dollystereo]

Ssd

 

[Silverlink]

Thanks everyone, great advice. I will look into the SSD or wait until the new MBPs are announced and wait for a price drop on the 2014 15". Crazy to think my 4 year old computer outpaces the latest 13" MBP, glad I checked here first before getting one.

 

[tears2040]

Thanks everyone, great advice. I will look into the SSD or wait until the new MBPs are announced and wait for a price drop on the 2014 15". Crazy to think my 4 year old computer outpaces the latest 13" MBP, glad I checked here first before getting one.

SSD would be a great choice for your current computer, but honestly I couldn't be without Thunderbolt or USB 3. Upgrade to the 15", not the 13" as that is the basic model so of course it's not really an upgrade to your system.

 

[dollystereo]

The 2010 and 2011 machines are great. Computing power has not increased enough the last 3 years. (mostly power savings).
The SSD is a nice upgrade, even in this SATA II machines. Get the crucial MX100, best value for the money.

 

[MagicBoy]

It is only a dual core and if I remember rightly that i7 is a quad core. You really want a quad core and the better graphics and the bigger screen for those apps. I would reccomend saving for a couple more months and getting a refurb 15 inch.

The 2010 15" and all 13" retina are both dual core.

You need a 15" retina for quad cores.

 

[jevjnd2012]

I couldn't disagree more with some of the people on this thread.

I have a 2012 15" Macbook Pro with retina display and my wife the 2014 13" retina Macbook Pro and hers totally blows mine out of the water. Hers is an i5 and mine is an i7; both with 8 GB RAM, and mine has a discrete 1GB video card (I think it was a GT650m). PCIe is also much better than SATA II which I believe you would have been using at the time. I can't imagine that a 2010 would out-perform a machine from 2014.

 

[talmy]

I’m looking at getting a refurbished 13.3" MacBook Pro Retina Mid 2014, 2.6 i5 Haswell and wondering how much better it really would be than my current Macbook, in terms of performance:

MacBook Pro 15” Mid 2010 , Hi-Res(1680 x 1050), i7, 2.66 GHz, 8 G, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M,

I’m using it for photo (Lightroom) and video (FCPX). Worth the upgrade?

Looking at the Geekbench 2 scores (courtesy of the MacTracker app) the 2014 will be about 30% faster even though it has half the cores. FCPX uses the GPU, so might be comparable or slower speed there, but as far as I know Lightroom doesn't.

The real downside to the switch would be the 2" smaller display.

 

[MagicBoy]

Looking at the Geekbench 2 scores (courtesy of the MacTracker app) the 2014 will be about 30% faster even though it has half the cores. FCPX uses the GPU, so might be comparable or slower speed there, but as far as I know Lightroom doesn't.

The real downside to the switch would be the 2" smaller display.

It doesn't have half the cores. The 2010 15" is a dual core i7. No quad cores until 2011, however that year is best avoided due to Radeongate.

2010's fastest 15" CPU : http://ark.intel.com/products/49666/Intel-Core-i7-640M-Processor-4M-Cache-2_80-GHz

 

[talmy]

It doesn't have half the cores. The 2010 15" is a dual core i7. No quad cores until 2011, however that year is best avoided due to Radeongate.

My bad. I've got a 2011 and was thinking the 2010 was the same. The 2011 is much faster than the 2010 and is in fact faster than the current 13" because of the quad cores. Oh, and no GPU problems here, at least not yet.

 

[v3rlon]

I would hate working on a 13" screen.

You can get a Crucial 512GB SSD from Newegg at around $200.
The data doubler/optibay to replace the spinning disk with another hard drive is also a good option.

If you are going to change computers, I would say go for the 15" rMBPro with discrete graphics.

A faster processor helps sometimes. More memory is useful sometimes. You might even need more HDD space at some point. But, you will use the screen and keyboard every time you fire that thing up. Make sure you like the new ones better than the old ones or it will feel like you've downgraded once the new wears off.