2013 MBA: i5 vs i7

[wermy]

My 11" i7 model just shipped.

For anyone on the fence about i5 vs i7, I'd encourage the i7. 23% higher base clock speed (27% higher turbo boost), 33% more cache and 10% higher clock speed on the GPU is nothing to sneeze at. Plus the max TDP is 15W on both the i5 and i7, so difference in battery should be negligible, especially when you're doing something like video editing or gaming. You can't upgrade it afterwards, so might as well err on the side of more power.

 

[davideotape]

My 11" i7 model just shipped.

For anyone on the fence about i5 vs i7, I'd encourage the i7. 23% higher base clock speed (27% higher turbo boost), 33% more cache and 10% higher clock speed on the GPU is nothing to sneeze at. Plus the max TDP is 15W on both the i5 and i7, so difference in battery should be negligible, especially when you're doing something like video editing or gaming. You can't upgrade it afterwards, so might as well err on the side of more power.

i'm inclined to agree w/this. regardless i'll be doing some minor video editing on this so i could likely use the boost. while i've already been playing around with my 11" i5 and it seems to be handling everything without too much trouble, averge geekbench scores of 8200 vs 6100 seems signifigant enough for me to upgrade. i ordered the other day and it's supposed to be at the store by tuesday (just in time for my current one to be returned). had it shipped to an apple store in a tax-free state so the entire upgrade to i7 AND 8gigs RAM is costing me $160.


i'm really in new toy mode w/this thing. i upgraded my MBP to a MBPr for like a $400 price difference after selling the old one, and invested in this thing for constant portability and i can't get over how much power is in this super-tiny machine.