An i3 of i5 MBP vs the current C2D

[Icaras]

how is it so cheap!!! farout.

*about to purchaseA*

Damn, that is cheap Honestly, I don't live in Australia, but $349 is still the cheapest I've seen 8 gigs too. Hmmm, so did you buy yet?

Its that price everywhere, nothing special.

It's not at Crucial. It's still $499 there. Sorry, I've only ever bought 3rd party RAM from them so it was pretty surprising to me too.

 

[DoFoT9]

Damn, that is cheap Honestly, I don't live in Australia, but $349 is still the cheapest I've seen 8 gigs too. Hmmm, so did you buy yet?

its 349us i hope you know haha, from a US store.
havent ordered yet, only just got home - i might wait a week until pay comes in.

It's not at Crucial. It's still $499 there. Sorry, I've only ever bought 3rd party RAM from them so it was pretty surprising to me too.

thats where i was going to order from. 4GB sticks are still going for +$1000 here! rediculous. i hate this country.

 

[Digital Skunk]

I've recently gone from a mid-2007 17" MBP (2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4Gb, 160Gb 7,200rpm drive) to a current 2.8Ghz 15" machine with the same memory and the 500Gb 7,200rpm drive and frankly, it's not that much quicker in daily use. Oh sure, when I'm processing large numbers of photos I can feel the difference but the 17" machine wasn't exactly slow. And that, really, is my point. For the first time in my life (bearing in mind I've been around PC's since the 486 days) I didn't feel the need to upgrade because my old machine was slow. In terms of real-world performance in the last two and a half years I haven't ONCE been held up by the hardware and I really believe that for the vast majority of users current hardware levels are more than enough.

I think we've reached on odd point now where hardware continues to improve but there really aren't that many applications taking advantage of it. Gaming is an obvious exception to that, and if you're a pro user who regularly imports and works with LARGE batches of files where even a second difference per file will make a significant impact to your workflow then any boost is worthwhile. Otherwise just buy what you want and be happy with your purchase.

Correct indeed. The other side to the upgrade or wait issue wants to believe they are getting a smoking hot, blazing fast machine today, and one that's even faster tomorrow.

It's one of the most insane things I hear.

i remember these forums being LOADED with "is my Quad 2.8 slower than a Nehalem 2.66?" and users whining about dumping their 1 year old Mac Pros in favor of the current, or those whining about how the Nehalem wasn't that much faster so they won't upgrade yet .... NO DUH!

You compare current models with 3 years old models, no 6 month old ones. When you are coming from a Power Mac G5 that Mac Pro is blazing fast and smoking hot.

Otherwise, there's some hardware or design advantage that benefits your work or play, i.e. 7 hour battery, GFX, 27" hi def display with Core i7, etc.

Otherwise, there's no need to upgrade.

people get their hopes up so much. silly people. there wont be a design change i dont think. it might get the i5 CPUs, or it might not. GPUs will still be pathetic. the only thing going for it is simplicity and style, i guess thats why i like it i probably do need a new laptop (esp for writing notes at uni where i have 8hrs straight and my current battery only lasts 2hrs), but now that the ipad is out im not sure if i need a new one.

Yeah there won't be for the Macbooks or iMacs. Apple has really hit it off with those designs, especially when HP is cloning them like crazy. The only thing I am really waiting for in the laptop lineup is a quad core 17" other than that, I am sticking with my Penryn until the keys fall off, and the known GFX card issue flairs up.

 

[DoFoT9]

Yeah there won't be for the Macbooks or iMacs. Apple has really hit it off with those designs, especially when HP is cloning them like crazy. The only thing I am really waiting for in the laptop lineup is a quad core 17" other than that, I am sticking with my Penryn until the keys fall off, and the known GFX card issue flairs up.

thats probably all that will happen, 17"s will get quads, 13s/15s will get duals (are there 4 thread duals?)

just run a game 24/7 and hope to blow that baby up

 

[AnaAhlawy]

No, the difference won't be devastating. In truth, while i5 is definately quicker and a new gen of graphics cards will (almost) always be faster I would be astonished if most users would ever really notice the difference unless they had both machines side-by-side. Frankly, I'm pretty convinced that the bottleneck in modern machines is no longer the processor or GPU (unless you're doing something that taxes both those areas obviously, gaming for example) but the hard drive. We're moving larger and larger data sets around and you can really feel the difference now between traditional HDD's and SSD's. But as a large capacity SSD still seems to be made of solid gold(and priced accordingly) that's a discussion for another day.

I've recently gone from a mid-2007 17" MBP (2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4Gb, 160Gb 7,200rpm drive) to a current 2.8Ghz 15" machine with the same memory and the 500Gb 7,200rpm drive and frankly, it's not that much quicker in daily use. Oh sure, when I'm processing large numbers of photos I can feel the difference but the 17" machine wasn't exactly slow. And that, really, is my point. For the first time in my life (bearing in mind I've been around PC's since the 486 days) I didn't feel the need to upgrade because my old machine was slow. In terms of real-world performance in the last two and a half years I haven't ONCE been held up by the hardware and I really believe that for the vast majority of users current hardware levels are more than enough.

I think we've reached on odd point now where hardware continues to improve but there really aren't that many applications taking advantage of it. Gaming is an obvious exception to that, and if you're a pro user who regularly imports and works with LARGE batches of files where even a second difference per file will make a significant impact to your workflow then any boost is worthwhile. Otherwise just buy what you want and be happy with your purchase.

Thanks a lot. A very helpful post.

I think you are absolutely right.

I really appreciate everyone's input in this topic. It has been really helpful. I went ahead and ordered 13"MBP 2.53, 4Gb RAM, and 250Gb HDD (I will personally upgrade it to 640Gb).

Thank You