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Another performance question

Right, that's that then. Think I'll stick with 256Gb, though. I'll spend the money for the 512SSD upgrade on an Airport Extreme and hook up my external WD 2Tb drive to it.
My wife has her eyes on an iPad 4 (to replace the iPad 2 which we'll pass on to the children), so I'm not made of money :D
My iMac and Airport Express are going up for sale soon ! Thanks for all the feedback.
 
Ronnoco said:
Be aware, the newer iPad 5 is right around the corner...:D
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I know, I'm planning on getting the iPad 4 at a discount, possibly a refurb... which is what our iPad 2 was.

As for the MBA, now in doubt whether to get i5 or i7... sigh.
Been reading (too much, I'm afraid). Now, I know the i7 is faster, but I couldn't care less if rendering footage in iMovie or Handbrake takes 2 or 5 minutes.
What I DO care about, however, is performance when surfing the web. Some report jerky scrolling on content heavy websites with the i5, whereas the same sites are perfectly fine with an i7.
Others say that's nonsense. Anandtech, however, recommended the i7 if you use the MBA as your primary and only computer, because you might be disappointed with the i5...

So, who has the 2013 MBA i5 with 8Gb of RAM and the 256gb SSD ? Is there any truth to the above or is it just nonsense ?
 
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As mentioned earlier, I had a 2011 13" i5 4gb/256gb MBA and just replaced it with a 2013 i7 8gb/512gb MBA. Performance difference is definitely noticeable in Final Cut Pro rendering and Logic Pro latency.

But for "everyday" stuff like web browsing, MS Office, etc... I was surprised how similar they are. I had them side by side while setting things up and couldn't really notice the difference for those kind of things. The 2013 i5 machine is surely even faster than my 2011 model also.

I didn't do any real "testing", but that was my subjective impression. The internet connection was not especially fast however, so maybe you'd see more of a difference on a fast cable or FIOS line?

But really.... since you have this question in your mind now, I suggest that you get the i7. If you don't, then there will always be that nagging "what if..." doubt. :D
 
If you are within reasonable driving distance of an Apple retail store (or Certified Apple Reseller), why not just try the i5 and if there are any issues, return it for the i7 and see if that settles the issue.
 
Ronnoco said:
If you are within reasonable driving distance of an Apple retail store (or Certified Apple Reseller), why not just try the i5 and if there are any issues, return it for the i7 and see if that settles the issue.
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Ronnoco, that i7 is starting to look like a great upgrade now. :D
 
Boyd01 said:
But really.... since you have this question in your mind now, I suggest that you get the i7. If you don't, then there will always be that nagging "what if..." doubt. :D
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I guess you're right. I believe the upgrade price for the 512Gb SSD is ridiculously high, but the i5 to i7 upgrade, I can live with.
As for being within driving distance of an Apple Store : I live in Belgium, so no Apple stores here, but we do have Apple Premium Resellers, which is the next best thing. Problem is that they only stock the i5 models, so no way to do a comparison. But I guess I could go and take a look to see if I like the i5 enough.

My internet connection is about 100 Mbps down and 5mbps up. I'll be adding a new Airport Extreme to the mix so I don't think internet/networking speed is going to be a problem.
However, I think Boyd01 is right : it's nagging me now so I don't think it'll go away anytime soon :D
 
Dr. McKay said:
My internet connection is about 100 Mbps down and 5mbps up. I'll be adding a new Airport Extreme to the mix so I don't think internet/networking speed is going to be a problem.
Click to expand...

You might have missed the point when I mentioned internet connection speed above. The speed of my internet connection is slow (2.5mb). Therefore, I might not notice a browser perfomance difference between the i7 and i5. If your internet is fast, then maybe you will notice a browser difference between the i5 and i7. ;)

In other words, internet speed is a bottleneck for me when browsing the web, and a faster CPU probably won't matter much.
 
I think internet connection speed will only have an effect on the speed with which the page loads, not with the fact that scrolling up and down is jerky or not...
 
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