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Any 2011 MBP 2.0 6490 (Base Model) Buyers Regret Not Going With 2.2 6750 (High End)?

I'm sure most people want the latest and greatest. I do as well but I don't have "needs" for the high-end model even though I can afford it. I upgrade my MBP every two to three year and have always bought the base model because I know that each time I upgrade I'd get significant hardware improvements. Thus "future-proofing" is irrelevant to me. I use my computer almost exclusively for web browsing and document editing. Once in a blue moon I'd fire up iPhoto and iTunes. If there was a 15" MacBook Air with 300GB+ storage I would have jumped for it, but the base MBP has been doing its job nicely for me in the past 6 years.

Like others have said, unless you need a lot of graphic power to support your gaming/design/video editing/3d rendering needs, the base quad i7 15" will be more than sufficient.

I am loving the hardware of my new MBP (upgraded from an early 2008), so unless Apple introduce a dramatic change in their next re-design, I might keep this machine for a few years longer than I intend to. And I am sure that the i7 quad-core 2.0GHz chip would still be more than enough to power what I normally do on my laptop 3-4 years from now.
 
aznguyen316 said:
I think after the $300 difference with the massive jump in graphics the CPU from 2.0 to 2.2 is also a bigger jump than some may think. Look at some benchmarks the 2.2 is a solid performer over the 2.0 while the 2.2 to 2.3 is a less of a jump. Anyway If you can AFFORD it I say wh not get the 2.2 model? I got 2.3 because I'm impatient and wanted AG which retail stores only have the 2.3 paired with it. I have notched that iMovie does utilize nearly 800% CPU when importing an avchd file so at least I'm making use of the CPU lol.
Click to expand...

exactly its more than just graphics, its clockspeed, level cache, all kinds of things, i made a thread about this earlier saying it was WELL worth the extra money spent and i got flamed out the ass for it!
 
edifyingGerbil said:
a slightly annoying thing is that the power adapters provided by apple don't have a high enough wattage to keep up with the 2.2GHz under full CPU/GPU capacity so you lose power, albeit slowly. playing Dragone Age II, a not that intensive game, on max settings for 3 hours caused me to lose 8-9% battery which is slightly concerning...

i hope they release a slightly increased power adapter sometime.
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Actually, it's not the adapter itself – the MBP uses more power than the battery and adapter can provide together, so Apple would have to stick a better battery in there to compensate.
 
I was doing some hard thinking on Saturday when I purchased my 13 inch base model MBPro. I was contemplating getting the Air, maybe spending more than I wanted to spend and get the 15 inch but the i5 is a very powerful cpu in it's own right.

I truly doubt on a day to day basis the performance difference is THAT great over the larger models barring the i7 of course. I for one am very satisfied.

But take my opinion with a grain of salt please, this is my first ever Mac computer and so I am a novice when it comes to how Macs should perform. Cheers!
 
harcosparky said:
My current video card is HD2600 with 256MB VRAM ---- you can see it is time to upgrade --- I have to believe going from 256MB VRAM to 1GB GDDRS will be better than going to 256MB GDDRS.
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You should not equate video ram with performance as they frequently have nothing to do with one another. Its the GPU (processor) that matters. In this case you should be comparing hd2600 to 6490 to 6750.

There is a tremendous increase in performance going to the 6490 from the hd2600. And yes, there is another increase in performance going to the 6750. Looking at 3dmark 06 performance which is the newest benchmark all three cards were tested with shows the scores as follows

2600: 3,133
6490: 5,602 (179% faster)
6750: 9,406 (300% faster)

I guess I posted this because people are forever posting the x has more ram than y and so it must be faster. Thats really a misconception due to the massive impact of the GPU. There's many cases of new video cards with more ram performing worse than an older unit with less ram...

/rant
 
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DarwinOSX said:
Oh please...4 GB is plenty. 8 GB is cheap so why not but you don't have any multi-tasking issues because of 4 GB.
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if you have two browsers open because one doesn't support the website you're trying to open (or you're programming and want to see how a particular site looks on a particular browser) and then have multiple tabs open on both you're left with about 500MB of free memory, that's not including the RAM used by various applications that are open concurrently such as word processing or itunes or PDF files etc etc.

i thought 4GB would be more than enough for my rather modest needs but looking at my ram usage the last week made me realise that 8GB would be way better.

4GB is not plenty, it's barely adequate.
 
Mackilroy said:
Actually, it's not the adapter itself – the MBP uses more power than the battery and adapter can provide together, so Apple would have to stick a better battery in there to compensate.
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lol listen to yourself, you're saying it's not the adapter, but then you say apple would have to stick a better battery in to compensate...

no, if they just provided a power adapter that matched the output of the MBP under load it wouldn't slowly lose power whilst plugged in. although i love my MBP i have to say that that is a serious design flaw.
 
edifyingGerbil said:
a slightly annoying thing is that the power adapters provided by apple don't have a high enough wattage to keep up with the 2.2GHz under full CPU/GPU capacity so you lose power, albeit slowly. playing Dragone Age II, a not that intensive game, on max settings for 3 hours caused me to lose 8-9% battery which is slightly concerning...
Click to expand...

Why would you care about 8 or 9%?
 
DarwinOSX said:
Why would you care about 8 or 9%?
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:confused:

i care because... a laptop shouldn't lose batter power.... when it's being used in the way that it was intended, ie using the CPU and GPU intensively....

what don't you understand about that? it doesn't strike you as odd that plugged in i will eventually have to stop working if i'm doing something intensive to let my battery recharge?
 
edifyingGerbil said:
:confused:

i care because... a laptop shouldn't lose batter power.... when it's being used in the way that it was intended, ie using the CPU and GPU intensively....

what don't you understand about that? it doesn't strike you as odd that plugged in i will eventually have to stop working if i'm doing something intensive to let my battery recharge?
Click to expand...

It won't ever happen if all you lose after 3 hrs is 8 or 9%
 
edifyingGerbil said:
if you have two browsers open because one doesn't support the website you're trying to open (or you're programming and want to see how a particular site looks on a particular browser) and then have multiple tabs open on both you're left with about 500MB of free memory, that's not including the RAM used by various applications that are open concurrently such as word processing or itunes or PDF files etc etc.

i thought 4GB would be more than enough for my rather modest needs but looking at my ram usage the last week made me realise that 8GB would be way better.

4GB is not plenty, it's barely adequate.
Click to expand...

Something is wrong then. I would look at activity monitor to see what is using so much ram.
 
DarwinOSX said:
Something is wrong then. I would look at activity monitor to see what is using so much ram.
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safari is using 573MB and the flash plugin another 100MB. if i have safari *and* firefox open i'm left with just 300MB of free ram...

I agree with you, but i think that opening lots of tabs makes the browsers use more memory.
 
I resent the 2GHz being called "low end". Lol. It smokes last years Premium BTO model. Anyway...

I was all set to get the 2.2. In fact I ordered it online. But then a project came up and I needed it the following day so I called and canceled It as it hadn't shipped yet. I planned to just hit the Apple Store the next day and buy it. Then it dawned on me that I would be doing myself a huge favor by getting the 2.0 instead. $325 savings (student pricing). I am using it for audio production, so the upgraded video card was worthless to me. That left me wondering if I needed to spend another 325 bucks for 200MHz per core. That extra power would not help me unless I was slamming the CPU anyway. Not that audio usage can't tax your processor but most DAWs start complaining before you hit the CPU ceiling anyway.

All in all, no regrets. The $325 was put towards 8GB of RAM. Still have $260 left over I could use to buy AppleCare, or put towards a new guitar, or groceries for my family, etc.

If the price diff. was $200 or under I probably would hav sprung for the 2.2. But considering I had no need for the 1GB graphics card it didn't seem like a good use of my money.

I absolutely love my 2GHz quad. It smokes the 2.4GHz Core2Quad PC I had last year. And at the time I thought THAT thing was powerful.
 
I have noticed that when playing NBA 2K11 and Black Ops while plugged in, the computer will go from charging to being charged. The light will turn from green to orange and then back. I have it on the highest settings. I doubt it would ever drain the battery. You would need to play for like 30 hours straight.
 
skiltrip said:
I resent the 2GHz being called "low end". Lol. It smokes last years Premium BTO model. Anyway...

I was all set to get the 2.2. In fact I ordered it online. But then a project came up and I needed it the following day so I called and canceled It as it hadn't shipped yet. I planned to just hit the Apple Store the next day and buy it. Then it dawned on me that I would be doing myself a huge favor by getting the 2.0 instead. $325 savings (student pricing). I am using it for audio production, so the upgraded video card was worthless to me. That left me wondering if I needed to spend another 325 bucks for 200MHz per core. That extra power would not help me unless I was slamming the CPU anyway. Not that audio usage can't tax your processor but most DAWs start complaining before you hit the CPU ceiling anyway.

All in all, no regrets. The $325 was put towards 8GB of RAM. Still have $260 left over I could use to buy AppleCare, or put towards a new guitar, or groceries for my family, etc.

If the price diff. was $200 or under I probably would hav sprung for the 2.2. But considering I had no need for the 1GB graphics card it didn't seem like a good use of my money.

I absolutely love my 2GHz quad. It smokes the 2.4GHz Core2Quad PC I had last year. And at the time I thought THAT thing was powerful.
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Yea I don't need the extra GPU/CPU power, I just don't want to regret getting it down the line.
 
JoJoCal19 said:
Yea I don't need the extra GPU/CPU power, I just don't want to regret getting it down the line.
Click to expand...

I doubt you will. I look at it like this...

2-3 months ago, the i7 Dual Core 15" 2.66Ghz was considered high end, and people that had the 2.4 i5 were pining for that i7. I was literally a millimeter or two from the Buy button on Apple's refurb site for that 2.66 for $1869 a couple months back. In one fell swoop the new 2011 MBP rendered all that meaningless. Now they are all just last year's models. Sure that 2.66 is still faster than that 2.53 and 2.4, but it doesn't matter anymore, because a much faster alternative is available that boldly outshines all of them.

When the 2012 is released, and the 2013, the difference between the 2.0 and 2.2 is going to be moot (for those who don't need the graphics) because all the new ones are going to smoke the old ones. And again, we'll all be last year's model. Luckily for us, this year, the entire line-up of quads is pretty awesome and should be very capable for a long time to come.
 
skiltrip said:
I doubt you will. I look at it like this...

2-3 months ago, the i7 Dual Core 15" 2.66Ghz was considered high end, and people that had the 2.4 i5 were pining for that i7. I was literally a millimeter or two from the Buy button on Apple's refurb site for that 2.66 for $1869 a couple months back. In one fell swoop the new 2011 MBP rendered all that meaningless. Now they are all just last year's models. Sure that 2.66 is still faster than that 2.53 and 2.4, but it doesn't matter anymore, because a much faster alternative is available that boldly outshines all of them.

When the 2012 is released, and the 2013, the difference between the 2.0 and 2.2 is going to be moot (for those who don't need the graphics) because all the new ones are going to smoke the old ones. And again, we'll all be last year's model. Luckily for us, this year, the entire line-up of quads is pretty awesome and should be very capable for a long time to come.
Click to expand...

excellent point... i'm currently going back and forth between the two 15 inch models, but leaning toward the base
 
skiltrip said:
I doubt you will. I look at it like this...

2-3 months ago, the i7 Dual Core 15" 2.66Ghz was considered high end, and people that had the 2.4 i5 were pining for that i7. I was literally a millimeter or two from the Buy button on Apple's refurb site for that 2.66 for $1869 a couple months back. In one fell swoop the new 2011 MBP rendered all that meaningless. Now they are all just last year's models. Sure that 2.66 is still faster than that 2.53 and 2.4, but it doesn't matter anymore, because a much faster alternative is available that boldly outshines all of them.

When the 2012 is released, and the 2013, the difference between the 2.0 and 2.2 is going to be moot (for those who don't need the graphics) because all the new ones are going to smoke the old ones. And again, we'll all be last year's model. Luckily for us, this year, the entire line-up of quads is pretty awesome and should be very capable for a long time to come.
Click to expand...

Although very true in terms of the CPU. There is still SOME weight to the CPU, but compared to this year's quads, not much. If you compare between the 2010's there's still value to the i7 compared to the i5, this was seen in my own personal resale value of my 2010 i7 and others I've followed on eBay.

Anyway, concerning the GPU. The 2010 i5 to i7 still had the SAME 330m GPU, just the i7 had the 512MB vs the 256MB vram, that's not a big difference at all, and kind of pointless unless you had the hi-res screen and gamed on it, and still the 330m was lower end at the time of release already.

Compare that to the 6490 vs 6750 and the 6750 is a higher end mid tier vs a low end graphics of 6490. There's a big difference here in GPU going from one base to high end model of the 2011. A lot bigger difference than last year in April concerning the base and high end 2010 15".

If we're comparing only the CPU like you mentioned, overall it will be moot but I think you'll find when it comes to reselling, a 2.2 will sell much better than a 2.0 even if the person doesn't care for the GPU, it's there and there's a big difference.
 
aznguyen316 said:
I think after the $300 difference with the massive jump in graphics the CPU from 2.0 to 2.2 is also a bigger jump than some may think. Look at some benchmarks the 2.2 is a solid performer over the 2.0 while the 2.2 to 2.3 is a less of a jump. Anyway If you can AFFORD it I say wh not get the 2.2 model? I got 2.3 because I'm impatient and wanted AG which retail stores only have the 2.3 paired with it. I have notched that iMovie does utilize nearly 800% CPU when importing an avchd file so at least I'm making use of the CPU lol.
Click to expand...

The 2.3 can provide major speed increases over the 2.2, at least for number crunching.
 
edifyingGerbil said:
:confused:

i care because... a laptop shouldn't lose batter power.... when it's being used in the way that it was intended, ie using the CPU and GPU intensively....

what don't you understand about that? it doesn't strike you as odd that plugged in i will eventually have to stop working if i'm doing something intensive to let my battery recharge?
Click to expand...

i find it hard to believe that whatever youre doing (to drain down the battery while plugged in) would be continuous for a solid 5 hours. Honestly whenever i ramp up my computer to the max its usually for a few minutes, maybe like an hour at the most. But to max your computer out for 5 or 6 hours (however long it would take to drain the battery completely while charging) doesn't seem plausible. In all honestly, sounds like you should have bought a higher spec'd computer.

Im still saying that you'll be able to infinitely work on your computer because as mentioned above i doubt you'll ever stress your computer long enough to drain the batter while plugged in
 
NickZac said:
Not really. It has some advantages over the 2.2 in regards to select work, and $200 isn't that much money anyway compared to the overall price.
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the cache is a big plus. but i mean i agree with it not being that much in the total price of things, but for 250 id much rather spend it on more ram or a SSD opposed to another 0.1 of clock-speed.
 
iMackPro said:
i find it hard to believe that whatever youre doing (to drain down the battery while plugged in) would be continuous for a solid 5 hours. Honestly whenever i ramp up my computer to the max its usually for a few minutes, maybe like an hour at the most. But to max your computer out for 5 or 6 hours (however long it would take to drain the battery completely while charging) doesn't seem plausible. In all honestly, sounds like you should have bought a higher spec'd computer.

Im still saying that you'll be able to infinitely work on your computer because as mentioned above i doubt you'll ever stress your computer long enough to drain the batter while plugged in
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a higher spec'd computer than the 2.2GHz quadcore with the 1GB 6750m AMD graphics chip?

oh yeah, of course... if i got a higher spec'd machine it'd use less energy, right? so i wouldn't have to worry about my battery draining.

you must be a future steve jobs or something with your innovative logic
 
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