Base 15" rMBP or older refurb 15" rMBP?

[jmadara]

I am looking for my first Mac. I'd really like to go all out, but the loaded 15" rMBP is out of my budget.

I don't play games. I use Adobe CC for editing photos and medium graphics work. I would like to use Premiere when I need to for short films (HD quality), but it wouldn't be something I use every day.

I can afford the base 15" rMBP or should I look for a previous gen rMBP with 16gb/500gb ssd/650M for about the same?

 

[hardo23]

I'm in the same situation.
Any advice?

 

[john123]

The previous generation is, far and away, your better value. It'll depreciate less (in percentage terms). You'll get far more longevity out of extra RAM and disk space from an older refurb than you will from the future-oriented features in the newer models.

Sometimes, newer isn't necessarily better—especially when it carries a price premium.

The only other thing I'd add is that it sounds like you're considering buying directly from Apple in both cases. You might consider the possible better deals of buying a new Haswell from a third-party reseller.

 

[jomirrivera]

Go with the base model, you wont regret it!
With mavericks compress memmory and for your uses? you wont need 16gb of ram!

I use more than you and I have not seen any swap yet with FCPX, lightroom 4 with 26-30mb files, itunes, safari, preview with huuuuge pdf files, mail and some other running together

 

[isephmusic]

The previous generation is, far and away, your better value. It'll depreciate less (in percentage terms). You'll get far more longevity out of extra RAM and disk space from an older refurb than you will from the future-oriented features in the newer models.

Sometimes, newer isn't necessarily better—especially when it carries a price premium.

The only other thing I'd add is that it sounds like you're considering buying directly from Apple in both cases. You might consider the possible better deals of buying a new Haswell from a third-party reseller.

whats the lowest u seen the haswell models ?

 

[john123]

whats the lowest u seen the haswell models ?

EDU pricing. If you aren't eligible for that, then I expect you'll be able to do a bit better on Black Friday, especially if you have a relevant credit card promotion going on.

As for prices, this tracker is wonderful: http://www.macprices.net/macbookpro.shtml

AppleInsider also has its own: http://appleinsider.com/mac_price_guide

Whatever you do, keep in mind the tax implications.

 

[sonyisawesome]

Last year's 15" rmbp is so much better. You get dedicated gpu 650m for lesser money too.

 

[soamz]

I'm in the same dilemma . The previous one had dedicated GPU but this new one base model don't have it

 

[thekev]

I'm in the same dilemma . The previous one had dedicated GPU but this new one base model don't have it

It only makes a difference in some things. In the case of premiere it wouldn't matter if it was that the old one had CUDA. On a lot of this stuff, it makes no difference.

 

[Tears Apart]

How about save for a while and buy the high-end haswell? By that time, it will also be available as refurb : )

 

[sonyisawesome]

How about save for a while and buy the high-end haswell? By that time, it will also be available as refurb : )

By using that logic, he can wait for another while longer after that and get the high end broadwell refurb.

 

[toneLA]

The previous generation is, far and away, your better value. It'll depreciate less (in percentage terms). You'll get far more longevity out of extra RAM and disk space from an older refurb than you will from the future-oriented features in the newer models.

Sometimes, newer isn't necessarily better—especially when it carries a price premium.

The only other thing I'd add is that it sounds like you're considering buying directly from Apple in both cases. You might consider the possible better deals of buying a new Haswell from a third-party reseller.

I also think that carrying a dGPU in the mid-2012/early-2013 is a bonus over the base late-2013 that's now missing one.

I am pleased to see Apple pushing for better integrated graphics but the Intel Iris Pro 5200 isn't as good as even last year's NVIDIA's 650M.

That's essentially the reason why I bought the higher-end that carries the 750M.

Last year's model is an excellent deal if you don't care for PCI-e or 802.11ac. Besides, Mavericks helps with battery life too.

 

[john123]

Last year's model is an excellent deal if you don't care for PCI-e or 802.11ac. Besides, Mavericks helps with battery life too.

I can also see ThunderBolt 2 being added to the list of big reasons why someone might want a Haswell model—although this is definitely relevant to a small minority of users. I'm actually super curious about how TB2 external drives will evolve and perform—not the big NAS arrays, but rather just smacking a 512GB SSD into an enclosure, just like we've done with hard drives.

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That's essentially the reason why I bought the higher-end that carries the 750M.

I keep getting really tempted to just do that, and then I say to myself, "but in 8 months, when a Broadwell model is released/announced, aren't you going to kick yourself for not allocating your money to that one?"

I haz mental problems.

 

[thekev]

I am pleased to see Apple pushing for better integrated graphics but the Intel Iris Pro 5200 isn't as good as even last year's NVIDIA's 650M.

This year is actually a rebrand. Apple was stingier on vram last time, and the 750m is clocked higher. It's the same chip though. I don't think the comparison should always be discrete vs integrated at this point. There are situations where a 750m would not allow you handle any situations that couldn't be handled by the iris pro. If you needed a really large framebuffer to cache texture data or something, your option might be neither. I feel like sometimes these discussions argue the wrong points, which ends with people who buy things that aren't really well aligned with their actual needs.

 

[Justinhub2003]

My personal laptop was a Late 2012 base model Retina MacBook Pro and my work purchased me a late 2013 model for use at work (also base model).

I can say that:

Both systems are extremely fast and I felt no performance difference over one another.

That said, where I did see a difference was in graphical performance (in games and in Cinebench testing).

For me, I would go with the late 12 or early 13 MBP for cheaper/same price or better specs.

That said,


I recently upgraded to the late 2013 15" for my personal computer to the one with dedicated 750m and 16gb/512gb upgrades and I can't notice any difference over either other models I had in daily use but for me this laptop was about future proofing a bit more with Ram and Storage.

 

[toneLA]

I can also see ThunderBolt 2 being added to the list of big reasons why someone might want a Haswell model—although this is definitely relevant to a small minority of users. I'm actually super curious about how TB2 external drives will evolve and perform—not the big NAS arrays, but rather just smacking a 512GB SSD into an enclosure, just like we've done with hard drives.

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I keep getting really tempted to just do that, and then I say to myself, "but in 8 months, when a Broadwell model is released/announced, aren't you going to kick yourself for not allocating your money to that one?"

I haz mental problems.

I agree - I thought the same. Keep in mind I had an early-2013 (base 15). I don't see myself being a TB2 user but I really benefit from 802.11ac with my TC that backs up my computer over wifi and the extra hour of battery is quite nice.

I just felt like the gen-1 was a bit premature. With all the latest improvements with the gen-2, I can see myself keeping that one for a while. With over 12K Geekbench scores, I'm not sure I'll ever fully use what I paid for (makes me rethink the whole purchase now) but it gives me piece of mind to think it won't be obsolete tomorrow morning.

You should pull the trigger. If you're successful at getting a 'perfect' one without the banana screen and the creak-of-hell bottom plate similar to a wood log, you'll be as golden as I am. It did require 4 attempts though, I'll give you that.

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This year is actually a rebrand. Apple was stingier on vram last time, and the 750m is clocked higher. It's the same chip though. I don't think the comparison should always be discrete vs integrated at this point. There are situations where a 750m would not allow you handle any situations that couldn't be handled by the iris pro. If you needed a really large framebuffer to cache texture data or something, your option might be neither. I feel like sometimes these discussions argue the wrong points, which ends with people who buy things that aren't really well aligned with their actual needs.

I'm not debating whether or not dGPU is better than iGPU in the case of Intel's IPG and NVIDIA's 750M. I'm just saying that a piece of hardware is missing from the base model that was here on the mid-2012/early-2013 model.

I appreciate Apple/Intel's joint effort to transition towards powerful iGPUs but I'm saying that on paper, rebrand of NVIDIA's chip or not (that still gets better performance than the 650M), I still get more from both than a single one.