Can the 13” MBP Best an Older 15” MBP?

[rhyzome]

I have a 2014 rMBP 15” with dGPU, 2.5 Ghz Quad Core i7, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD.

For the most part it is adequate for my use. It is taxed most when organizing a large photo library and occasionally when manipulating or OCRing large PDFs.

If I were to try to replace my old 15” with the 13”, would I run into performance bottlenecks? Are the current 13” MBPs faster than my older 2014 15”?

Will a 13” today be an upgrade or downgrade from my 2014 15”?

If I get the leaner 13” rMBP of today, will it be about as powerful as my older, bulkier 15”?

 

[jmoore5196]

I have a 2016 2.7GHz 15" MacBook Pro, and even it doesn't deliver better performance than the 2014 I had, which was identical to yours.

However, the dual-core 13" MBPs available now are substantially better performers than the last generation. I returned a 2015 'ultimate' 13" MacBook Pro because I became annoyed at the lag I experienced working with audio projects.

There is, however, a distinct difference in heft. Carrying the 2014 15" MacBook Pro was quite an exercise for me (I have a bad back) and the half-pound shaved off the 2016 version made the upgrade worthwhile.

If Apple releases a quad-core 13" in June, as many pundits predict, I'll be the first to order.

 

[casperes1996]

"Faster" is not as straight forward as it might seem.

The short answer, is that some things are faster, some are slower.
Overall, it's slower.

 

[cambookpro]

"Faster" is not as straight forward as it might seem.

The short answer, is that some things are faster, some are slower.
Overall, it's slower.

Yeah, this - it's not straightforward to answer.

I went from a quad-core 15" 2011 to a 13" 2016. If I'm exporting or rendering video (or other multithreaded CPU-intensive tasks), the 2011 would still be faster. However, the faster SSD makes day-to-day performance a lot better, as does the faster 802.11ac networking. And it's half the weight.

I think the 2014 would still be a fair bit quicker for CPU performance, and does it have a dedicated GPU? You might be better off waiting to see if the 13" gets a quad-core version this year.