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Icanhazmacbook

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Hi, im buying a MacBook pro open box from a store by me called Micro Center.
They have two ones I'm interested in:

$750 - 15.4" MacBook pro w/ C2D 2.66 ghz Model Number MB985LL/A

$800 - 13.3" MacBook pro w/ Core i5 2.4 ghz Model Number MD313LL/A

Also please don't say buy a new or a refurb MacBook, because it is too much for my budget.

Thanks 🙂
 
I think the real question here is whether or not you would benefit from the larger screen & dedicated graphics more than a little horsepower.
 
I know it is newer, i only do photo editing occasionally and school work, will I benefit a lot from the i5?

Thanks

Yes.

The C2D is from 2009, and the i5 is from 2011 (It's the same model I have).

I don't know what software you're going to use to do photo editing, but Photoshop works really well on the i5.
 
Hi, im buying a MacBook pro open box from a store by me called Micro Center.
They have two ones I'm interested in:

$750 - 15.4" MacBook pro w/ C2D 2.66 ghz Model Number MB985LL/A

$800 - 13.3" MacBook pro w/ Core i5 2.4 ghz Model Number MD313LL/A

Also please don't say buy a new or a refurb MacBook, because it is too much for my budget.

Thanks 🙂

Small screen is a quick fix with an external monitor, but you cant fix a C2D. 100% go for the i5, it is a fairly big jump in processing power.
 
To give you an idea, a core i3 benchmarks about the same speed as a Core 2 Q6600 quad core (yes, multi-threaded).

An i5 is much faster.
 
Hi, im buying a MacBook pro open box from a store by me called Micro Center.
They have two ones I'm interested in:

$750 - 15.4" MacBook pro w/ C2D 2.66 ghz Model Number MB985LL/A

$800 - 13.3" MacBook pro w/ Core i5 2.4 ghz Model Number MD313LL/A

Also please don't say buy a new or a refurb MacBook, because it is too much for my budget.

Thanks 🙂

Around a year ago I upgraded from MacBook 2009 white C2D 4G RAM to MacBook Pro i5 4G RAM.

One particular CPU intensive project that I've been working on and transferred to a new laptop became ~2 times faster. So, it almost feels like the difference in speed between these two processors is proportional to number of cores.
 
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