Deciding between 13" & 15"

[cheezeit]

Ok looking for opinions between both machines. I currently have a 27" iMac and 12"MacBook. I like have two machines but would rather consolidate into one for simplicity purposes. I plan on docking either 13" or 15" at home to dual monitors for my usual web browsing and work (usually office programs) I don't require anything too powerful, hence we getting rid of my iMac, and would rather have portability.

I do however do some casual gaming, (Starcraft 2) but have done so easily with my Mac mini I use to have.

Should I go 13" and have the option to build a pc in the future for any gaming I might need or go 15"? Is the cpu a lot stronger on the 15" compared to the 13"? And lastly, is the 15" cpu the same as the iMac? Or is it still a mobile chip?

Any guidance would be great. Thanks

 

[ZachsMacDaddy]

That's funny, because I'm considering going the opposite way. I have a 15" rMBP and I'm thinking about going with a smaller laptop for travel and a 27" 5k iMac for home. I use my laptop in clamshell mode with an external monitor almost all the time, wasting that beautiful screen.

In the 15" the CPU is going to be a quad core, where the 13" only has options for dual core. You can upgrade to an i7 in the 13", but it's still only dual core. So depending on what you are going to do with it, the 15" can easily outperform even the best configured 13" model if the application takes advantage of the extra cores.

What model Mac Mini do you have? Luckily there are some older ones out there with the quad core i7.

 

[T5BRICK]

Earlier this year I was shopping for a new mac. I checked out the rMB, and the 13" and 15" rMBPs. I ended up with the 13" rMBP because it had the best combination of power and portability for me. The rMB looked really nice, but I hated the keyboard and the CPU seemed underpowered. The 15" rMBP was nice and fast, but I wanted something easier to move around.

 

[cheezeit]

I had the current base model. Nothing powerful but surprisingly I was able to game without issue.

I plan on doing what you're doing, use the laptop in clamshell but it will be nice to be able to undock and have my setup with me. Right now I have my files synced but sometimes I don't keep both machines up to date with programs installed and it gets tiresome having to think about if both machines are up to date.

I know the 15" cpu is quad vs 13" dual but I'm guessing the 15" is still slower than an iMacs 27" cpu? So I'm really losing quite a bit of performance and graphics consolidating into a single 15"

 

[alexmarchuk]

I had the current base model. Nothing powerful but surprisingly I was able to game without issue.

I plan on doing what you're doing, use the laptop in clamshell but it will be nice to be able to undock and have my setup with me. Right now I have my files synced but sometimes I don't keep both machines up to date with programs installed and it gets tiresome having to think about if both machines are up to date.

I know the 15" cpu is quad vs 13" dual but I'm guessing the 15" is still slower than an iMacs 27" cpu? So I'm really losing quite a bit of performance and graphics consolidating into a single 15"

I have the mid 2015 rMBP with the i7 and it's not that big of a gap. The 27" iMac is stock with an i5, with the i7 option and the 16GB ram option the iMac comes to $2,749.00 BTO. Though I see that its only $250 more for a 4GB AMD card, not bad. (these are the single core 32bit, they vary model to model, but more or less around the same). Retina 27" iMac is newer of course. lol.