Early 2011 or Late 2011? Which one to buy?

[DaniloGouveia]

Hello there.
I'm going to buy my first Macbook Pro. It will be a 15'' one and i'm in doubt on which one i should get.

The early model costs 1600 USD on BestBuy and the late is 1700 with the educational discount on Apple Store. Is there much difference between the models?

Is there any place i can get it cheaper?


Sorry for my bad english and thank you for your attention.

Greetings!

----------

I'm goint to use that for photo and HD video editing, AutoCAD and some other stuff like that, by the way.

 

[Sdreed91]

Id say go for the late model. I have the early 2011 model. Not a big difference but if u don't already have A 2011 model I'd say get the late one

 

[Mersailios]

Are you looking at the entry level models?

If so, I would recommend a Late 2011 MacBook Pro because of its faster graphics processor (which is an AMD Radeon HD 6750M, compared to the AMD Radeon HD 6490M found in the Early 2011 model).

You'll gain a bit of graphics performance which will be important for the tasks you've specified which would be well worth it for the $100 price difference.

Hope that helps, have a great day!

 

[DaniloGouveia]

oh, i'm sorry. I forgot saying that both models are for the low-end.

Thank you for the answer guys.

Have a nice day too.

 

[DaniloGouveia]

I've just seen a refurbished early 2011 high-end for the same 1700 bucks.
It's 750GB and 1GB versis 500GB and 512MB of the late model.

Is the late model still the best choice to do?


Another question, do the early models work fine with all SSD models? I've seen some people complaining about that.
I'll buy the MBP and 5 or 6 months after, i'll get a 240GB OCZ Vertex 3 and an external HD for extra stuff.

 

[thunng8]

I've just seen a refurbished early 2011 high-end for the same 1700 bucks.
It's 750GB and 1GB versis 500GB and 512MB of the late model.

Is the late model still the best choice to do?


Another question, do the early models work fine with all SSD models? I've seen some people complaining about that.
I'll buy the MBP and 5 or 6 months after, i'll get a 240GB OCZ Vertex 3 and an external HD for extra stuff.

The high end early 2011 model has slightly higher specs
- 750gb hdd instead of 500
- more graphics memory 1gb vs 512mb
- faster cpu. The early 11 2.2ghz version has a turbo speed of 3.3ghz vs 3.1ghz for the late 11 low end model. Difference of about 500 points in Geekbench.

 

[jwksmith]

If the early 2011 either comes with Snow Leopard or it can be installed, I would get that. I think the ability to run SL or Lion is useful and may be valuable for resale in future. I have mine so I can boot either Lion or SL. So far, SL is much better.