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Exchanging i5 for i7

C

ccs569

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Question: I ordered a 13" i5 256GB MBA online with 1) Education Discount, 2) $100 apple gift certificate
IF I decide to exchange it for a 13" i7, what would be the best way to do it while preserving my savings above?

Thanks so much!
 
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That sounds like a great machine. You might want to give it a good look over and see if it's every thing you expected, the difference on the i5 & i7 for the 13" model is very modest. Plenty of threads talking about it.

You have 14 days, so if you want the $100 option that should be all you have to pay is the difference of the option.
 
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Unless you have a specific need for the i7 I'd stick with the i5. The performance delta between the 1.7 i5 and the 1.8 i7 is only noticeable in a few apps. I love my i7 but if I had it to do over again and knew what I know now I think I'd go with the i5.
 
reputationZed said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

Unless you have a specific need for the i7 I'd stick with the i5. The performance delta between the 1.7 i5 and the 1.8 i7 is only noticeable in a few apps. I love my i7 but if I had it to do over again and knew what I know now I think I'd go with the i5.
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Agreed. If you think you need the i7 or just plain want it, go for it. However, the difference is negligible outside of a few processor intensive apps. 3-4 seconds faster is not worth it to me. But...that's me. I think a $400 difference in price between the two models is not worth the 7.5% relative increase in performance (Anandtech). I believe the i5 to be the sweet spot in terms of price to performance.

But like I said, many others would think otherwise. Do what makes you feel like you've got the best laptop in the world. That is until Ivy Bridge comes out and 3D transistor technology gives that generation of MB-Air another 50-75% increase in performance. At which point, I personally will be happy for the 1300 I spent, not the 1700. And it won't matter that i7's are 7.5% faster. We'll all be wanting new Airs. 🙂
 
iphonsteve4ajob said:
That is until Ivy Bridge comes out and 3D transistor technology gives that generation of MB-Air another 50-75% increase in performance. At which point, I personally will be happy for the 1300 I spent, not the 1700. And it won't matter that i7's are 7.5% faster. We'll all be wanting new Airs. 🙂
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Great point.
 
iphonsteve4ajob said:
But like I said, many others would think otherwise. Do what makes you feel like you've got the best laptop in the world. That is until Ivy Bridge comes out and 3D transistor technology gives that generation of MB-Air another 50-75% increase in performance. At which point, I personally will be happy for the 1300 I spent, not the 1700. And it won't matter that i7's are 7.5% faster. We'll all be wanting new Airs. 🙂
Click to expand...

I'm planning to hold out until Haswell. The most significant improvements in Ivy Bridge will be better battery life (lower CPU power consumption), and an improvement in graphics performance. I had heard that Intel was targeting a 30% increase in CPU and GPU power, not 50-75%, with Ivy Bridge, which gets the GPU slightly above the NVIDIA 320m. With Haswell, Intel is promising GPU performance at least equal to the fastest mobile discrete GPU on the market today. That may be farfetched, but even if we assume they'll achieve the equivalent of the AMD Radeon HD 6490M that's in the base 15" Pro today, that would be a bigger deal.

IOW, think of Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge like going from a 1.6GHz Merom Core 2 Duo to a 2.13GHz Penryn Core 2 Duo, and an NVIDIA 9400m to a 320m. I.e. faster and lower power consumption, but not a giant leap. Think of Ivy Bridge to Haswell like going from the Penryn/320m combo to Sandy Bridge + discrete GPU.

Plus, on my 11", it's more of a 20-25% CPU difference between the i5/i7. I agree, though, that we'll always be chasing something new, and that for the 13" it makes sense to go for the i5. The ASUS UX21 will actually be using the 1.7GHz i5 in the 11" model, so it's almost too bad that Apple couldn't or wouldn't cram it into the 11" Air this time around (perhaps they wanted or expected more upsells in the 11" for whatever reason).
 
KPOM said:
I'm planning to hold out until Haswell. The most significant improvements in Ivy Bridge will be better battery life (lower CPU power consumption), and an improvement in graphics performance. I had heard that Intel was targeting a 30% increase in CPU and GPU power, not 50-75%, with Ivy Bridge, which gets the GPU slightly above the NVIDIA 320m. With Haswell, Intel is promising GPU performance at least equal to the fastest mobile discrete GPU on the market today.

Plus, on my 11", it's more of a 20-25% CPU difference between the i5/i7. I agree, though, that we'll always be chasing something new, and that for the 13" it makes sense to go for the i5.
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Right! Should've clarified my preference for the 13" i5. Yes for the 11" the performance gap is greater and I would definitely upgrade to the i7.

As for Haswell, wow that should be interesting to see. I'm almost afraid for the new Airs to come out. The 2011's are pretty awesome at almost everything I throw at it.
 
Unless

You are heavily into video and photo real time stuff, id stick with the i5 it's still an awesome machine.🙂
 
Roswell is the name for the upcoming chip processor technology, tollbridge. It will be distinguished by requiring a credit card to open the new Air, which will be charged for the time you use it until it's closed again.
 
iphonsteve4ajob said:
I think a $400 difference in price between the two models is not worth the 7.5% relative increase in performance (Anandtech). I believe the i5 to be the sweet spot in terms of price to performance.
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I am confused - if the OP has the 13" with 256GB SSD, the educational price difference between an i5 and i7 is only $90. What am I missing?
 
richpjr said:
I am confused - if the OP has the 13" with 256GB SSD, the educational price difference between an i5 and i7 is only $90. What am I missing?
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I mistakenly assumed the OP had the 128GB i5, not 256GB. Yes it is a $90 diff. My comments were to address the people who purchase the i7 though they do not need the extra storage.
 
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