I am a Apple/Mac Noob and I'm going to purchase the new MacBookPro I want to buy the 15" Inch with the Nvidia graphics card. I am a student in graphic design and photography so I want the best picture possible. I want to know what upgrades do you recommend I will be using most of the adobe master collection during my studies and will have a lot of coursework. So would I need the 1TB flash memory or could I use external hard drives. Would the 512GB flash make my mac any slower than 1TB? Can you recommend the best external monitor for the MacBook pro and if its the thunderbolt display will they be releasing another one soon so should I wait. Sorry for the novel and I hope you can help.
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Help! New MacBookPro! Which upgrades?
- Thread starter danielwardpt
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To be frank, 512gb is more than enough. I doubt you'd even use 50gb your entire term. I also have a feeling that retina might be more of an issue for you as it's non-standard. Just make sure your prof can see your work as you intended because you're using a more advanced system.
15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display
2.6GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
512GB PCIe-based Flash Storage
Apple Thunderbolt Display (27-inch)
So this will be a great set up for me? I don't need the 1TB PCIe-based Flash Storage. It won't be any slower without it. I will also play the odd game and store all my music and films etc on it.
2.6GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
512GB PCIe-based Flash Storage
Apple Thunderbolt Display (27-inch)
So this will be a great set up for me? I don't need the 1TB PCIe-based Flash Storage. It won't be any slower without it. I will also play the odd game and store all my music and films etc on it.
Speed decrease? I seriously doubt you would see anything appreciable, anything at all really. Depending on how the 1TB was constructed (more cells vs larger ones) it could be faster or slower, but that shouldn't impact you in a $500 way.
If you ever get near 512GB usage, you can always get a SDXC card. Or a USB3 drive. Or a Thunderbolt drive.
Full disclosure - I spent the extra money on the 1TB, but I don't have any justification in mind.
I would definitely just recommend the standard high end 15" with 2.3GHz CPU. You won't notice much difference with the $200 processor upgrade. These incremental upgrades are where Apple jabs you.
And consider waiting until December to get the display, as I believe it'll be updated then. If not, then go for refurb.
Agreed, not enough benefits to outweigh the cost of a small bump to 2.6ghz. That is unless you are doing very processor intensive tasks, but even then the difference would be minimal.
