How different are the Dual-Core & Quad-Core MacBook Pros?

[DrJames]

My ultimate decision is between the MacBook Pro 13 and 15 inch. I really want the 13 because I can really upgrade it but, I need to know how different these are going to be be.

I don't do much for gaming and stuff, but what are the pros and cons for each? What do Quad-Core users use it for?

 

[geoffreak]

While I personally don't own either of these two devices, I can tell you that generally you won't benefit much from more cores unless you do lots of parallel processing or apps that take advantage of the parallelism.

Again, speaking generally (I haven't looked at the latest generation specs), when more cores are added, the clock speed tends to be lower. While this lower speed doesn't matter for parallel jobs, single process jobs (i.e. most applications you likely use) will have lower speed. If there isn't any clock speed difference, more cores are better.

There are of course a few more factors that determine how "fast" a computer is, but this is a good rule of thumb.

 

[mrsir2009]

A Quad Core processor can process more things at the same time than Dual Core, so it would be far superior for multitasking. Are you going to be doing much multitasking? Because if not, you won't notice much difference if you get the Quad Core

 

[Guru53]

I purchased a 15" MacBook Pro over the 13" model for 3 reasons primarily:

1) The screen size and resolution (with the 1680x1050 upgrade) allow me to fit more onto the screen and give me a desktop like experience on the go.

2) The quad core cpu really cuts short the time when encoding and I frequently use the CS4 production premium suite by Adobe which makes use of the extra horsepower. I assume the newer CS5 suite takes even better advantage of newer hardware, but I have not upgraded.

3) I wanted a dedicated gpu to do some light-medium gaming.

From what you've said so far, it seems like the 13" will be perfectly fine for your needs and you honestly wouldn't see a substantial improvement moving to a quad core processor if all you do is web browsing, office work, consumption of media, etc. However, if you use software like photoshop, premier pro, vegas, etc. it may be worth looking into the 15".

 

[Macman45]

I have a fairly new 17" Quad. It is fast...But it's a little unfair to compare 2 cores with 4. Adding RAM to a dual core Mac will improve things too, but the quad by it's nature is alway's going to be benchmarking a lot faster.

 

[skiltrip]

I have a 15 because I need the quad for audio production. If I didn't need the power, i'd be using a 13. I prefer the smaller footprint.