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How much faster is the 15 inch than the 13 inch MacBook pro

N

nec207

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 21, 2011
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I want to get the new MacBook Pro for playing games and video editing and I'm on a budget. Is the 15 inch worth it?

I hear the 13 inch is a i5 duo core and the 15 inch is the i7 Quad core:eek: But is it worth it on a budget and how much faster will the 15 inch be.

If it is 2 or 3 times faster yes I will cough up the money but if not 2 or 3 times faster than I will not.

I also hear that the 13 inch gets very hot and the 15 inch is much cooler.
 
It's not going to be "2 or 3 times faster". It depends on what types of games you play, but I probably wouldn't want to play games though without a video card.
 
If you plan to play games, you need to get the 15", preferably high-end for the better graphics card.
 
I very nearly bought the 13" MBP but changed my mind at the last minute (cancelled order) and went for the 15"

This was due to not doing my research properly and the lack of dedicated graphics put me off the 13"

I like to play a few old PC Games via VMWare Fusion, driving games mostly and happy with the 15" :)

The 1440x900 is also great and really suits the size of screen perfect.
 
So other than the higher screen resolution , dedicated graphics and running cooler the i7 Quad core is not that much faster than the i5 duo core .

I hear the 13 inch gets very hot .


So it is not like video editing on a 13 inch will take a hour and on a 15 inch do it in 30 minutes or less do to being faster????
 
Last edited:
nec207 said:
So other than the higher screen resolution , dedicated graphics and running cooler the i7 Quad core is not that much faster than the i5 duo core .

I hear the 13 inch gets very hot .


So it is not like video editing on a 13 inch will take a hour and on a 15 inch do it in 30 minutes or less do to being faster.
Click to expand...

Video editing uses the CPU, not graphics card.
 
nec207 said:
Can you you elaborate on that?
Click to expand...

No doubt the 2.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 in the 15" MBP will SCREAM past the 2.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 that is in the 13" MBP.

Reason is the i7 has twice the processing cores and as the i5.

No comparison at all!

Besides with the 15" MBP you automatically get Dedicated Graphics which will make a huge difference when doing graphic intense work (Photo / Video Editing, Watching Videos, Games).
 
nec207 said:
So other than the higher screen resolution , dedicated graphics and running cooler the i7 Quad core is not that much faster than the i5 duo core .

I hear the 13 inch gets very hot .


So it is not like video editing on a 13 inch will take a hour and on a 15 inch do it in 30 minutes or less do to being faster????
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure the 15" model won't render a video in exactly half the time, but you will notice a difference. The processors in the 15" will definitely do very taxing tasks like video editing much faster (and to a noticeable extent). However, smaller things like launching Safari will not be noticeably different on the 15".

If you plan to do activities like gaming, video editing, and other intensive tasks, the 15" could definitely be a good option (it also has a nice screen size for those who want one a little bit bigger).

Otherwise, the 13" can handle all of those tasks easily, just not as well as teh 15".
 
For every aspect, no matter what kind of application or daily task you are running, the 15" will always outperform the 13" anytime. That's just the way it is. If you got the money to spend on 15", go ahead and do so. You won't regret it (unless you are afraid of the size and portability. You can always visit the local Apple Store to see what matches you.)
 
if u look JUST at the processors, you prob wont notice a speed difference but where u will notice the difference is hwen ur starting to run intensive applications like exporting videos and such, that there si a big difference in speed, because the processor has more resources to handle more .

so if ur doing basic stuff, than a 13 is fine.

i have the 2011 15 , got it for ***** and giggles and i LOVE IT
 
nec207 said:
So it is not 2 times faster by the looks of it.

According to the benchmark.
Click to expand...
Without knowing what the benchmark is doing, any number it spits out is going to be worthless. If the processing it does isn't representative of real-world computing tasks then it's going to be even more worthless. I wouldn't put too much faith in the numbers you quoted in your post.

If the programs you intend to run properly scale to the number of CPUs, then the quad-core Macbook is going to be MUCH faster than the dual-core machine. Many heavy-duty professional programs are written to scale well, or as well as is possible anyway with multiple processor cores since all computers sold have multi-core CPUs these days.

Since this is a portable computer you may end up somewhat limited by the speed of the built-in system disk though, depending on what your'e doing, as 2.5" harddrives typically aren't very speedy. Even speedier 7500RPM 2.5" drives generally aren't as speedy as a 7500RPM desktop drive due to the small diameter of platters (larger platters fit more data on each track, meaning less seeking, relatively speaking).

If your work is disk intensive (like video editing for example), you might want to get an internal SSD as a workspace drive, and an external enclosure with a cheap, large harddrive for bulk storage. Even a 120ish GB SSD will hold quite a few hours of compressed HD video, and there are 240GB drives that aren't totally unreasonable in price now as well. A Thunderbolt enclosure would be ideal once more such products become available and prices drop.

However, if your work doesn't need that much CPU processing, and doesn't need powerful 3D acceleration either, I would consider taking a look at the 13" MBP. It's a really neat little machine, and contrary to what you've heard, it doesn't run particulary hot either, certainly not to a degree that is harmful to it (all processors today put out quite a bit of heat when loaded fully due to their very high performance; it is unavoidable really.)
 
Well here is other Benchmarks.

First 2011 MacBook Pro Benchmarks: How Much Better?
http://lowendmac.com/musings/11mm/macbook-pro-benchmarks.html


It is little over the top for me but I'm sure some one here can fill in the cap.

Based on these numbers, the 13" 2.3 GHz dual-core i5 MBP slightly outperforms last year's 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo model. However, that number is weighted by the fact that the Intel HD 3000 graphics in the 2011 models doesn't do nearly as well at gaming (as measured using Call of Duty 4) as the nVidia GeForce 320M in the 2010 model. The 2010 13" MBP scored 33-34 frames per second, while the 2011 edition only achieves 26-27 fps. The 13" MacBook Pro is not the one to choose if gaming is your forte.

The quad-core i7-based 15" and 17" models absolutely toast last year's dual-core i5 and i7 models. The 2.0 GHz quad-core i7 benchmarks 9.3% higher than last year's 2.66 GHz dual-core i7, this despite having a measurably lower frame rate in Call of Duty 4. (Unfortunately, Macworld never benchmarked the 2.8 GHz 2010 machines.)
Click to expand...
 
its a costly upgrade.

I have the 13" and i wish i could upgrade to the 15" quad core. Video editing is a pain(I edit in 720p) It somewhat laggy, upgrading the ram to 8gb would help but i have a quad core desktop as well and its fluid so i know its not a ram issue.

Benchmarks tell one part of the story,

For what you need. A 15" is the way to go.

13" to me is like the budget power user. Who quite cant afford a 15 but needs the power of one. Or a student who needs more then a macbook air..
 
nec207 said:
Well here is other Benchmarks.

It is little over the top for me but I'm sure some one here can fill in the cap.
Click to expand...
If the author of that article (or whatever) claims the 2011 13" MBP is only "slightly" faster than a core2 duo then his testing methodology is seriously flawed. The "sandy bridge" CPU of the 2011 MBPs is several generations more recent than the core2 series (3 generations in fact, and that's compared to the most recent "penryn" core2 iteration), and the real-world performance increase is quite startling. Especially for maths-heavy program code, since sandy bridge CPUs support all the recent floating-point SSE extensions and offer simply higher throughput overall.

Also, Call of Duty 4 (the ONLY game used to draw conclusions about 3D performance) isn't available in a native OSX version, and the windows driver for the GMA3000 on-chip graphics processor is considerably less optimized than the OSX driver.

Anandtech did a more extensive graphics comparison between the Nvidia GPU in the 2010 MBPs and the GMA3000 of the 2011 model and found that in OSX, 3D performance was pretty much equal between the two. Pure CPU performance is much faster on the sandy bridge chip of course so overall you get a better machine with the 2011 version...
 
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