i7 C2D day to day running

[bcburrows]

Wondering if anyone else has thoughts on this.

Just sold me 2.66Ghz C2D 4Gb 500Gb 7200 MBP and replaced it with the
2.2Ghz i7 4Gb 750Gb 5400 MBP

Whilst I do notice some speed changed i.e. video encoding, I do not notice any obvious changes with anything else really.

Load up time - may be a few seconds
Program start up - seems the same
Wifi connection - definitely slower!!

So can't figure out if I just expected too much?

However despite spending £1800 on it, I would be willing to invest a little more cash, and was hoping for some thoughts...

So £70 will buy me 8Gb RAM

£70 will buy me a Momentus XT hybrid 500Gb HDD 4Gb SSD and an external case for my stock MBP HDD - 750Gb 5400rpm

I don't really want to spend another £140 right now, but wondered if people had any actual experience of these upgrades and what they noticed?

General use of MBP
Photo / Video editing
Digitising my DVD collection
Office applications - iWork
iLife suite
Various medical programs - quite intense graphical applications
Triathlon training/exercise tracking programs - Ascent.

Cheers for any input

 

[alust2013]

Unfortunately the faster CPU/better GPU won't do you much good unless you really use them, such as with video encoding. Those upgrades may give you a boost with boot time and app loading (mostly due to the faster HDD), as the HDD is the bottleneck of that type of thing.

 

[bcburrows]

The video encoding that I am doing is different on an almost geological time scale....before encoding my DVD collection took maybe 45 mins per disk, it now takes 5-6 mins

I did suspect I went overkill with the old MBP specs, but I switched to mac 7 years ago and have always liked the powerbooks / macbook pro's and just figure the top 15inch spec seems like a better deal than the bottom 15 inch spec and they always keep their value for re-sale.....

Never really known what people do these days to push these sorts of specs to their limits?

 

[alust2013]

The video encoding that I am doing is different on an almost geological time scale....before encoding my DVD collection took maybe 45 mins per disk, it now takes 5-6 mins

I did suspect I went overkill with the old MBP specs, but I switched to mac 7 years ago and have always liked the powerbooks / macbook pro's and just figure the top 15inch spec seems like a better deal than the bottom 15 inch spec and they always keep their value for re-sale.....

Never really known what people do these days to push these sorts of specs to their limits?

Gaming and video encoding will do it usually; gaming will push the GPU and video encoding the CPU. That sounds about right for the times too. Sandy bridge is just more efficient, has turbo boost, and double the cores, plus hyperthreading.

 

[Onimusha370]

you'll see a big difference in startup and loading programs if you switch to a 7200rpm HDD. i'd recommend that route, and then in a years time when SSD prices have fallen further, i'd grab a fast SSD.
the combination of that sandy bridge i7, and a modern SSD will give incredible performance, and if you wanted it to, that machine would last many many years. great purchase, these new processors are blazing fast