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i7 vs SSD

Nyy8

Nyy8

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 12, 2011
524
198
New England
Hey Everyone!

In an unexpected offer, someone offered to buy my iMac in cash and in a day from now. The offer was MORE then good enough to take him up on.

Now, I've gotten enough money to either buy the SSD or the i7 upgrade.

I already got the 780M since I will be doing some gaming on this mac. But my question, I don't do much video editing and the only thing I do as far as encoding goes is converting MKV to MP4 in handbrake. Along with some light photoshop.

Will games take advantage of this i7, or will an SSD be more beneficial in almost everything that I do and overall system response time?
 
the SSD will give you give faster load times thats it, zero increase in fps performance, the i7 will give you more cpu boast in games:)
 
insane79 said:
the SSD will give you give faster load times thats it, zero increase in fps performance, the i7 will give you more cpu boast in games:)
Click to expand...

Once you hit quad-core intel processors, your CPU stops being a bottleneck almost entirely. An i5 processor will not be any worse than an i7 processor, at least until games start supporting 8+ cores, which shouldn't be for at least a few years. Here is one of many tests anandtech did. Differences in CPU power are negligible.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7189/choosing-a-gaming-cpu-september-2013/6

Get an SSD. Get an i7 if you really want it, but get an SSD first. The i7 won't do you much good at all if you don't have professional software that you use 20+ hours a week. The HDD is the biggest bottleneck in most computers today, and you are just hurting your computing experience by not getting one.

Matt
 
Nyy8 said:
Hey Everyone!

In an unexpected offer, someone offered to buy my iMac in cash and in a day from now. The offer was MORE then good enough to take him up on.

Now, I've gotten enough money to either buy the SSD or the i7 upgrade.

I already got the 780M since I will be doing some gaming on this mac. But my question, I don't do much video editing and the only thing I do as far as encoding goes is converting MKV to MP4 in handbrake. Along with some light photoshop.

Will games take advantage of this i7, or will an SSD be more beneficial in almost everything that I do and overall system response time?
Click to expand...

I'd save up even more and go for both the SSD and i7. No point skimping on something that's nearly maxed-out already.
 
yjchua95 said:
I'd save up even more and go for both the SSD and i7. No point skimping on something that's nearly maxed-out already.
Click to expand...

I mean I wish I could wait... but the problem is $135 is a lot to just make out of thin air. As a high school student who makes minimum wage and has to pay for gas, and sometimes lunch if I decide to eat out I just can't swing it.

If I sell this Mac in 2 days, then if I were to wait for the i7 I'd be out of a mac for a month.
 
Nyy8 said:
Hey Everyone!

In an unexpected offer, someone offered to buy my iMac in cash and in a day from now. The offer was MORE then good enough to take him up on.

Now, I've gotten enough money to either buy the SSD or the i7 upgrade.

I already got the 780M since I will be doing some gaming on this mac. But my question, I don't do much video editing and the only thing I do as far as encoding goes is converting MKV to MP4 in handbrake. Along with some light photoshop.

Will games take advantage of this i7, or will an SSD be more beneficial in almost everything that I do and overall system response time?
Click to expand...

SSD, no questions asked. I'll never buy a computer without one ever again.
 
Nyy8 said:
I mean I wish I could wait... but the problem is $135 is a lot to just make out of thin air. As a high school student who makes minimum wage and has to pay for gas, and sometimes lunch if I decide to eat out I just can't swing it.

If I sell this Mac in 2 days, then if I were to wait for the i7 I'd be out of a mac for a month.
Click to expand...

Well I suppose you could have your parents subsidize that cost first and repay it slowly over time?

Honestly, if I were in your shoes, I would very much regret it if I maxed out almost everything except just one thing.
 
yjchua95 said:
Well I suppose you could have your parents subsidize that cost first and repay it slowly over time?

Honestly, if I were in your shoes, I would very much regret it if I maxed out almost everything except just one thing.
Click to expand...

They already owe me $800 for pervious money I loaned to them, They are already giving me $800 for this computer. The money was mine at one point but just loaned... they aren't too happy I'm making them repay it either.

I can afford the computer, but they are already paying the taxes ($134) on this computer, and my dad is using his government discount.

There is no other place I could pull money out of right now, I might regret it. I'm not sure, but there just isn't any floating cash around right now.
 
Nyy8 said:
They already owe me $800 for pervious money I loaned to them, They are already giving me $800 for this computer. The money was mine at one point but just loaned... they aren't too happy I'm making them repay it either.

I can afford the computer, but they are already paying the taxes ($134) on this computer, and my dad is using his government discount.

There is no other place I could pull money out of right now, I might regret it. I'm not sure, but there just isn't any floating cash around right now.
Click to expand...

If you are that tight on cash, the i5 vs i7 will only make a difference for professional programs. For basic applications, you will not notice any difference for many years to come. Programs are allocated a certain amount of cores, and very few consumer programs use more than a single core, let alone 8 hyper threaded cores. Unless you are doing really heavy work, you will not notice any difference. When word processors start using 4+ cores, or even 2 cores, then we can start talking.

Matt
 
Nyy8 said:
Hey Everyone!

In an unexpected offer, someone offered to buy my iMac in cash and in a day from now. The offer was MORE then good enough to take him up on.

Now, I've gotten enough money to either buy the SSD or the i7 upgrade.

I already got the 780M since I will be doing some gaming on this mac. But my question, I don't do much video editing and the only thing I do as far as encoding goes is converting MKV to MP4 in handbrake. Along with some light photoshop.

Will games take advantage of this i7, or will an SSD be more beneficial in almost everything that I do and overall system response time?
Click to expand...

take the largest SSD you can get and go with the i5.
The SSD will make a larger difference in your daily activities than the i7 will.
 
Upgrade to the SSD. I returned an iMac to Best Buy and custom ordered another iMac with and SSD because the day to day impact of having an actual hard disk drive was extremely obvious. Opening programs, start up, etc. are all affected by the storage system, not processor.

I'd just leave the processor alone and save that money. Those saying "max it all out just because you're almost there" make no sense. Why spend money on stuff you know you won't use? I have an i7 in my 2013 MBA and I bet I haven't used it to it's full capability. I don't mess with photos, make movies, or program, and the MBA sucks to play games on.
 
If you're getting a computer without SSD, you're committing a crime against yourself. I cannot imagine using a Mac without an SSD.
 
I was able to bargin some walmart gift cards since my dad is buying a new TV soon there, so i7 and SSD for me :D

The Buyer is coming tomorrow, and if I'm lucky I'll still have time to run to the Apple Store to see if they have any custom built one's in the store.

Do the Apple Stores usually carry custom order iMacs in the store? or would I need to build this online and ship it to the store?
 
Last edited:
Nyy8 said:
I was able to bargin some walmart gift cards since my dad is buying a new TV soon there, so i7 and SSD for me :D

The Buyer is coming tomorrow, and if I'm lucky I'll still have time to run to the Apple Store to see if they have any custom built one's in the store.

Do the Apple Stores usually carry custom order iMacs in the store? or would I need to build this online and ship it to the store?
Click to expand...

They don't normally carry BTOs there. They carry either baselines or fully maxed ones.

But either way, head to the store and BTO the machine through them, and use the cards.
 
yjchua95 said:
They don't normally carry BTOs there. They carry either baselines or fully maxed ones.

But either way, head to the store and BTO the machine through them, and use the cards.
Click to expand...

If I go into the store and place a order for one, do I owe them the full 2,500 before they order it or will they order it and let me pay after it comes in?
 
yjchua95 said:
Depends on whether the guy behind the counter will let you do that or not.
Click to expand...

Judging by your quote, you have quite a few maxed out Macs. Did you always just put them on a card of some sort?

It feels a little uneasy handing a guy $2,500 cash for an item that I can't see/inspect.
 
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