If the processor upgrade is a waste of money, why is everyone buying it?

[MH01]

Fact is, since 2012, CPU upgrades have been marginal.

The real reason many upgrade the CPUs/GPUs, they want the best/greatest . And if that makes them happy great.

There are some genuine users who need every bit of processing how, but that is a minority.

Hey if you can afford it, its nice knowing you have the top spec..... Day to day, you will not notice the difference
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You might only see a little gain in performance... but it could also help the reselling price later.

I would assume most MBPs sold today are the base-model... so the upgraded version will be "rare" in a few years and could command a higher price when you go to sell it.

That $100 you spend today could get you an extra $100 later... making it a wash. And you get to enjoy the little performance boost while you own it.

Having said this... I've never tested this theory. But it makes sense to me. Spend a little more now... and you'll get a little more when you go to sell it.

If you're a person who sells their current laptop to help fund the new laptop... every little bit helps!

I think you will find the base models have the highest resale value, Sure the rare ones go for more, but you paid a lot more. I could be wrong, but from experience, the top specs cost so much more, and the base model has better resale value when in factor in the initial price. And I'm a buyer of the top specs.....

The only cases where you do will with the top specs are when the outgoing unit is better. Some examples are 2012 mac mini server or 2011 Macbook pro 17" , those top specs were sought after and a premium.

 

[maflynn]

Fact is, since 2012, CPU upgrades have been marginal.

I'm surprised at how well my 2012 rMBP still performs, i.e., using Lightroom or PS. True my iMac is faster, but for a 6 year old computer, its surprisingly fast.

 

[MH01]

I'm surprised at how well my 2012 rMBP still performs, i.e., using Lightroom or PS. True my iMac is faster, but for a 6 year old computer, its surprisingly fast.

Same here. Sure the battery and GPU are not great, but the CPU is really holding its own.

 

[Michael Scrip]

I think you will find the base models have the highest resale value, Sure the rare ones go for more, but you paid a lot more. I could be wrong, but from experience, the top specs cost so much more, and the base model has better resale value when in factor in the initial price. And I'm a buyer of the top specs.....

Well like I said... it was just a theory.

I was looking at it from the standpoint of someone looking for a maxed-out 2016 MBP in a few years... like 2019 or so.

There will likely be a ton of base-models flooding the market by then... so a maxed-out model will stand out!

But I dunno.

 

[MH01]

Well like I said... it was just a theory.

I was looking at it from the standpoint of someone looking for a maxed-out 2016 MBP in a few years... like 2019 or so.

There will likely be a ton of base-models flooding the market by then... so a maxed-out model will stand out!

But I dunno.

Don't worry I think the same as you do though realistically Im not sure how much I would get back from the machine in 2019 if I spent £4000 in 2016. I suspect the base model will not loose value as fast the the top end unit, though yeah a max out unit will always get more later. Thats what I tell myself when i buy the maxed out one there are others in time that have the same OCD that will want to buy a used maxed unit.......my theory and I'm sticking to it

 

[aevan]

It's not necessarily a question of doing things faster, it can be a question of working or not. Some things simply take more memory than 8Gb or 16Gb.

It's clear that most things don't need or use that much memory. What I argued was against the asinine assumption that everyone who's bought 16Gb and doesn't do rendering on it is stupid.

Oh, I'm sure there are a things that require more than 16Gb that aren't rendering. I'm just saying that for most workflows, from office work and gaming to more demanding stuff like sculpting, illustration, etc. - having more than 16Gb gives diminishing returns - but people don't know that. I've seen posts like "I need more than 8Gb RAM because I open a lot of browser tabs" and "I opened Pages and all of my 16Gb RAM is full" here. And we had this talk with the 5K iMacs, where people were jamming 32Gb in it, claiming they need it because they like to open a lot of Word documents and stuff like that.

I usually direct people to that Linus video where he measures performance in Adobe apps and comes to the conclusion that after 8Gb RAM, you get minimal improvements. People don't know how RAM works and how system manages RAM. In fact, the only reason to have a lot of RAM is if you have something that won't fit in your available RAM, like scenes with insane amount of objects in 3ds Max or like having virtual machines or RAM disks.

For 90% things people do on computers, 8Gb RAM is ample. 16 for 95%. There is, like, 5% people that really, really need more than 16Gb - no question about it. But for the rest, anything more than 16.... even 8 - is overkill. Even more than getting a 100Mhz faster CPU.
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Same here. Sure the battery and GPU are not great, but the CPU is really holding its own.

Computers reached a point where they are superfast. Even GPUs would age well if we didn't increase resolutions so fast (VR is, basically, rendering 2x images, so you could say it's the same case).

I remember a time when computers were slow for almost everything. Start the computer - wait. Load a program - wait. Search for files - wait. Render a scene - wait for hours. Every increase in CPU performance made computers suck less.

But now - everything other than sustained work (like CPU intensive calculations, rendering, etc.) happens almost instantaneously. Just think about it - if your CPU became magically twice as fast - would you even notice it during regular work?

It's not just that CPU updates are getting slower, it's the fact that it's becoming harder to observe the difference.

 

[MH01]

Well like I said... it was just a theory.

I was looking at it from the standpoint of someone looking for a maxed-out 2016 MBP in a few years... like 2019 or so.

There will likely be a ton of base-models flooding the market by then... so a maxed-out model will stand out!

But I dunno.

Jumping back here, you might be onto something, take the 2015 model, as it's still being sold by apple, well not the one with the dedicated GPU , a maxed 2015 with a 370x may hold it's very well.

 

[bizack]

I would really like to know. I've seen a lot of people post that the benefits of upgrading the processor on the new 15" MBP's are marginal at best, but then everyone who's bought one seems to have gone for the upgrade. Am I missing something? Do you all process heavy data or are you preparing for the future??

On the 15," the upgrade is worth it since you're actually getting both a larger cache and a faster processor. On the 13," the upgrade is questionable (the cache size is the same for both the i5 and i7 - the i5 upgrade is what I finally went with after returning my i7 since the gains weren't worth the price).

 

[symphara]

Oh, I'm sure there are a things that require more than 16Gb that aren't rendering. I'm just saying that for most workflows, from office work and gaming to more demanding stuff like sculpting, illustration, etc. - having more than 16Gb gives diminishing returns - but people don't know that. I've seen posts like "I need more than 8Gb RAM because I open a lot of browser tabs" and "I opened Pages and all of my 16Gb RAM is full" here. And we had this talk with the 5K iMacs, where people were jamming 32Gb in it, claiming they need it because they like to open a lot of Word documents and stuff like that.

I usually direct people to that Linus video where he measures performance in Adobe apps and comes to the conclusion that after 8Gb RAM, you get minimal improvements. People don't know how RAM works and how system manages RAM. In fact, the only reason to have a lot of RAM is if you have something that won't fit in your available RAM, like scenes with insane amount of objects in 3ds Max or like having virtual machines or RAM disks.

For 90% things people do on computers, 8Gb RAM is ample. 16 for 95%. There is, like, 5% people that really, really need more than 16Gb - no question about it. But for the rest, anything more than 16.... even 8 - is overkill. Even more than getting a 100Mhz faster CPU.

Look I don't take issue with anything you wrote and in particular I don't really know why you replied to me. I don't know how people use their machines. I know how I use mine and I spec them appropriately, whenever possible.

But as an observation, on Sierra, my 2011 Air with 4Gb of RAM (max back then) slows down significantly (I think it's swapping like crazy) just with Chrome and Safari running, nothing else. Many tabs but not darken-the-sky-with-tabs. Pretty disappointing. It used to work very well in Mountain Lion, less well in Mavericks, and so forth.

So I can see how someone like my wife for example, who uses Chrome in darken-the-sky-with-tabs mode, might jump over 8Gb. Chrome is a memory hog.

 

[bringbackjobs]

I'm not sure if anyone pointed this out:

2.6 6MB cache
2.7 8MB cache
2.9 8MB cache

There are three options actually. And the 2.7 is the sweet spot. I would put remaining money in storage - for two reasons - larger SSD have faster i/o and it's not user replaceable AND it's the fastest drive you can get in a laptop right now. Ok, three reasons.

I have the base 2.7/512 which between drive 'estimate' size and OS leaves me 460gb for apps and paging.

My only draw to returning it is to get a BTO with 1 or 2 TB. I would spend the money for more CPU cache, but not a little more GHz.

 

[Scott G.]

Mind sharing the source?

They were just posts from others here that I've come across.

 

[ihatetoregister]

OP : It depends on your use really.
If what you're doing is basically run macOS, browsing and using a couple of software that aren't too punishing, it's pointless. Some people will do it just for the hype ( which is an issue with Apple ).

Some others have real use-case. I do web dev and I compile the assets that compose a page several hundreds of times per day. If I gain 5 seconds on each, it's starting to represent some gains.

RAM upgrade should always been seriously considered.

 

[dapork]

On the 15," the upgrade is worth it since you're actually getting both a larger cache and a faster processor. On the 13," the upgrade is questionable (the cache size is the same for both the i5 and i7 - the i5 upgrade is what I finally went with after returning my i7 since the gains weren't worth the price).

What exactly the benefit of each of those, individually? That's what I haven't been able to figure out.

 

[jk76]

What exactly the benefit of each of those, individually? That's what I haven't been able to figure out.

Increase on CPU clock speed gives you a linear improvement on calculations which fit on L1 cache. Beyond that it's more convoluted. It's quite clear that one can't get more than a 10% range improvement from this.

Increase on L3 cache size increases chances of running software without long delays and more limited throughput involved with accessing off-chip RAM. On very specific workloads, effects of cache size can be dramatic, but most workloads are not so clear-cut, or are actually run more efficiently on GPU which is a beast of its own.

My personal opinion is that you are unlikely to note the difference between different CPUs, unless amount of cores is different. This especially applies to interactive workloads (in contrast to batch jobs which I would run on desktop or server systems anyways). If your finances are constrained by other factors, choose cheap (at least on CPU GHz front), if not, do what your conscience tells you...