Is the 10th Gen 13” model actually more future proof than the 8th Gen?

[PurpleIsAFruit]

I realise that obviously the 10th Gen is newer and performs slightly better than the 8th Gen, but is there any good reason to believe a 10th Gen 13” Pro will last longer than an 8th Gen one?

I ask this because I’m interested in the 8th Gen with 16GB of RAM. It is £300 cheaper than the 10th Gen, which I appreciate has improvements on the 8th Gen, but will your typical user notice the difference between 8th and 10th Gen or between DDR3 and DDR4? Moreover, is there any reason to believe the power in the 8th Gen isn’t enough to last into the distant future?

I know £300 doesn’t seem like much more to pay, but I’m already kind of going over budget so it would be a real stretch going for the £1800 model. Yes I would love the 10th Gen, but I don’t know if it is worth £300 extra. The most commonly given reason to upgrade to the 10th Gen is that it’s more future proof. But is it?

 

[sub150]

Both will last the same amount of time.

 

[noobinator]

It might be more futureproof if you plan on having a more intense workload on your laptop in the future than you do now. Other than that, they'll last the same amount of time at their current abilities.

 

[leman]

I realise that obviously the 10th Gen is newer and performs slightly better than the 8th Gen, but is there any good reason to believe a 10th Gen 13” Pro will last longer than an 8th Gen one?

Depends on what one means by “last longer”. Future proofing is an odd concept to say the least. Will the 10th gen still running general purpose software when the 8th gen can’t run it anymore? No, their overall performance is pretty much the same. Will the 2020 MBP receive updates longer than the 2019? That’s up to Apple.

The only real “future-proof” aspect about the 10th gen CPUs is that they support AVX-512, which is the new vector CPU instruction set. Once - and if - AVX-512 will become more widespread, you might see up to 2x increase in performance on some workloads with these CPUs. But this will probably take a couple of years and it’s not given that you are a user that might benefit from these instructions.

 

[ctjack]

Also keep in mind that you can't future proof something enough. I mean in 3-4 years, new Base MBP's and base Air's will be out there, which will offer better performance while being cheaper than current $1800 offerings.

 

[LFC2020]

If you don't need the extra fan, extra thunderbolt ports or faster intel iris plus graphics, then the 8th gen is the way to go.

 

[mtneer]

What is your definition of "future"? The 10th generation is currently and is always going to be incrementally better than the 8th gen - hence the price difference. So, yes, there could be a theoretical window many years in the future where the 10th gen can maybe marginally handle software better than the 8th gen, but that future will be a ways out and whatever current hardware at that time will blow both the 8th and 10th gen out of the water.

 

[26139]

I realise that obviously the 10th Gen is newer and performs slightly better than the 8th Gen, but is there any good reason to believe a 10th Gen 13” Pro will last longer than an 8th Gen one?

I ask this because I’m interested in the 8th Gen with 16GB of RAM. It is £300 cheaper than the 10th Gen, which I appreciate has improvements on the 8th Gen, but will your typical user notice the difference between 8th and 10th Gen or between DDR3 and DDR4? Moreover, is there any reason to believe the power in the 8th Gen isn’t enough to last into the distant future?

I know £300 doesn’t seem like much more to pay, but I’m already kind of going over budget so it would be a real stretch going for the £1800 model. Yes I would love the 10th Gen, but I don’t know if it is worth £300 extra. The most commonly given reason to upgrade to the 10th Gen is that it’s more future proof. But is it?

Nothing is future proof. Get the best-specced computer you can afford at the time and start saving for the next one.

 

[2984839]

They're so close that it won't make any difference. I'd just get the cheaper one.

 

[Jimmy James]

My 2008 was future proofed.
Hard drive failed. Replaced with ssd.
Ram insufficient. Replaced.
Battery died. Replaced.

My wife’s 2012 is more of the same.

They’re still fine for what we use them for.

Most people won’t be able to say that with current models a decade from now. They will more likely die of failure or insufficiency and be discarded. They are inherently anti-future proof

 

[Pugly]

There's nothing stopping computers from 5-10+ years ago from being used today, and the same will be true of the computers released right now.

The 10th gen and 8th gen do basically the same things... the 10th gen just gets a bunch of extra creature comforts. Except for graphics, that's a pretty big jump. But the CPU varies from no improvement to about 20% faster depending on the test. You get nicer speakers, a slightly better cooling design (though the low spec is good and can run with boost clocks pretty well) the 4 ports, and a considerable 50%+ graphics performance. The graphics is nice if you want to run old games at medium-high settings...or try to barely run current games at low settings.

I don't think any of those is a future proof sort of thing. They all fall into the nice to have category, but not essential.

 

[jgoodmanjr]

What about for occasional video editing...will the 10th gen and Iris Plus graphics be ok for that you think?

 

[antipodean]

Maybe one relevant difference not mentioned so far is the two TB busses of the 10th gen model vs. One on the 8th gen. If you could see yourself using an eGPU and TB3 SSD storage, for example, the 4 port/2 bus model will give better performance. The 2 port/1 bus model would see the eGPU competing with the external SSD.

But at this point, I think it’s clutching at straws. If the £300 price difference is a big deal, eGPU and TB3 SSDs are most likely not in the frame for OP anyway.