Late 2013 15' rMBP vs. Same 2015 ?

[legaleye3000]

Few questions:



1. Late 2013 15' rMBP (base model) vs same but 2015= worth upgrading? Besides force touch, are the speed updates really that much worth it?



2. Late 2013 15' rMBP vs. 2015 13' rMBP: Which one is faster? I think the only difference in the 15 inch was that it has Iris Pro. But would the Late 2013 15' rMBP Iris Pro be slower than the 2015 (non-pro) Iris in the 2015 13' rMBP?



***I don't do photo/video editing or anything of the sort but I do use it in clamshell mode with dual-screens; however, I want enough power to once in a while play the latest games while keeping the most portable machine possible. I'm wondering if I can get away with an Air or not. Thanks!

 

[yjchua95]

Few questions:



1. Late 2013 15' rMBP (base model) vs same but 2015= worth upgrading? Besides force touch, are the speed updates really that much worth it?



2. Late 2013 15' rMBP vs. 2015 13' rMBP: Which one is faster? I think the only difference in the 15 inch was that it has Iris Pro. But would the Late 2013 15' rMBP Iris Pro be slower than the 2015 (non-pro) Iris in the 2015 13' rMBP?



***I don't do photo/video editing or anything of the sort but I do use it in clamshell mode with dual-screens; however, I want enough power to once in a while play the latest games while keeping the most portable machine possible. I'm wondering if I can get away with an Air or not. Thanks!

Needless to say, the late-2013 15" will be way better than the early-2015 13", because the Iris Pro 5200 is still way faster than the Iris 6100. But if you want to play the latest games, not even the 750M-equipped Haswell rMBPs will cut it.

If you want to play the latest games, you have to stick with the mid-2015 15" rMBP with AMD R9 M370X.

 

[shoehornhands]

The 13" MacBook Pro has Intel Iris 6100 graphics. Only the 15" models have Iris Pro graphics (the Iris Pro is only available with the quad-core chips).

Anyway, even though the CPU in the 13" was upgraded to Broadwell, the 13" still uses dual-core CPUs. The quad-core i7s in the 15" model are significantly faster than the chips in the 13" model because they have the 2 additional cores (4 additional threads).

Same thing for the graphics chips. Even though the 13" model was upgraded to Iris 6100, the older Iris Pro in the the 15" should still be significantly faster. The Iris Pro is actually pretty decent and gives performance close to that of a dedicated GPU (I remember seeing some reviews of the 2013 15" model that showed the Iris Pro neck and neck with the Nvidia 750M in the majority of tests).