Mac book Pro i5 or i7 ? Performance difference major or minor ?

[conversationsan]

Hi folks ,
Hope every one is doing great
I have to purchase a Mac book pro 13 inch . But confusion I am having is between i5 and i7 processor . I ll be using my laptop mainly for surfing , movies, and Video editing ( FCP , Adobe premiere pro ) . i7 is expensive than i5 and right now my budget is not permiting me to buy i7 until or unless there it is EXTREMELY important to buy a i7 mac book as there are will be huge performance issue . From what I read I got to know that there wont be huge difference since they both are using dual core processor and there is no option of hyper threading in i7 either . Also there aint any difference of graphics card as they both use the cpu inbuilt intel graphics card.
So just wanted to know from some one who has used i5 mac book pro and ran editing software (or any one who knows about it) . Did you guys face any glitches or are they very minor to be noticeable. I am fine with extra time taken in rendering and exporting , thats not the issue for me . Only issues is that videos shouldnt lag or appear jerky in the timeline because then it will hamper editing experience .
I know Imac in same rate is the best option for editing and nothing can beat that . But I couldnt go for it because of portability issue as I have to travel a lot .
Hope to hear expert comments from you guys.
Cheers !

 

[simsaladimbamba]

The dual core mobile i5 and i7 CPUs support HyperThreading (HT).

For your purposes the i5 will be fine, just think about getting an external and dedicated HDD (USB 3.0 should suffice, but Firewire 800 or Thunderbolt would be better, though more expensive) for your videos to work with.

Video Compression
Why It Matters & How To Make The Most Of It

which includes the following sections:

• GOPs, Macroblocks & Wavelets
• Acquisition Formats
• Editing & Post Formats
• Final Cut Pro
• Avid Media Composer
• Adobe Premiere Pro
• Which Codec Should I Edit With?
• Conclusion
• Camera Codec Summary
• Apple ProRes Variations
• Avid DNxHD Codecs

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

I edit in FCP X on my MBA which has a dual-core i5. Since I have a SSD, FCP X does not lag in any way whatsoever. So I think an i5 MBP will suffice. But you might want to upgrade the HD to a SSD. I used to have a 13" MBP and I did work in FCP X too. No lag after you've given it some time to render any new clips.

 

[Yahooligan]

If you want to get a general comparison for how the two perform, scroll through the Geekbench scores...

http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

The i5 2.5GHz scores 6650 on average
The i7 2.9GHz scores 7753 on average

The i7 scores about 16% better based on the Geekbench scores (Which test processor and memory performance, not disk and GPU). That's not going to be a huge difference, you may save 10 minutes for every hour of heavy CPU use such as with video compression and transcoding. On the other hand, that adds up if you have some really long-running jobs...but such jobs would take much more disk space than you'll have.

Since you're on a budget, I would recommend getting the base 13" and upgrade the memory to 16GB, then go to an SSD down the road if you feel it's necessary. I don't know what size videos you'll be editing, but I wouldn't do it with less than 8GB of memory. I have 16GB and it works nicely with FCPX.

 

[Badrottie]

8GB suits me well with FCPX and Photoshop CS6 open leaving about 4.32GB available for other apps to be open.

 

[renosausage]

I edit in FCP X on my MBA which has a dual-core i5. Since I have a SSD, FCP X does not lag in any way whatsoever. So I think an i5 MBP will suffice. But you might want to upgrade the HD to a SSD. I used to have a 13" MBP and I did work in FCP X too. No lag after you've given it some time to render any new clips.

I agree with the SSD upgrade too.

But if you upgrade the HDD to an SSD, you might as well as get the 13" rMBP