MacBook Pro and MacBook

[mclaugaa]

Hello All

I currently am running a mid-2011 base 21.5 iMac.

I've been looking to go portable with a rMB or rMBP.

I know the new processors are better than what was made four years ago, but in terms of desktop vs laptop, how much of a difference should I expect to see? Will mobile processors be as powerful as a desktop processor from five years ago?

The most in depth processor work I do is importing old camcorder videos and digitizing them using imovie and related programs. Port issues aside, would a rMB be able to handle this task, or would that be work best suited for a rMBP?

Thanks

 

[Pearl Wisdom]

Because your iMac has an i5 CPU, you could get a 2012 or newer MacBook Pro which would have an i7 chip and has benchmarks at least 30% faster than your i5. The past few years have not seen a great increase in CPU power, but the SSD speed has gotten significantly better. If you want to save some money, you might look for a used or refurbished 2014 rMBP - that has benchmarks about 60% faster than your iMac.

 

[mclaugaa]

Because your iMac has an i5 CPU, you could get a 2012 or newer MacBook Pro which would have an i7 chip and has benchmarks at least 30% faster than your i5. The past few years have not seen a great increase in CPU power, but the SSD speed has gotten significantly better. If you want to save some money, you might look for a used or refurbished 2014 rMBP - that has benchmarks about 60% faster than your iMac.

Is there a difference between the processors in the MacBook Pro and the one found in my iMac? One area I plead ignorance is comparison between desktop and mobile class processors.

 

[HBOC]

I was in the EXACT same situation as you. I bought my iMac in may of 2011, and mine was a mid 2011. i only added 16GB of RAM to it.

my problem was i was running out of space on the HDD. I decided it was more cost effective to get a new machine vs putting a new one in it, as it still would be 5 years old.

A few weeks ago, i bought a practically new MBP 15" with the 2GB card. This thing is seriously at least 5 times faster booting up, opening Adobe CC programs, etc. I don't do any video editing or gaming on it, so i cannot comment on that.

Now it could be the SSD that has made a big difference, but even the geek bench scores are twice as fast. I notice that when i am editing my photos (easily reaches 1GB in files each) that it is much smoother.

I was 98% sure on a late 2014 27" iMac, but i decided portability would be nice. To me, it was time to switch it back up, as I have a MBP the previous 4 years before buying the iMac.

If you want portability, the MBP is a great choice. Anything will be faster. Remember we didn't have USB 3.0 or HDMI inputs. Now i need to get a thunderbolt to FireWire adapter

 

[Samuelsan2001]

The iMac has a quad core i5 desktop part without hyperthreading, so if you get a 13 inch pro it will be a hyperthreaded dual core part which will be about as good as your iMac.

If you get the 15 inch it is quad core hyperthreaded i7 and will outperform your iMac by some distance.

As others have said perceived speed for opening apps booting etc is almost always down to an SSD removing the slow platter HDD bottleneck.