Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

macbook pro CTO dilema

R

rachellarissa

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 16, 2011
32
0
Singapore
hello world hahaha.

im deciding on the 17' macbook pro for school next year at singapore polytechnic.

i'll be playing black ops , maybe starcraft .
Is the 2.66 i7 upgrade worth the 267?
or i'd be happier with the speed upgrade i get from getting a 128gb ssd for the same price as the i7 upgrade?
and if i have both os on the ssd how much space will i have left?
can i have one os on the ssd and one os on the hdd that i plan to install in the optibay?
 
rachellarissa said:
hello world hahaha.

im deciding on the 17' macbook pro for school next year at singapore polytechnic.

i'll be playing black ops , maybe starcraft .
Is the 2.66 i7 upgrade worth the 267?
or i'd be happier with the speed upgrade i get from getting a 128gb ssd for the same price as the i7 upgrade?
and if i have both os on the ssd how much space will i have left?
can i have one os on the ssd and one os on the hdd that i plan to install in the optibay?
Click to expand...

Depends if you want it or not just get prepared to get beaten with comments saying the 512mb vram is not worth it...blahblahblah. I have the 2.66 i7 15" and I can do Starcraft 2 on High. I dont know what "both os" you are talking about so I will assume Windows and OS X.

Windows 7 32bit takes about 20gb, 64bit about 25gb, OS X is about 10gb. XP is obviously smaller than 7 but im not sure on the size. Yes you can put one os on the ssd and one on the optibay hdd. I have both OS X and Windows 7 on my SSD with some minimal apps and currently have 57gb free on the OS X partition and I did give Windows 7 a 35gb partition because I was trying to install some things. I keep everything else on my HDD.
 
rachellarissa said:
17' mac comes default with the 512 ram. . .
how big is your ssd?
Click to expand...

120gb OWC Mercury Extreme Pro, it was $240. Make sure if you buy one(Any SSD with Sandforce Controller) to have them flash it with Sandforce 310 firmware before they send it or you will have a bunch of problems.

As far as the 2.66 upgrade, they will beat you to death with that too at this forum.
 
The Sandforce chip is the CPU of the SSD drive, it's a brand. These things get their firmware upgraded from time to time.

I think the SSD is a better choice. The difference between and i7 and i5 isn't huge and won't be too obvious in games. CPU performance in games will be bottlenecked by the GPU, especially that 330m. Very little or no performance increase at all between the 512mb and 256mb 330m if you're playing at 1440x900 or 1650x01080. You might want to look at some comparisons at 1920x1200, not sure about that one.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back