MBA 11" - i5 or i7 processor ??

[IngerMan]

Sorry that I have quite a lot of questions today as I need to make my decision soon.

Thanks for all the information provided. I really appreciate it.

If you can only choose one upgrade, would you go for i7 or 256GB?

They both get the job done, i5 & i7. The i7 will get the job done faster when you are doing extensive stuff. But it's a time factor, 8 minutes or 10 minutes encoding a video.

For me if I could only choose one, I would go with the 256 SSD. That is a $400 plus upgrade from OWC and I believe less from the Apple store.

I was making iMovies and importing video on my 2010 MBA, the speed jump for just going to the i5 was plenty big enough for me instead of paying an additional $150 to get an additional 20%. I doubled my speed as it was. And I was content with what I had for the C2D.. My main reason for the upgrade was to go to the 11" from the 13"

 

[theSeb]

Sorry that I have quite a lot of questions today as I need to make my decision soon.

Thanks for all the information provided. I really appreciate it.

If you can only choose one upgrade, would you go for i7 or 256GB?

I would go for the 256 GB, no doubt. By the way... Vmware Fusion does support Windows XP.

 

[Sounds Good]

If you can only choose one upgrade, would you go for i7 or 256GB?

256, every time.

 

[adamsium]

I bought the 11" i7, 256 SSD and I've found it to be an amazingly good machine for everything I do.

As far as heat, fan noise and battery life is concerned, although I don't have anything with which I can make a direct comparison (i.e. the i5 model), I've been very happy with it. The heat levels have been fine - it usually doesn't feel even warm and when it does, it's only just warm, certainly not hot and most definitely not going to burn you. I've only managed to really get the fan going once - whilst playing a game. It reached around 6,000RPM, but I really didn't think it was overly 'loud'. Compared to the near silent level at which it normally runs, it was certainly louder, but it wasn't 'loud' by any means. Normally, even when holding the laptop up with the vent very close to my ear, I can just barely hear the fan. Even when it was running faster and louder, the sound it made wasn't bothersome - it sounded like quite a gentle, smooth flow of air. As for battery life, I've not really measured it, nor can I make a comparison, but I can say I am absolutely satisfied with it and happy that I opted for the i7 in every respect.

 

[Nioxic]

I would go for the 256 GB, no doubt. By the way... Vmware Fusion does support Windows XP.

Indeed. The hdd space is muuuch more useful than a slightly faster cpu.

The only reason i got both is because my local store didnt order home some i5's with 256

 

[SmoothJ]

One thing to consider though, you can upgrade the SSD later (expensive though), while the CPU you can't unless you upgrade the motherboard. This is relevant for all macs, not just the MBA.

 

[mireki1975]

hi from Germany

meanwhile i think about i5 oder i7 in 11" MBA:

the i7 is not the ultrasuperperformer with 1,8 Clock
why upgrading to that cpu? it´s better than the i5, ok - but it´s still not the Champion........but in the other hand 150 bucks more is ok

btw: when resell every year for a new one ..the i5 is the best in buy/sell price

 

[KPOM]

hi from Germany

meanwhile i think about i5 oder i7 in 11" MBA:

the i7 is not the ultrasuperperformer with 1,8 Clock
why upgrading to that cpu? it´s better than the i5, ok - but it´s still not the Champion........but in the other hand 150 bucks more is ok

btw: when resell every year for a new one ..the i5 is the best in buy/sell price

Don't compare the 1.8GHz to 1.6GHz as much as the 2.6GHz dual core turbo boost of the i7 to the 2.1GHz dual core turbo boost of the i5. The CPU spends as much time as possible in the higher speed mode when it is active, so that's where the difference lies.

That said, most everyday tasks aren't taxing on the CPU. That's why the Core 2 Duo models last year performed so well, even though they had old processors.

 

[entatlrg]

wait at least 3-4 days before posting. The indexing and other first startup tasks can effect everything you mentioned. also try updating to 10.7.1 i found that the battery life vastly improved and the average heat went down a lot.

Yea, thanks, I thought about that to. The i7 I returned was only out of the box 48 hours.

I'm not even going to comment on this one for the first three days then after that I'll compare it to the i5 and post back.

Reading some of these posts make me drool for the i7. I always buy max'd out everything. But I did not have good luck with my first i7 at all. I hope it goes different with this one.

 

[L0s7man]

Don't bother with i7 unless you really really really need it.

Are you running Super PI all day long? Do you want to pimp your Seti@Home score?

I have MBA 11" 1.4 C2D. From what I gather the new i5 MBA is 2-3x faster so I'll be trading in mine and getting the new one. But even the quite slow 1.4C2D is good enough for a lot of stuff that I do (a lot of programming work + usual procrastination), so i5 will be blazingly fast in comparison.

I did some testing (had 13" i7 but sent it back) and i7 does run HOT. i5 seems to be slightly cooler, 5 degrees Celsius maybe. The important things are: i5 has 3MB L2 cache, i7 4MB and that's not much difference. If it was 3MB vs 6MB L2, I'd go with 6MB. Also both i5 and i7 have hyper threading, so no difference there either (it used to be the case that only i7 had HT, I think).

OTOH, i7 isn't really much more expensive, so why not? Well, heat... There is no consensus here so I'd recommend trying it out and you can always return it if it's too hot and try i5.

----------

Oh, BTW, 2011 MBAs have SATA3 so what you should really be saving money for is SATA3 SSD upgrade once they are released into the wiled.

OWC has SandForce based Aura SSDs and they're blazingly fast, but that's only SATA2. With SATA3 SSD, expect read/write speeds >500MB/s...

I sure hope OWC will get round to making SATA3 SSD for MBA... If they don't, someone else will.

 

[ZBoater]

i5. The performance increase isn't enough to justify the $150 cost.

Yes it is.

 

[theSeb]

[/COLOR]Oh, BTW, 2011 MBAs have SATA3 so what you should really be saving money for is SATA3 SSD upgrade once they are released into the wiled.

OWC has SandForce based Aura SSDs and they're blazingly fast, but that's only SATA2. With SATA3 SSD, expect read/write speeds >500MB/s...

I sure hope OWC will get round to making SATA3 SSD for MBA... If they don't, someone else will.

That's great, but back in the real world you will not see a difference in day to day use between the "super fast" SATA III SSD and the "rubbish slow" SATA II SSD that your MBA came with.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1197959/

 

[ZBoater]

If you can only choose one upgrade, would you go for i7 or 256GB?

I would choose 4GB of RAM.

Then 256GB SSD.

And then i7.

But I'd sure try for all three...

 

[mireki1975]

Masterplan is vnc via macbook air 11 on a acd27 on my mini quad i7
I hope that will work snappy on max resolution in my LAN

 

[L0s7man]

That's great, but back in the real world you will not see a difference in day to day use between the "super fast" SATA III SSD and the "rubbish slow" SATA II SSD that your MBA came with.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1197959/

In "real world" you would. If you're copying a 10GB 1080p movie for instance. If you're installing 4-5GB game to Applications. If you open a folder with 500 20MB RAW files and OS X checks sizes of each and every one, etc.

Small things, sure, but noticeable.

That said, I can make use of 500MB/s. I work with big-ish files around 1-4GB and I often have to scan them back and forth. This doesn't require much processing power (although requires some for decoding the data), but often I'm seeking specific markers. So seeking at 500MB/s will be 2.5x faster than seeking at 200MB/s. But it is a very specific use-case...

 

[judethat]

I could not make up my mind so went for the 4GB ram, i7, 256 SSD and it is the fastest Mac I have ever owned. It is amazingly fast, and after the first few days, when it does spend time indexing etc. its battery life has improved. No noise at all from the fans, cannot say I have noticed them.

 

[macjacky11]

Thanks for all the information here. I have placed my order: 11" MBA, i5 wih 4GB ram and 256GB SSD. I think I am going to like it.

 

[bwhinnen]

Yea, thanks, I thought about that to. The i7 I returned was only out of the box 48 hours.

I'm not even going to comment on this one for the first three days then after that I'll compare it to the i5 and post back.

Reading some of these posts make me drool for the i7. I always buy max'd out everything. But I did not have good luck with my first i7 at all. I hope it goes different with this one.

Digging up an older thread here

But I was curious to know how the new i7 compares to the original one you had?

Thanks!

 

[cucullin]

Some good points made but the way I see it is if your're going for the 11inch then get the core i7 no doubt about it. Its 25% faster! Thats huge! Different story though when deciding between the slightly slower core i5 1.7ghz in the 13inch model. I'm struggling with that myself.

 

[tomliau33]

Yea, thanks, I thought about that to. The i7 I returned was only out of the box 48 hours.

I'm not even going to comment on this one for the first three days then after that I'll compare it to the i5 and post back.

Reading some of these posts make me drool for the i7. I always buy max'd out everything. But I did not have good luck with my first i7 at all. I hope it goes different with this one.

I'm interesting in the comparation result.
Does i5 have more usage time than i7 (30min??) ?
And does i7 have better user experience?
I have no idea to choice i5 or i7...
Thank you~

 

[richpjr]

I could not make up my mind so went for the 4GB ram, i7, 256 SSD and it is the fastest Mac I have ever owned. It is amazingly fast, and after the first few days, when it does spend time indexing etc. its battery life has improved. No noise at all from the fans, cannot say I have noticed them.

Heh - I couldn't make up my mind so I did the same thing and went for the ultimate as well.

 

[Sgenea]

Interesting your results are different. Your comments on speed are in line with Anandtech, your comments about the battery are not. Frankly, hard to swallow your comments on the battery life, professional reviews are more in line with my experience for sure.

Like I said, side by side, 11" i5/i7 I did not notice ANY speed difference whatsoever in *day to day* tasks ... money doesn't matter to me, I typically buy high end everything - not in this case. The heat and battery life are my priority, not speed I'm not going to notice, and I'm not using the 11" to render video either so why go i7? The windows mentality persists for many, specs, speed, power ...I used to be that way too, now I like to test first hand and read reviews then make my decision ... for me, this was the right decision.

Speed difference or not, does it matter?

Will it agonize you to know that your handbrake video take an extra 5 seconds to load? Or your programs take an extra 1-3 seconds to boot?

It is noticeably faster, maybe. But is it worth? I agree with entatlrg on both heat and battery issues. These issues are what that should be holding you back from buying an i7, unless you are willing to sacrifice a portion of your battery life and live with the excess heat.

I'm happy with my i5, and with it, i'm already lamenting on the heat that is radiating off my 11" thin frame albeit I could live with that.

Seriously, do you lose that much productivity with 1-3 seconds slower when you open or run extensive apps?

If yes, the i7 is for you.

 

[blipmusic]

Speed difference or not, does it matter? [...]
Seriously, do you lose that much productivity with 1-3 seconds slower when you open or run extensive apps?

If yes, the i7 is for you.

As hase been stated repeatedly in this and other threads: yes, it might matter *depending on what you use it for*. There are other user scenarios than "word processing vs gaming".

I'm currently on the fence as well but leaning towards the i7 since I'll be running music apps. As stable and cpu efficient as Reason is, extra ooomph still helps. Even more so when you tack on live audio recording/processing.