MBA 13.3 BTO Core i5 vs Core i7 -- really worth the $300 + $100?

[nebulos]

i7 option on 128GB would be nice, but that's not how Apple does things.

my vote is usually for i5 + 128GB, though 256GB can make sense for some.

as for i5 vs i7, i've said before i think the psychological difference may be the biggest, though if it were offered on the 128GB, i might pay the extra $100. might not though. not something to sweat. if in doubt, i'd say save the cash or spend it towards external storage, etc.

blah.

 

[jamesryanbell]

It depends on what you are going to do with your MBA. If you do video editing or heavy photo editing get the I7. Otherwise, get i5 it more than enough for casual use.

I know it's kind of the cliche response, but it's still true, so I'll say it anyway...

If you're doing heavy editing, you shouldn't be doing it on an Air.

If you HAVE to, then yes, max out the machine. Hope the 4GB of RAM is enough.

(for casual use, it's way enough, as that's what I have)

 

[iamthedudeman]

I know it's kind of the cliche response, but it's still true, so I'll say it anyway...

If you're doing heavy editing, you shouldn't be doing it on an Air.

If you HAVE to, then yes, max out the machine. Hope the 4GB of RAM is enough.

(for casual use, it's way enough, as that's what I have)

I do engineering, marketing, and alot of heavy editing. And the i7 Air does just fine. Got rid of a imac 27 2.93 with SSD and don't miss it at all. Now have a cinema display with a maxed out Air.

Consider this, the i7 Air is is as fast as or faster than last years top of the line MacBook Pro. Is the 2010 top of the line MacBook Pro considered slow? How about one with a fast SSD?

There is nothing underpowered about the i7 Air. The 4GB of ram is a slight hindrance in theory only under the most taxing circumstances. Even then the page swaps are not even noticeable because of the SSD. I went with the Air only because it is so fast and found myself just using it at work and at home because it was plenty fast enough. Instead of transferring my work over to my imac.

And the TBD is better then the imac screen. Alot better. Same screen but no yellowing, better contrast, better color repro, and no back light bleeding.

other than the spec of dust under the screen. Which you can only see under close inspection.

 

[KPOM]

i7 option on 128GB would be nice, but that's not how Apple does things.

my vote is usually for i5 + 128GB, though 256GB can make sense for some.

as for i5 vs i7, i've said before i think the psychological difference may be the biggest, though if it were offered on the 128GB, i might pay the extra $100. might not though. not something to sweat. if in doubt, i'd say save the cash or spend it towards external storage, etc.

blah.

You can get an i7 with a 128GB SSD, but only on the 11". On the 13" model, if you don't need the 256GB storage, I'd suggest just going with the i5, since the 1.7GHz model is actually considerably faster than the 1.6GHz i5 on the 11" (the Turbo Boost is much higher). It isn't enough to justify spending $400 extra to get the i7.

 

[DarwinOSX]

I have the 1.8ghz i7 but would not notice the difference with an i5 most of the time. I just like to get the highest spec I can.
But you should get your information from some actual benchmarks not Wikipedia. Your wikipedia data points are not very useful in comparing procs in an Air running OS X.

Try this;
http://www.barefeats.com/mba11_04.html

Oh and fyi...all computer companies charge significantly more for higher specs. Its not just an Apple thing.

 

[BadaBing!!]

I thought about getting the upgrade myself - $100 extra for an upgraded processor - I usually take it 'just because' more or less.

That said, I've done some reading about the i7 and stumbled across a number of posts of complaints about the heat in those things. The computer apparently runs warmer than the i5 and the performance upgrade was...while they may have noticed a very minor bump, the 'condition' of how the computer ran wasn't a worthy tradeoff.

I went ahead and picked up an i5 13" from Best Buy and been loving it ever since.

**Edit. i5, NOT i7! Sorry!! Got mixed up with the 5s and 7s *sigh - long day

Same here. I choose the i5 for less heat and slightly better battery life. I don't regret as this is a really fast computer

 

[irrªtiºnal]

You can get an i7 with a 128GB SSD, but only on the 11". On the 13" model, if you don't need the 256GB storage, I'd suggest just going with the i5, since the 1.7GHz model is actually considerably faster than the 1.6GHz i5 on the 11" (the Turbo Boost is much higher). It isn't enough to justify spending $400 extra to get the i7.

I've been thinking about the 11" precisely for this. Apple still wants $150 for the upgrade from 1.6GHz Core i5 to 1.8GHz Core i7, but that's not so maniacal. The only problem is that, as you might remember, I want it for a trip where I'm gonna be taking hundreds of pictures per day... for several days.

And the 11" ain't come with an SD card reader!!!

 

[snowwhite007]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

I have i7 my bro has i5 and i assure u you wont notice a difference its all in your head iff you do. I bought i7 because i got discount otherwise i would have stuck with i5

 

[anirudh]

since all of you have a 2011 air, and i am deciding between the 2010 13" ultimate and the 2011 13" base, i was wondering if anyone can tell me if there are any issues with heating and fan noise in the 2011? i have also heard some mention of even the scrolling on web pages stuttering on the 2011 due to the intel gpu!

 

[iaymnu]

I have the 2011 13" in i5 and i7 both Samsung ssd & display.

No stutter on web page scrolling.
I don't have flash installed and if I need I just use chrome.

i5 vs i7 heat is pretty much the same.
My i5 would kick the fans faster than the i7 in same tasks. Both feel warm when under load. Just one gets warmer quicker.

Unless you plan to play games I see no advantage in the 2010. Plus gaming on that is still pffft...

since all of you have a 2011 air, and i am deciding between the 2010 13" ultimate and the 2011 13" base, i was wondering if anyone can tell me if there are any issues with heating and fan noise in the 2011? i have also heard some mention of even the scrolling on web pages stuttering on the 2011 due to the intel gpu!

 

[BadaBing!!]

since all of you have a 2011 air, and i am deciding between the 2010 13" ultimate and the 2011 13" base, i was wondering if anyone can tell me if there are any issues with heating and fan noise in the 2011? i have also heard some mention of even the scrolling on web pages stuttering on the 2011 due to the intel gpu!

If 128Gb is enough, I recommend the 2011 Base.

 

[ZipZap]

It's worth every penny. If you want the biggest, baddest MBA out there, go i7. No matter how you slice it, i7 > i5.

Let the i5ers start their complaining...

And

Hahahahaha, I couldn't of said it better. 7% cost increase for a 10% performance gain? Sounds good to me.

You're enthusiasts and hard-core users, and your motivations are very different than the average person.

For most, the extra cost and the "7% cost increase for 10% speed gain" ( that 99.99% of owners will never perceive) is a waste of money.

 

[thekev]

And



You're enthusiasts and hard-core users, and your motivations are very different than the average person.

For most, the extra cost and the "7% cost increase for 10% speed gain" ( that 99.99% of owners will never perceive) is a waste of money.

Bleh if they're hard core users, they'd be better off with a 15" mbp given the quad cpu and greater ram capacity unless they're on a very modest weight budget for travel reasons or whatever. The Air is still not a machine (even in 2011) that you buy to own the fastest thing available even when the comparison is restricted to laptops only. If one doesn't suit your needs in terms of power, the other won't either. One is also not more future proof than the other.

2012 also won't make everything into Airs regardless of the silly speculation. Basically they have the cto option there to cover the entire cpu lineup offered in the ULV setup. Transitioning to all Air like form factors would mean they'd have to ditch the more powerful cpus allowed by Intel and downgrade or remove discrete graphics (the ultra compacts ones are much less powerful). I know we've seen rumors that Ivy Bridge would fix that, but the configurations that are shaping up would not make this possible. They're nowhere near close enough to the 17W tdp of the current air cpus.

 

[iaymnu]

Also take in consideration that the resale would have a slight advantage with the i7 if and when you decide to sell to upgrade to a 2012 air in the midst of people trying to sell theirs.

 

[EuStoN]

there was a really good review about the comparison on the two processor....

to me, i don't think its worth the money... and also, I really don't need it for the work i do on my MBA...

 

[thekev]

Also take in consideration that the resale would have a slight advantage with the i7 if and when you decide to sell to upgrade to a 2012 air in the midst of people trying to sell theirs.

That isn't really a guarantee. I'd bet the difference on ebay between the two ends up under $50 on average. The value new is slim. The difference in value used is non existent given that on a newer processor class like the ULV spec, future cpu generations are likely to significantly outpace both of these models, at which point the difference between the two goes from almost meaningless to completely meaningless. Anyway, I think you're wrong and that many of you guys are way too worried about residual speculation on high depreciation electronics .

 

[2IS]

Sorry, it's an improvement of up to 10%, not a flat 10% speedup in everything you do. For everyday tasks like word processing, you will hardly notice the gains at all.

I'll take it a step further and say for tasks like word processing, you will absolutely not notice the gains at all.

 

[Confuzzzed]

If you got the cash why not go for i7. However I'd rather have an i5 with Samsung SSD vs. i7 and Toshiba SSD. Now if you can get an i7 with Samsung SSD that's a win win.

most if not all top of the line 13" MBAs are Samsung (as per other thread that is somewhere on these pages if you care to look). That been said, I'd wait until June if I were you because the ivy bridge processor will offer a 25% processing power improvement so if a 10% gain which you currently get going from i5 to i7 is really important to you then 25% should make you get by with what you have for another 6 months. It should also offer significant improvement to graphics. Then again, I will personally side with many others that said the i5 processor is plenty good enough for every day use. Even for heavy photo editing. But not tested it to its limits on video editing so can't comment but I have a mac mini with an i7 processor and it does run hotter than the i5 in my MBA.

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For a more comprehensive answer and some bespoke tests see below:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1293809/