MBP 2.4 W 500 7200HD vs MBP 2.53 W/500 5400HD For Speed?

[FunkTechNician]

Im about to order a new MBP and im on some what of a budget. I want to get the best speed for the price. Want to Use Adobe photoshop CS5, Final Cut Pro, Few Games, Lots of photo stuff and some scrapbooking and a few other programs like that on the Mac side. will be running Windows 7 On Bootcamp as well

Is it better for me to get

# 2.4GHz Intel Core i5
# 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
# 500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm
# SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
# MacBook Pro 15-inch Hi-Res Antiglare Widescreen Display

Or

# 2.53GHz Intel Core i5
# 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
# 500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
# SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
# MacBook Pro 15-inch Hi-Res Antiglare Widescreen Display

Or would it be better for me to buy The 2.4 with the cheapest hard drive option and buy a 7200RPM hard drive from somewhere else that would be faster? What would be the best bang for my buck..

If i buy the hard drive elsewhere which one would be the best for under 160$?

I would like to order asap so please help

Thanks

 

[Tom71]

The changes your list are miniscule. I would normally rule out the 7.2k HDD but if you do a lot of heavy CS5 & Final Cut Pro work then the 7.2k might even make sense - but so does the (indeed lesser) increase of CPU clock.

For the work that you describe I think both would perform equally The biggest push you would probably get from upgrading RAM if you were a heavy CS5 & Final Cut Pro user.

The 7.2k is quite a bit faster than the 5400 but you would really only notice this when dealing with applications that use the HDD a lot.

OTOH you would always feel the increased CPU clock, although the percentage of this is much less.

I think they would be the same

 

[FunkTechNician]

o ok thanks

 

[dr. shdw]

SSD. It's very noticeable.

 

[DHart]

I would pick the fastest clock speed, install the most RAM you can afford and don't give a hoot what drive Apple puts in the machine as I'd be installing my own drive anyway, which would likely be a Hitachi 500GB 7200 RPM drive. Drives are easy to come and go, clock speed of your machine is what it is and that's it!

Photoshop is a RAM intensive program, more so, generally, than clock speed. If you don't have enough RAM it starts to use the HDD, which can really slow you down.

I would go for the i5, or better yet the i7 machine, have at minimum 4GB of RAM (I guess no choice there), but if you can afford more RAM do it (aftermarket, of course) and take care of your HDD needs aftermarket as well.

If you do a lot of video and large file image editing, you're going to want a good fast external FW800 drive for sure.. especially if you will use another machine for your editing along with your MBP. I use MBP, MP, and iMacs, so the internal drives on all my machines are for system and application files only and all data is kept on bus-powered 2.5" portable drives housed in OWC Mercury OnTheGo Mini enclosures. Those drives are all 2.5" (Notebook size) 500GB 7200 RPM drives. In this way, I can pull one FW800 plug and take a data drive to any of my other machines and keep on working without skipping a beat. (I work professionally in imaging and some video work).