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212rikanmofo

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 31, 2003
1,979
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I'm having a hard time deciding between the 2. Would I see any differences if I go with the 2.8ghz? I am a graphic designer and photographer. So I use mostly the Adobe apps and Aperture. A little bit of gaming but very rare. If there is hardly any difference I rather save the $300 or so and get the 2.53ghz instead. What do you guys suggest?
 
It really depends on the type of processor intensive applications that you run. I would imagine if you are moving RAW formatted images that are substantial in size that you would see a difference.

I recently upgrade my custom gaming computer from a 2.4 Ghz 65nm processor to a 3.0 45nm processor and for gaming it made a phenomenal difference.

It doesn't help you now but sometime in the next week or two I would expect to see some reviews by legitimate computer sites with benchmarks. I opted for the 2.8 but I also sale my notebook and upgrade at least every other revision.
 
It's only ten percent faster. It really depends what you do. If, for example, you add a lot of effects to your work in Photoshop, which needs a lot of raw CPU power then you should get the faster one, but if you don't I think you will be just fine with the 2.53 Ghz.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, Adobe has/or is planning to implement calculation done by GPU (through Cuda), but I'm not sure if or when that is going to come to Macs. The point is, when this happens, you won;t care much about your CPU speed because the GPU is much faster in these mathematical computations.
 
2.4 to 3.0ghz seems like a big jump but i am not sure about 2.53ghz to 2.8ghz... doesn't seem like it would make a big difference. decisions decisions, damn! :(

well if its only 10% difference, then i guess i rather save $300 and buy the 2.53ghz model...
 
It doesn't matter if you make money from it, It depends on your needs. For running high end music plugins for example. You may eventually make money if you produce something good but you may make nothing especially with people giving away albums these days (although you could argue the publicity makes you money from live performances ect). If you can't run as many instances as you need of a piece of demanding software your going to be annoyed regardless of whether you make money since you've compromised your hobby for the sake of paying a bit more for your machine.
 
In my experiance, it doesn't matter as much right now, but if you intend to keep the laptop for a long time (4+ years), I think that the 2.8 is going to be worth it. I think that as everything demands more of your system with future software upgrades and OS releases every little bit can help you put off that next upgrade a bit longer.

My MBP is comming with the 2.8GHz, so I put my money where my mouth is as well... even if the up front cost increase is a bit painful.
 
you need to look at more than just the clock speed, what are all the differences between the 2.53 and the 2.8? If I was less lazy I would do that research my self, but alas.....
 
I don't think its as easy as saying it will be 10% faster, it might be on some applications...all the other components will still be the same. I'm actually wondering if there will be a larger difference between the 2.4 and 2.53 since its got the 6MB of L2 cache.
 
you need to look at more than just the clock speed, what are all the differences between the 2.53 and the 2.8? If I was less lazy I would do that research my self, but alas.....

But everything apart from the clock speed is exactly the same so the clock speed is the only variable isn't it? I would order the same 320 GB 7,200 HD on both and 4GB ram with both.
 
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