Need Help choosing 13 or 15 rMBP

J

jmthigpen

macrumors regular
Hey guys, I'm having trouble figuring out which would be the best choice so I wanted to post here for some advice. I want to keep the machine for 2-3 years.

My usage will be:

occasional GoPro footage video editing
occasional editing D700 files in photoshop and lightroom
occasional gaming, WoW, Diablo 3, any future blizzard games
occasional encoding with handbrake, to import DVDs and Bluerays to iTunes

I will be attending a masters program next year so I will be doing quite a bit of word processing and research, and web browsing.

I can't decide between:

13" Midrange 2.6 i5, 8GB, 256

15" base 2.0 i7, 8GB, 256

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, especially from people that have had both the 13" and 15", and why they prefer which one.

Thanks!
 
Not much difference between those two. To see a difference you have to get the 15'' with discrete graphic card.
 
Unless you really want the extra screen size, go for the 13". And test out both if you have an Apple store near you.
 
2- years? I'd save money and get a 2012 or Feb 2013 refurb with a discrete graphics card. Unless you need what they got (slightly faster cpu and longer battery and tb2).
 
Given you mentioned most uses that would benefit from more cores as "occasional" I would say go for the 13".

People tend to want the best and want the fastest but what they forget that the processors in the 13" are not slow either and that they can process everything that you throw at them. The only difference is that it will take a bit more time.

If you would be constantly doing those CPU intensive tasks, then it would be a no brainer and go for the 15". But I would suggest you save yourself some money and take a 13".

Most "normal" people spend more time doing text processing and web browsing and then even a 3 year old Core 2 Duo can easily still keep up.

I bought the rMBP 13" 2.4GHz, 8GB, 256GB and couldn't be happier. I really wanted to buy the 15" because of the extra power and screen real estate (I come from a mid 2010 13" cMBP hooked up to a 27" ACD) but as I had no practical reason for having it (I love screen real estate but what good is putting all windows nicely arranged so you can keep track of everything at once) I decided to downgrade in real estate size and see from there.

Granted: I gave away some of the sharpness by using the 1680x1050 resolution instead of the 1280x800, but this is way sufficient for my needs.

Note: I don't game very much (I rarely do), I have a ton of tabs open in Chrome (I hate Safari), I always have a minimum of 4 to 6 Terminal SSH sessions open, a VLC window, some preview files, text files, CyberDuck/FTPZilla, and some other programs and both my cMBP and rMBP can handle anything easily without breaking sweat.

Why did I upgrade? Simple: the upgrade itch bit me. But I controlled it by taking the mid 13" rMBP. I sold off my 27" ACD and the cMBP so the only money I had to spend was 50€ extra for the rMBP. :)
 
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