New to Macbook

[whiskeyn34t]

I'm looking to buy a 13" macbook pro and it is my first mac. Getting the 13" mainly for portability. I want to customize it to get the processor to an i7. I will be using it for video editing. Is there anything else that I will need to change to get it to run efficiently without maxing out the price?

 

[xb2003]

I'm looking to buy a 13" macbook pro and it is my first mac. Getting the 13" mainly for portability. I want to customize it to get the processor to an i7. I will be using it for video editing. Is there anything else that I will need to change to get it to run efficiently without maxing out the price?

If I were you I would go with the base i5 CPU and get more RAM instead. The upgraded CPUs provide a very small improvement.

 

[0002378]

I'm looking to buy a 13" macbook pro and it is my first mac. Getting the 13" mainly for portability. I want to customize it to get the processor to an i7. I will be using it for video editing. Is there anything else that I will need to change to get it to run efficiently without maxing out the price?

Good choice. I've owned a 13" for 8 years, and I can tell you how great this form factor is for portability.

Getting the best (or mid-range) processor is a great idea, because that is the one thing you definitely cannot upgrade (if you can upgrade anything at all), and that is the one thing that will become a bottleneck over time. So, I say get the best or mid-range processor now, and your investment will last longer.

I honestly don't know the specifics of what is available in MBPs these days (mine is a mid-2009 and I don't see myself upgrading till this thing dies).

Since you're going to be doing video editing, the graphics processor (GPU) is also going to be important (but not as important as the CPU). Pick an SSD ... aside from the CPU and GPU, this is the one thing that will boost your performance the most. And enough RAM to get all your tasks done (which depends greatly on what you do).

Bottom line - You're probably going to want to max out the CPU and the GPU, and perhaps the RAM. SSD doesn't have to be maxed out.

The only gotcha here is that the 15" form factor, to my knowledge, provides higher spec options (I think). But, you can get a decent 13" machine.

 

[jerryk]

I'm looking to buy a 13" macbook pro and it is my first mac. Getting the 13" mainly for portability. I want to customize it to get the processor to an i7. I will be using it for video editing. Is there anything else that I will need to change to get it to run efficiently without maxing out the price?

Can you wait until mid 2018? If so, you will likely be able to buy a more powerful system for video editing. By then the 13" should have quad core processors (15 inch will likely have a hex core). Currently, even the i7 in the current MBP 13 is a dual core processor.

Prices should be close to the same as today.

 

[Brookzy]

In my personal opinion the processor upgrade is not money well spent on the 13” model because they aren’t performance processors anyway, and you could be spending hundreds to get a very modest, almost unnoticeable increase in clock speed.

On the other hand, the RAM and storage can be very good upgrades.

However, you mention that you want to use it for video editing. While it is perfectly capable of that, you do get considerably better performance in the 15” model. If you were planning on upgrading the processor to an i7, then you’re already near to the price range of the base spec 15” model, which comes with a quad core (instead of dual core) processor and a dedicated graphics chip. Depending on the type of video editing you’re doing and the software you are using, this could make it up to twice as fast, or even more, than the 13” model. This will vastly improve the experience of editing video, if that’s what you need to do.

But, if portability is too important and means you can’t get the 15”, then I would recommend the base CPU 13” MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM and as much storage as you need.

 

[casperes1996]

I'm looking to buy a 13" macbook pro and it is my first mac. Getting the 13" mainly for portability. I want to customize it to get the processor to an i7. I will be using it for video editing. Is there anything else that I will need to change to get it to run efficiently without maxing out the price?

So; the one thing I must recommend, is to make sure to get the Touch Bar version. The non-touchbar version uses a lower TDP chip and only has a single heat pipe and a single fan, as opposed to two on the TB model. This translates to both better CPU and GPU performance. Even the i5 in the TB model should perform better than the i7 in the nTB model. 15" is a hell of a lot faster but obviously also less portable and more expensive.

 

[Fishrrman]

What -kind- of video do you intend to edit?
1080p or 4k?

 

[whiskeyn34t]

What -kind- of video do you intend to edit?
1080p or 4k?

Mostly 1080. I have a GoPro and a sony a7s. I want to shoot more 4k but the rendering speeds just turn me off to it until I get something capable.

 

[Fishrrman]

For 4k, you'd probably want an iMac with an i7 in it. Lots of processing power required.
For 1080p, the MacBook Pro should be fine.

 

[leman]

Getting the best (or mid-range) processor is a great idea, because that is the one thing you definitely cannot upgrade (if you can upgrade anything at all), and that is the one thing that will become a bottleneck over time. So, I say get the best or mid-range processor now, and your investment will last longer.

Bottleneck? If your application will become limited by the CPU, a 5% increase in peak performance is going to do exactly nothing. Upgrading the CPU forced”future-proofing” is probably the most nonsensical thing one can do.

 

[0002378]

Bottleneck? If your application will become limited by the CPU, a 5% increase in peak performance is going to do exactly nothing. Upgrading the CPU forced”future-proofing” is probably the most nonsensical thing one can do.

I meant that, someday, the user might upgrade other hardware (if that is possible with these newer MBPs), and likely even the software (OS). But, the one thing that will lag behind, and hence hold the system back in terms of performance, is the CPU since it cannot be upgraded.

 

[jerryk]

I meant that, someday, the user might upgrade other hardware (if that is possible with these newer MBPs), and likely even the software (OS). But, the one thing that will lag behind, and hence hold the system back in terms of performance, is the CPU since it cannot be upgraded.

In general, the 2016 and 2017 MBPs are sealed, non user upgradable systems. The RAM and SSD are soldered onto the board. The only exception is is the 13" Non-touchbar 13. But even that has a Apple proprietary M.2 form factor SSD.

 

[0002378]

In general, the 2016 and 2017 MBPs are sealed, non user upgradable systems. The RAM and SSD are soldered onto the board. The only exception is is the 13" Non-touchbar 13. But even that has a Apple proprietary M.2 form factor SSD.

Right. So that makes future-proofing all the more relevant, in my opinion. Spend $300 to $500 more, and use it for a few more years.

 

[MagicBoy]

The i7 upgrade is poor value for money. It's a couple hundred MHz and a bit of cache worth under 5% overall performance increase for $hundreds. That won't delay the inevitable future upgrade. Increase the RAM and SSD first.

 

[casperes1996]

Right. So that makes future-proofing all the more relevant, in my opinion. Spend $300 to $500 more, and use it for a few more years.

Or save all the money that you were going to spend "future proofing" it, and instead of getting a 7% faster machine that'll last 2 months longer, put the money towards your next Mac purchase, when prcoessors are made of a different material that means they run at 500GHz without getting hot.

The speed of evolution has slowed down - where as we used to get double the performance every two years, it's not more like every 4 years. (double performance or other features like less powoer consumption - not both). However, even if we ignore the potential of major leaps like in my example above, a system that is even as much as 30% faster will hardly matter too much in terms of how usable it is in the future, if macOS at that time is made for systems that are 8x faster. Get what you need now and put the money you save towards the next computer some years down the road.

 

[jerryk]

Right. So that makes future-proofing all the more relevant, in my opinion. Spend $300 to $500 more, and use it for a few more years.

Or what until 2018, when the quad cores ships. Spending more for an i7 dual core now is not a good investment unless you need the system now. The new processors will have more cores, and by all reports have better thermal management and control of clock bursts so they can get better overall throughput even on 2 cores.

 

[kikote]

The I5 will do the job... The performance increase with the I7 ist minor... I would upgrade the memory instead, you get more performance for the money. If you are doing a lot of video compression I would buy the 2017 model as it has build in support for HEVC ... Ignore any offer with discount of the 2016 model, the performance boost and the keyboard of the 2017 model is worth the money...

 

[ZapNZs]

Could you tell us a little bit more about the video editing you will be doing?

How often?
What resolution?
What length?
What App(s)?
How many projects will you be working on simultaneously?
Are you going to be using one or more external displays when editing? (if so, what resolution displays?)