I have a 2009 13" mbp - considering an upgrade to a 2014 15" rmbp, but on the fence on going for the dgpu version or not. 90% of the time, I'm in a browser or I'm programming (i7 is going to be sweet) in C++, sometimes with an external monitor. The other 10%, I watch movies.
I'm leaning towards the $1,999 version + $100 2.5GHz i7 upgrade for its simplicity/no chance of dgpu failure (maybe upgrade the SSD myself in 3-4 years), but I'm open to the $2,499 version for the larger SSD/dgpu, if there are enough non-game benefits.
Does anyone have either version who can compare the 2014 15" 750M vs on-board graphics performance in these situations?
1. Browser scrolling
2. Movies (VLC)
3. 2nd Monitor (4K)
Maybe 3. is the only one with a perceptible difference?
Thx.
For NO. 3 I believe both the iGPU and dGPU SKU's of the 15" support 4k/60. I believe the 13" only supports 4K/30 although not sure if thats a hardware limitation or software.
For the other two either GPU will be fine and in some circumstances (depending on the software) the iGPU may perform better.
What kind of coding do you do? We have a group 15" i7 machine and I have a 13"
2.6Ghz i5 (I need the portability). We do both embedded design and mobile device software.
For embedded design work the difference in compile time is irrelevant as actually blowing an IC takes so much time in comparison a few seconds saved compiling makes little or no difference. For mobile device software, the i7 is faster, but we're talking about a few seconds. Thats only really noticeable when you're trying to resolve a bug and doing multiple compiles in short time frame. For general coding, compiles are so few and far between (in the grand scheme of things) the difference is negligible. And they are usually used as a good time to take a break and stretch ones legs/etc.
If we were compiling software that took a long time to compile, we'd be better of dropping the source onto one of our hosted servers to compile. Even if you don't have a hosted machine it would likely be better to invest the additional money in a desktop at home and setup remote access.
Its hard to say whats best for someone else, as only you know your circumstances and usage scenarios intimately. But personally I'd rather invest in more storage then marginally faster silicon. Finding you haven't got a doc, spec, stock source code, etc on your machine is far more of a hindrance to our work then a few extra seconds for a compile.
Having said all that, our machines are business tools, therefore the relatively "small" difference cost is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. We just get what we need, so for example I got a 512GB SSD (double what I previously had filled), but given I was never bound by the CPU/GPU I knew the i5 would give me plenty of overhead. All that matters to us is that we're not constrained by the machine over the ~3 years its our primary machine.
