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OMG Decisions - Core 2 Duo or i5

S

skate71290

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 14, 2009
556
0
UK
hey everyone, well, some serious decisions to be made... should i get the low end 13" 2.4GHZ with 500GB HDD or top end 15" i7? will Core 2 Duo last me another few years (i will be playing MW2 in Bootcamp)? is the nVidia 320M a Discrete Card? in addition, for the extra £655 for the top end 15" i can get 8GB RAM and 500GB HDD for the 13" and nearly buy an iPad for myself :O can someone just tell me that Core 2 Duo will suffice for 2 years as i get out of university and start my life lol ;)
 
skate71290 said:
hey everyone, well, some serious decisions to be made... should i get the low end 13" 2.4GHZ with 500GB HDD or top end 15" i7? will Core 2 Duo last me another few years (i will be playing MW2 in Bootcamp)? is the nVidia 320M a Discrete Card? in addition, for the extra £655 for the top end 15" i can get 8GB RAM and 500GB HDD for the 13" and nearly buy an iPad for myself :O can someone just tell me that Core 2 Duo will suffice for 2 years as i get out of university and start my life lol ;)
Click to expand...

I ran MW2 on a P1 166Mhz with great frame rates. I don't think you will be hurting any getting the 13 inch. Yes the Core2 will work just fine for the next few years.
 
InfoSecmgr said:
I ran MW2 on a P1 166Mhz with great frame rates. I don't think you will be hurting any getting the 13 inch. Yes the Core2 will work just fine for the next few years.
Click to expand...

hey, thanks, is the graphics card (nVidia 320M) discrete? thanks :)
 
4 years ago, I bought the baseline MacBook (1.83GHz Core Duo, 512MB RAM, 60GB HDD). I've put 2GB of RAM and a 320GB HDD in it. Because I am required to run CAD software for school, and I enjoy using Photoshop in my spare time, I need to upgrade.

Unless you plan on doing some really heavy lifiting (Final Cut, CAD work, etc), the 13" will be more than fast enough for you, and it will certainly last you the specified 2 years, and probably much longer. For the uses you stated, you would be much better off getting the low end 13" machine and spending the rest on a good gaming PC or a console.
 
MW2 is a really old game, it can probably run in DOSBox direct in OSX, no need to install bootcamp for that.

With that said, if you plan to do any kind of modern gaming, you will be better served with the 15" or 17" MBP, not because they use the i5 processor, but because they have much faster, dedicated graphics cards.
 
when i say MW2, what do you guys think i mean? MW2 to me is Call of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2, a game release late last year :cool:
 
spend the extra

I say go the 15inch i7 for sure. By adopting the newer specs helps future proof yourself into a longer term purchase. The i7 has turbo boost plus hyper threading, the core duo does not. The i7 is a quad core, the duo is two. I wish I waited, I bought the 15inch 2.53Ghz and wish every day I could have the i7.
The i7 comes with the better graphics card as well. If you are looking at gaming go the i7, if you are looking at word processing and email go the core duo.
 
skate71290 said:
when i say MW2, what do you guys think i mean? MW2 to me is Call of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2, a game release late last year :cool:
Click to expand...

To us over 30 folks, MW2 is Mechwarrior 2.

You modern warfare kids stole our acronym :)
 
JoshBoy said:
I say go the 15inch i7 for sure. By adopting the newer specs helps future proof yourself into a longer term purchase. The i7 has turbo boost plus hyper threading, the core duo does not. The i7 is a quad core, the duo is two. I wish I waited, I bought the 15inch 2.53Ghz and wish every day I could have the i7.
The i7 comes with the better graphics card as well. If you are looking at gaming go the i7, if you are looking at word processing and email go the core duo.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure the i7 in the MacBook pro is only a dual core.
 
You guys are awesome! Didn't think I'd ever hear anyone else who loved MW2 as much as me, lol... God, I miss 1996.

(Oh wait, I was still in high school - change that, I DO NOT miss 1996, just 1996 gaming. :D)

P.S. - I wasn't one of those lucky kids with a Pentium to play with. I ran MW2 on a 486-DX4 100MHz with 16MB of RAM. Wahoo!

Oh, and I have tried and tried to get it to run well in emulation and just can't find anything that works well. I've tried Virtualbox, Fusion, and DOSBox, but nothing has played well at all. All this talk may make me have to go find an old Pentium box to play with!
 
js81 said:
You guys are awesome! Didn't think I'd ever hear anyone else who loved MW2 as much as me, lol... God, I miss 1996.

(Oh wait, I was still in high school - change that, I DO NOT miss 1996, just 1996 gaming. :D)

P.S. - I wasn't one of those lucky kids with a Pentium to play with. I ran MW2 on a 486-DX4 100MHz with 16MB of RAM. Wahoo!

Oh, and I have tried and tried to get it to run well in emulation and just can't find anything that works well. I've tried Virtualbox, Fusion, and DOSBox, but nothing has played well at all. All this talk may make me have to go find an old Pentium box to play with!
Click to expand...

At least you had the DX (over drive) and it wasn't the SX LOL, I ran mine on a P166 with a 1 gig HDD and 64 meg of RAM, that computer cost us $4000 LOL it was the bomb ha ha ha ha Go the WOLF clan!!!
 
skate71290 said:
hey everyone, well, some serious decisions to be made... should i get the low end 13" 2.4GHZ with 500GB HDD or top end 15" i7? will Core 2 Duo last me another few years (i will be playing MW2 in Bootcamp)? is the nVidia 320M a Discrete Card? in addition, for the extra £655 for the top end 15" i can get 8GB RAM and 500GB HDD for the 13" and nearly buy an iPad for myself :O can someone just tell me that Core 2 Duo will suffice for 2 years as i get out of university and start my life lol ;)
Click to expand...

The Core2Duo 2.4 worked fine for the last 2 years, I don't know if it is good enough for you for the next 2 years.... espeacially if you wan't to do some CoD gaming...
No seriously, opt for the higher spec'd MBP or wait for another 13" refresh if you need the portability. Core2Duo has reached his EOL soon...
 
skate71290 said:
hey everyone, well, some serious decisions to be made... should i get the low end 13" 2.4GHZ with 500GB HDD or top end 15" i7? will Core 2 Duo last me another few years (i will be playing MW2 in Bootcamp)? is the nVidia 320M a Discrete Card? in addition, for the extra £655 for the top end 15" i can get 8GB RAM and 500GB HDD for the 13" and nearly buy an iPad for myself :O can someone just tell me that Core 2 Duo will suffice for 2 years as i get out of university and start my life lol ;)
Click to expand...

Most of consumers will be fine with core 2 DUO. You will be able to run MW2 and most of current games without any issues. However, it will not last you 2 years for serious gamers. Just cause 2 already requires intel core 2 DUO for minimum requirements, so you can already expect that core 2 DUO will last you this year, but after that... you will not be able to run every games at max or high settings.
 
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