Ordered a new rMBP - How is the 15" model?

[staticz]

I currently have a 13" late-2012 rMBP and, luckily, am in a position where I'm able to upgrade my workstation every 2 years. Anyway, my current setup is the rMBP and 2 24" monitors. While the 13" handles all three displays pretty well, I thought it might be beneficial to get the 15" with a dedicated video card. So I went ahead and requested a max'd out 15" rMBP (512 SSD).

Will it be a noticeable upgrade? I run a couple VMs at a time, but the rMBP I have now plows through those like a champ!

For those of you that have that have handled both models, how much bigger is the 15"? Is it going to be too large to travel with? I'm thinking I may keep the 13" for travel and just leave the 15" at my desk all of the time...not sure

 

[pragmatous]

The SSD will be a nice upgrade. The retina will be nice too. The resolution alone is why I upgraded. Plus the 16GB of RAM. It'll be noticeable. Plus you can use 4k monitors where you cannot on the 2012 models.

I currently have a 13" late-2012 rMBP and, luckily, am in a position where I'm able to upgrade my workstation every 2 years. Anyway, my current setup is the rMBP and 2 24" monitors. While the 13" handles all three displays pretty well, I thought it might be beneficial to get the 15" with a dedicated video card. So I went ahead and requested a max'd out 15" rMBP (smaller SSD thought).

Will it be a noticeable upgrade? I run a couple VMs at a time, but the rMBP I have now plows through those like a champ!

For those of you that have that have handled both models, how much bigger is the 15"? Is it going to be too large to travel with? I'm thinking I may keep the 13" for travel and just leave the 15" at my desk all of the time...not sure

 

[staticz]

The SSD will be a nice upgrade. The retina will be nice too. The resolution alone is why I upgraded. Plus the 16GB of RAM. It'll be noticeable. Plus you can use 4k monitors where you cannot on the 2012 models.

Thanks. Yeah we were looking at 4K monitors but I A) couldn't use them with the 2012 and B) couldn't justify them :/ After all I stare at a CLI most of the day!

The SSD switched to PCI-E correct? What did the late 2012 models use? I'm excited for the additional space and RAM for sure, not to mention going to a quad core i7 will be mighty nice!

 

[Freyqq]

Thanks. Yeah we were looking at 4K monitors but I A) couldn't use them with the 2012 and B) couldn't justify them :/ After all I stare at a CLI most of the day!

The SSD switched to PCI-E correct? What did the late 2012 models use? I'm excited for the additional space and RAM for sure, not to mention going to a quad core i7 will be mighty nice!

It's a great machine. Late 2012 used SATA III. Now, they're using PCIe. Mine gets ~700 MB/s read and write. SATA III tops out at about 500 MB/s.

 

[maflynn]

I don't there's a huge upgrade in performance, though I think the iGPU is better as is the SSD but from a user experience I don't think it translate into a large difference.

 

[Traverse]

I upgraded from an SATA III SSD at 500 read speeds to the PCIe one with 700 and I can't say that I see a difference in day to day stuff except for running VMs, where are slightly faster.