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Please check my thinking and "Man maths"

J

josh bear

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 11, 2010
378
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Hi All,

coming to the forum to get a non biased view on my thought process. Background. Daughter is going to Uni and I want to send her away with a Mac that will last for the next few years and would replace her 2017 12 inch Macbook.

I have a bunch of tech things that I no longer need and have started to sell, specifically 2 12 inch MacBooks (Inc the one above), 1 iPad Pro, A couple of Sonos sound bars and an oculus rift. Total expected £1,600 ish.
So my plan is to buy her an Air. She will be able to use the Apple educational discount for the Air so total price will be around £900.

So far so good as it leaves me with £700. Now if I sell my 13 inch MacBook Pro 2.7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 2018 with 16GB of RAM that £700 becomes £1,700.

Then I use that £1,700 and buy a new 2020 MBP 13 inch pro 2.3 Ghz, 32GB RAM, My usage is photography, Lightroom and photoshop working on RAW files from 40MP cameras.

So does all that make sense will I see a bump in performance in the 2020 vs 2018 MBP. Value any opinions.

thanks

Josh
 
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I am asking the same thing under a thread called benchmark, bottom line i have the same 2018 MacBook Pro as you do and already have purchased the 2020 i5 2.0, 16GM, 1TB hard drive and there is very little change in the benchmarks and the disk is actually faster in the 2018. Benchmarks are all within 5% to 7% better on the newer MBP. Yours may be a little bit better as the new processor is a 2.3 rather than a 2.0. So I am trying to justify opening the newer MBP and selling the old one.
 
Thanks. In my case I have the added justification of linking it to the purchase for my daughter. Although I recognise if I stopped at the air purchase i would actually be better off.
 
Looking at the benchmarks and specs the impression I have is that, unless she really hates the butterfly keyboard, she'd be as well sticking with her current Macbook Pro as the new one isn't hugely improved beyond the typing experience!

You'd be better keeping the cash and buying one in the next year or two IMO when they do a larger refresh of the design.
 
Hi

thanks, hers is the Macbook 12 inch. And the plan is to replace with an Air.
 
maflynn said:
Minor increase and you get a better keyboard.


I'm not sure about the 2020 MBA, seems to be a fair amount of complaining regarding cooling
Click to expand...
Essentially don't buy the upgraded processor in the 2020 MBA as it cannot be sufficiently cooled enough to get the performance out of it.
 
For what its worth...

The base Macbook Air will be awesome for your daughter.

Unless you are doing massive amounts of photo edits or video editing, I’d recommend you consider the 2.0 GHz 13” 10th gen Macbook Pro. The internal storage I/O performance gains in all of the 2020 13” models are quite impressive.

Also, you it might be fine to knock the RAM back to 16 GB (depending in what your current memory pressure looks like on your existing system).
 
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N0ddie said:
Essentially don't buy the upgraded processor in the 2020 MBA as it cannot be sufficiently cooled enough to get the performance out of it.
Click to expand...
A dual core i3 is going to be under-powered for most tasks, imo. While I'll not disagree with you, its a sad state of affairs that you're spending a lot of money for a laptop and it struggles to keep itself cool
 
maflynn said:
A dual core i3 is going to be under-powered for most tasks, imo. While I'll not disagree with you, its a sad state of affairs that you're spending a lot of money for a laptop and it struggles to keep itself cool
Click to expand...

I completely agree. I was "stung" when I purchased a brand new upgraded processor MBA a few years ago so definitely wouldn't recommend one.
 
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Yeah, I've heard very mixed feeback about the performance of the Air. It's not a small amount of cash but it's definitely worth considering spending another $300 to get the 13" Pro instead of the Air.
 
Thank you all, really appreciate the insight and opinions. Given my daughter will only be doing essays and social media and probably shopping then the MBA would work well for her over her current rather battered MacBook 12 inch
 
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maflynn said:
Minor increase and you get a better keyboard.


I'm not sure about the 2020 MBA, seems to be a fair amount of complaining regarding cooling
Click to expand...
The cooling issues are mostly with heavy use. Compared to a 12” MacBook, the Air will be noticeably faster, the case itself will be cooler, but the fans might kick on. That said, the i3 doesn’t heat up as fast as the i5.
 
maflynn said:
A dual core i3 is going to be under-powered for most tasks, imo. While I'll not disagree with you, its a sad state of affairs that you're spending a lot of money for a laptop and it struggles to keep itself cool
Click to expand...

In my opinion a dual core i3 (with some awesome graphics capabilities in the 2020 Air's) should be more than adequate for most things a college kid will be doing "for a few years" as the OP specified.

My kid ran a 2015 m3-based 12" Macbook her 1st two years of college. She studies interior design (runs CAD software, doing wireframe stuff among other tasks that are not run of the mill/typical). While it was not quite as fast as the MBP 13" computers her friends all had in the same field of study, the battery lasted much longer which ended up being of more importance to her.

I got her a 2017 dual core i7 MBP 13" at the start of last year so she could run one (required) Windows-only CAD program via bootcamp with a bit more performance than the 12" could muster. It is still going strong though she is coveting the 2020's (of course!) haha
 
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I am still struggling to upgrade from the 2018 i7 MBP 2.7 GHz 16GB/1TB to the 2020 i5 MBP 2.0 GHz 16GB/1TB, I want it bad but having a hard time justifying the cost for the upgrades. I have no issues with the old keyboards. I already purchased the 2020, just have not opened it yet.
 
maflynn said:
A dual core i3 is going to be under-powered for most tasks, imo. While I'll not disagree with you, its a sad state of affairs that you're spending a lot of money for a laptop and it struggles to keep itself cool
Click to expand...
I think people are misunderstanding the Y-Series quad-core. It is intended to max out at 12W. It is a replacement for the previously fanless Y-series in the 12” MacBook that topped out at 7W (9W in maximum boost). It is significantly faster than that chip. The best cooling system in the world wouldn’t make it run any faster. Apple designed it to run at 100C, just as it does the 13” MacBook Pro. In this case, it doesn’t need a heat pipe, etc. because by design the chip doesn’t run at high speeds for extended periods of time.
 
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jeme said:
I am still struggling to upgrade from the 2018 i7 MBP 2.7 GHz 16GB/1TB to the 2020 i5 MBP 2.0 GHz 16GB/1TB, I want it bad but having a hard time justifying the cost for the upgrades. I have no issues with the old keyboards. I already purchased the 2020, just have not opened it yet.
Click to expand...

If what you are using works, continue banging away on that until it gets to be problematic.

Unless you are eyeing the resale value- at some point it can drop precipitously. Even on straight trade-in to Apple. For example: my 2015 quad core 15" would have gotten over $1k trade in before the end of last year. That dropped to $650 in late January (I sold it on eBay for just under $800 in February).

If resale value is not a major factor, the longer you wait, the more performance you'll get at a lower cost on a new system. In my case, it was well worth it for me to wait until the 2020's came out.

I still run a 2012 quad core 15" MBP on Mojave as a backup system. It works fine for more mundane tasks and stumbles along with higher demands when I'm too lazy to drag my main system home or out to power up.

I sold 3 systems to purchase a 2020 as my daily driver because I need more horsepower for the day job.
 
Really appreciate the help. Thank you. My current system gets $960 trade in from Apple and $1100 to $1200 from online vendors - I think I could sell it for $1400 with the apple care. So that and $1879 for the new one plus Apple Care makes it $800 at best and $1000 in worst case scenario.
 
Hi All,

Sold some of the items today and now have ordered the MBA for my daughter. Thank you. She is thrilled.

so back to me :). Just been running Safari (Multiple tabs), Photoshop and Lightroom at the same time and through activity monitor saw that I was only using (At peak) 10GB of the 16GB of ram I have. Therefore do I really need the 32GB? Also started to read about the I5 vs the I7 and for my usage doesn’t look like I would notice a difference. All of a sudden the outlay becomes only £300 of actual cash. If I went for the i7 and 32GB then I need to find approx 800.

Any perspective on 16GB vs 32GB and I5 vs i7 appreciated.

thanks

Josh
 
I would say the 16GB. I am worried if I don’t trade in/up now will I take a hit on the value. Meaning is now the peak time to upgrade.
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Josh bear have you determined what type of performance gain you will see going from the 2018 i7 to the 2020 i5? What are your thoughts there? From my research it is minimal. I have already purchased the new machine but considering sending it back. Have not opened it yet.
 
Hi

I have done my usual thing of reading too much! This is what I think I have learnt. Looking at scores on multicare - Geekbench. The numbers appear to be around the following

2018 i5 multi 3828
2019 i5 multi 3815
2020 i5 2.0 multi 4489

2018 i7 2.7 multi 4011
2019 i7 2.8 multi 4107
2020 i7 2.3 multi 4565

So my 2018 i.7 has a score of 4011 and the 2020 I5 has a score of 4489. So does this mean I could go for the I5 and not see any hit on performance for what I do vs my 2018 i7 2.7?

Thanks for any help on this.

Josh
 
josh bear said:
Hi All,

Sold some of the items today and now have ordered the MBA for my daughter. Thank you. She is thrilled.

so back to me :). Just been running Safari (Multiple tabs), Photoshop and Lightroom at the same time and through activity monitor saw that I was only using (At peak) 10GB of the 16GB of ram I have. Therefore do I really need the 32GB? Also started to read about the I5 vs the I7 and for my usage doesn’t look like I would notice a difference. All of a sudden the outlay becomes only £300 of actual cash. If I went for the i7 and 32GB then I need to find approx 800.

Any perspective on 16GB vs 32GB and I5 vs i7 appreciated.

thanks

Josh
Click to expand...

16GB should be ample... even when an amount close to that is allocated, it may not actually be "in use".

The based 2.0 i5 has plenty of horsepower under the hood from what I'm observing (running LR 6 with ~20,000 RAW images in my main library).

Benchmarks only tell part of the (theoretical) story. I was happy with the performance of an i7 Air with things I do on a daily basis. I decided to switch to a Pro 13" primarily for the increased (nearly double) internal storage performance and increased dual fan cooling capabilities as well to some extent.
 
So is the upgrade worth going from a Multi Cor score of 4011 to 4489 - about a 12% increase? I am an email/excel guy so nothing stressing the machine?
 
jeme said:
So is the upgrade worth going from a Multi Cor score of 4011 to 4489 - about a 12% increase? I am an email/excel guy so nothing stressing the machine?
Click to expand...
Also consider that you get Thunderbolt ports on both sides (more convenient), better bass on the speakers, etc.
 
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