Quandary (Thought regarding refurbished macs)

[Farrout]

Thought regarding pros/cons following refurbished macs?

Refurbished 15.4-inch MacBook Pro 2.3GHz Quad-core Intel i7
Originally released June 2012
15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen display, 1440-by-900 resolution

4GB (2 x 2GB) of 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM
500GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 512MB of GDDR5 memory
Vs
Refurbished 15.4-inch MacBook Pro 2.3GHz Quad-core Intel i7 with Retina Display
Originally released June 2012
15.4-inch (diagonal) Retina display; 2880-by-1800 resolution at 220 pixels per inch
8GB of 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
256GB Flash Storage
720p FaceTime HD Camera
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
Vs
Refurbished 15.4-inch MacBook Pro 2.5GHz Quad-core Intel i7
Originally released October 2011
15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit Hi-Res antiglare widescreen display, 1680-by-1050 resolution

4GB (2 x 2GB) of 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM
750GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Intel HD Graphics 3000 and AMD Radeon HD 6770M

Which will best address video and heavy graphic manipulation and hold up best over time? Thanks for any help you can offer.

 

[yjchua95]

Thought regarding pros/cons following refurbished macs?

Refurbished 15.4-inch MacBook Pro 2.3GHz Quad-core Intel i7
Originally released June 2012
15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen display, 1440-by-900 resolution

4GB (2 x 2GB) of 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM
500GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 512MB of GDDR5 memory
Vs
Refurbished 15.4-inch MacBook Pro 2.3GHz Quad-core Intel i7 with Retina Display
Originally released June 2012
15.4-inch (diagonal) Retina display; 2880-by-1800 resolution at 220 pixels per inch
8GB of 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
256GB Flash Storage
720p FaceTime HD Camera
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
Vs
Refurbished 15.4-inch MacBook Pro 2.5GHz Quad-core Intel i7
Originally released October 2011
15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit Hi-Res antiglare widescreen display, 1680-by-1050 resolution

4GB (2 x 2GB) of 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM
750GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Intel HD Graphics 3000 and AMD Radeon HD 6770M

Which will best address video and heavy graphic manipulation and hold up best over time? Thanks for any help you can offer.

I'd say neither, because for your type of work, 8GB of RAM is just plain insufficient for heavy video and graphics manipulation.

You're going to need 16GB of RAM, a quad-core i7 and an SSD. RPM drives are horrible and bloody slow compared to an SSD.

Let me give you a look at the performance gap between SSD and RPM drive:
With SSD, boot up time is around 10 seconds from a shutdown, and no delay after logging in before you can open apps quickly.
With an RPM drive, that would take at least 30-45 seconds, and there's also a 15-second wait time after logging in before you can smoothly use it.