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Question on 15" 2011 Macbook pro

K

Kleptomaniac

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 26, 2011
29
0
Ireland
Hello, this is my first post here but I have been reading these forums for awhile and while I do find them extremely helpful there are still some questions I need answered.

I'm looking at getting the 15" Macbook pro sometime this summer and I have made up my mind about most of my options. I will be adding a normal hi res screen and adding the 128GB SSD. However I am still undecided on getting the 2.0GHZ or 2.2GHZ model, I realise this has has been discussed many times but I have some additional questions to ask.

To give an idea of my usage I should be starting a computer science course in September and so I want the laptop to last me for these 4 years. This was one of my reasons for choosing OSX I want to learn Obj-C. So I will be writing a lot of code on it and other college stuff like writing up documentation and essays. I will also be using it for viewing videos and I would like to take advantage of having a mac by doing some light video picture editing.

My main questions between the two models are:

Will the lower clock of the 2.0 GHZ as well as the weaker GPU give a boost to battery life? Even a small amount.

I have no intention of playing games at all on my Mac I have a PC for that but are there any applications apart from Photoshop that would really benefit from the stronger 6750?

Does the 6490 have the power to push an additional 1200p monitor?

The difference between these models for me would be about 300 euro. I can afford both models but if I don't need the extra horse power of the 2.2GHZ model I will definitely just save the 300 euro and put it towards college books and transport.

Thank you for any answers you give.
 
Sounds like the 2.0 is the better model for you. I don't think you'll see much better battery life, if at all. The 6490 can easily run a separate display, up to 2560x1600, although that requires a dual-link adapter. Not sure what other apps would benefit from the better GPU though, probably not many. I'd say the 300 would be better spent elsewhere for your needs though.
 
Yeah thats the way I've been leaning, I was just worried if in the future I would regret going with the weaker GPU. But I guess the CPU would more than make up for it and the 300 would definitely be better spent elsewhere.
 
Kleptomaniac said:
Hello, this is my first post here but I have been reading these forums for awhile and while I do find them extremely helpful there are still some questions I need answered.

I'm looking at getting the 15" Macbook pro sometime this summer and I have made up my mind about most of my options. I will be adding a normal hi res screen and adding the 128GB SSD. However I am still undecided on getting the 2.0GHZ or 2.2GHZ model, I realise this has has been discussed many times but I have some additional questions to ask.

To give an idea of my usage I should be starting a computer science course in September and so I want the laptop to last me for these 4 years. This was one of my reasons for choosing OSX I want to learn Obj-C. So I will be writing a lot of code on it and other college stuff like writing up documentation and essays. I will also be using it for viewing videos and I would like to take advantage of having a mac by doing some light video picture editing.

My main questions between the two models are:

Will the lower clock of the 2.0 GHZ as well as the weaker GPU give a boost to battery life? Even a small amount.

I have no intention of playing games at all on my Mac I have a PC for that but are there any applications apart from Photoshop that would really benefit from the stronger 6750?

Does the 6490 have the power to push an additional 1200p monitor?

The difference between these models for me would be about 300 euro. I can afford both models but if I don't need the extra horse power of the 2.2GHZ model I will definitely just save the 300 euro and put it towards college books and transport.

Thank you for any answers you give.
Click to expand...

Get it with the stock HDD and buy your own SSD. It's a snap to install and you can get a better one for the same money that Apple will charge you.
 
I did think of getting my own SSD for it, but having seen a lot of people having trouble with 3rd party SSD's and incompatibilities I think I will go the safe way and get the Apple provided SSD.

My reasoning for this is that Apple will tweak OSX to work best with the SSD's they provide in the same way they tweak OSX to run on the components they use. I have even seen posts saying that faster SSD's have not outperformed the stock SSD in OSX.

As for the price I have researched online for 128GB drives and surprisingly they are all more expensive than the Apple drive which they provide as an upgrade at 199!:eek:
 
I got the baseline 15" MBP and am more than happy with it. I don't play games at all so the GPU really doesn't matter to me. I actually have it set to use the built-in GPU most of the time. This saves a lot of battery.

Most people who buy 3rd party SSDs then use the stock HDD with an optical drive HDD caddy and use the HDD for extra storage. If you don't need that then I think the stock SSD is a fine choice. It benchmarks slower than the new SSDs but in real life usage, I doubt you'll perceive a difference. In real usage, the Apple SSDs are good, so if you're leaning toward the baseline 15" with an Apple SSD, I think that would be a great choice for you.
 
bozz2006 said:
I got the baseline 15" MBP and am more than happy with it. I don't play games at all so the GPU really doesn't matter to me. I actually have it set to use the built-in GPU most of the time. This saves a lot of battery.

Most people who buy 3rd party SSDs then use the stock HDD with an optical drive HDD caddy and use the HDD for extra storage. If you don't need that then I think the stock SSD is a fine choice. It benchmarks slower than the new SSDs but in real life usage, I doubt you'll perceive a difference. In real usage, the Apple SSDs are good, so if you're leaning toward the baseline 15" with an Apple SSD, I think that would be a great choice for you.
Click to expand...

Thank you its nice to hear from the people who have the product, I should note that I have a 1 TB HDD in my home PC so I don't need a massive amount of space for my notebook.
 
I have to agree with everyone else here. I got the baseline 15" MPB and spent a little extra getting the high res anti-glare screen. Overall, I'm completely happy with my purchase. The 6490M, although less powerful, is still plenty for all the things I've thrown at it, even running Portal 2 without any noticeable lag at native resolution. Most of the time, I just force it to the HD 3000 and its more than enough for flash videos and image editing.

As far as Photoshop, from what I understand, its primarily CPU based, so it would be the 2.0 vs 2.2 that would come into play there. IMO its not a worthwhile upgrade for just .2 GHz

So don't let other people tell you that it's necessary. I had some slight buyers remorse at first, but now I've realized that this is more than enough when I go to study computer engineering at college this fall. If you should do anything with the saved money, I would recommend the high res screen, but whether thats glossy or anti glare is up to you.
 
I was set for a while to buy the 2.2 15" model but then suddenly realized that I didn't need the extra performance and so I started waffling on whether to get the 2.0 or 2.2 model. I started this thread a couple of weeks ago about it to see if anyone regretted getting the 2.0 model: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1135645/

The response was positive for those who bought the 2.0.

I went ahead and bought the base 2.0 15" and I can tell you that I am MORE than satisfied. It's blazing fast and I have ZERO problem running it on my 24" Samsung monitor. I'm glad I didn't pay $300 extra for the 2.2 model.
 
If you aren't gaming or doing huge 3D renderings then the 2.0 will be sufficient IMO.

I bought the 2.0 because I don't like gaming on computers, no sense for me to spend the extra money on something I will never use. I very rarely even flip the discrete gpu on in my mbp.
 
Thanks guys I will definitely get the base model!:D

I figure I will spend the money saved on a quality bag for the macbook and maybe some accessories.
 
There's another post in the forums today that I replied to that quoted a review of the 15" 2.0 and the 17" 2.2. The 15 had slightly better battery life and ran at a slightly lower temperature, but it wasn't clear from the review whether that was the slower chipset or the easier task of running 1440x900 rather than 1900x1200 resolution.
 
dblissmn said:
There's another post in the forums today that I replied to that quoted a review of the 15" 2.0 and the 17" 2.2. The 15 had slightly better battery life and ran at a slightly lower temperature, but it wasn't clear from the review whether that was the slower chipset or the easier task of running 1440x900 rather than 1900x1200 resolution.
Click to expand...

that was most likely from the lower resolution.
 
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