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Refurb MBP Buying Advice

K

Kestrel452

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 23, 2008
197
256
Hey guys,

I have a 2.8 Ghz Mid-2010 MacBook Pro with a 15" "hi-res" anti-glare display.

It's getting kind of slow to use for picture and video processing. I'm not a professional photographer, but pretty well into it as a hobbyist. It isn't used a whole lot for gaming, I mainly stick to my homebuilt PC tower for that.

I've been keeping track of Apple's refurb offers lately, and they have May 2015 MBP's on offer currently. A dedicated GPU is a must for performance purposes, the ones I am looking at have the Radeon R9 370X with 512GB SSD's. At $2199 for the 2.5 Ghz variant, and $2289 for the 2.8 Ghz model; is that a smart buy??? What is the real world performance difference between the two?

I really don't want to spend $2500, it just doesn't seem worth the price for a brand new model. Are there better offers out there? What do you gentlemen suggest?

Thank you :)
 
The 2.5GHz model is $2119.

The 2.8GHz model is $2289.

Is 300MHz worth $170 to you? There's a good chance you'll never notice it.
 
Kestrel452 said:
Hey guys,

I have a 2.8 Ghz Mid-2010 MacBook Pro with a 15" "hi-res" anti-glare display.

It's getting kind of slow to use for picture and video processing. I'm not a professional photographer, but pretty well into it as a hobbyist. It isn't used a whole lot for gaming, I mainly stick to my homebuilt PC tower for that.

I've been keeping track of Apple's refurb offers lately, and they have May 2015 MBP's on offer currently. A dedicated GPU is a must for performance purposes, the ones I am looking at have the Radeon R9 370X with 512GB SSD's. At $2199 for the 2.5 Ghz variant, and $2289 for the 2.8 Ghz model; is that a smart buy??? What is the real world performance difference between the two?

I really don't want to spend $2500, it just doesn't seem worth the price for a brand new model. Are there better offers out there? What do you gentlemen suggest?

Thank you :)
Click to expand...
Either computer will run circles around your current machine, simply because they are a quad core vs. your dual core.

Heck even a 2012 or 2013 15" would blow your machine out of the water.

As far as the upgraded processor: not worth it. You'd only ever notice it if you peg your CPU at 100% usage, 100% of the time. And we're talking about shaving a minute or two on an hour long operation. You do the math.
 
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snaky69 said:
As far as the upgraded processor: not worth it. You'd only ever notice it if you peg your CPU at 100% usage, 100% of the time. And we're talking about shaving a minute or two on an hour long operation. You do the math.
Click to expand...

That seems to be the overwhelming consensus, spanning back at least a few years based on forum searches. Why does Apple even bother offering a 300Mhz higher clock if it makes a negligible difference? Can't the 2.5 ghz machines be upclocked by the end user anyways, or does Apple actually heatsink the 2.8'ers better?
 
Kestrel452 said:
That seems to be the overwhelming consensus, spanning back at least a few years based on forum searches. Why does Apple even bother offering a 300Mhz higher clock if it makes a negligible difference? Can't the 2.5 ghz machines be upclocked by the end user anyways, or does Apple actually heatsink the 2.8'ers better?
Click to expand...
There are a few options.

Some users like to show off their E-peen.

Also, for a few users, their work is very time critical and every second counts.

And no, you cannot overclock a Mac. It is literally impossible. They are EFI locked with no possible access to the EFI by the end user, and the only people that have access to the multipliers are Intel themselves.
 
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Kestrel452 said:
That seems to be the overwhelming consensus, spanning back at least a few years based on forum searches. Why does Apple even bother offering a 300Mhz higher clock if it makes a negligible difference? Can't the 2.5 ghz machines be upclocked by the end user anyways, or does Apple actually heatsink the 2.8'ers better?
Click to expand...

Some people will get some use out of it so it's offered for them but they are few and far between.
 
Seems I missed the boat on the last crop of dedicated GPU Mid-2015 15" refurbs. Anyone have the faintest clue when Apple might get some more in? I'm not sure if there's a general pattern or restock cycle.
 
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