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Should I buy?

G

glwinkler

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 17, 2010
14
0
I have a late 2009 15" MBP. 2.53 processor. I was thinking about upgrading to a new i5 or i7. My only issues is when iTunes boggs down system. Other than that, it's media, learning programing and photos.

Do I need to upgrade?

I put a 7200rpm HD in it. Thinking about upgrading to 8GB of RAM.

Should I save my $ and wait? What would be the benefit?
 
Definitely. Is there a huge difference between the core two duos and the new ones? Enough to fork out $1500 or so?
 
glwinkler said:
Definitely. Is there a huge difference between the core two duos and the new ones? Enough to fork out $1500 or so?
Click to expand...

If you don't already know the differences, you don't need them. I say that in the sense that if you used applications that required more than what you have, you'd already be on top of the news and benchmarks that came with the SNB processors.

To answer your question though: No. Definitely not worth the extra money. Now if it's your job to do hard rendering/encoding (HD video/high definition photoshop, etc.) then it "might" be, however I would highly suggest selling your current MBP to make up some of the money.
 
Young Spade said:
If you don't already know the differences, you don't need them. I say that in the sense that if you used applications that required more than what you have, you'd already be on top of the news and benchmarks that came with the SNB processors.

To answer your question though: No. Definitely not worth the extra money. Now if it's your job to do hard rendering/encoding (HD video/high definition photoshop, etc.) then it "might" be, however I would highly suggest selling your current MBP to make up some of the money.
Click to expand...

Yup, good points.

iTunes during syncing and hand break are the only real drains. Not in aperture or pixel mater enough to notice a lag.

I think I'll just buy some kingston ram.
 
glwinkler said:
Yup, good points.

iTunes during syncing and hand break are the only real drains. Not in aperture or pixel mater enough to notice a lag.

I think I'll just buy some kingston ram.
Click to expand...

Oh ok; well yea, with that I would say you should be fine for years or until you get bit by the bug to upgrade.

Having 8 gigs of RAM is great and goes that extra bit in the second hand market; you could/should also put some money on the side for an external HD to use with TM (you can use any external HD for it, I use a 320gb external) so you'll always have a backup.
 
I have a Time Capsule. I was using carbonate but it was slowing me way down. some sort of bug where any mac user over 100,000 files it starts burning up cpu. What a waste of time that was.
 
glwinkler said:
Definitely. Is there a huge difference between the core two duos and the new ones? Enough to fork out $1500 or so?
Click to expand...

Check out some of the benchmark numbers on everymac.
Benchmarks aren't always 'real life transferable,' but compare the multiple years of the core 2 duo models to the first gen/2010 and then the 2011 macbook numbers. Core 2s did see some changes - faster, cache sizes, drop in process size, but they were within the same generation, relatively minor overall in speed differences. I ran a 6GB Santa Rosa MB for several years, and never really 'needed' to upgrade speed-wise to another C2D system. I would have still been running my original C2D MBP except for the RAM limits there of 3GB - multiple VMs and dev work just don't mix well after a while. :-/

The performance jump to i5/i7 is pretty significant. Of course, if you're a gamer, just a GPU jump is significant, while if you spend most of your time browsing the web, editing a few word/OO documents and presentations, it's probably a waste of $ as you're not going to benefit much beyond the whole 'new and shiny' factor. If you're spending a lot of time at near 100% CPU usage and/or waiting 'a lot' on programs to complete work or keep up, it may be worth the upgrade, but if not, just add some ram for $50 or so and it'll likely give a decent boost by itself, then wait until you're sure you need (or very strongly want/convince yourself) the newer model...and you probably do want to at least wait a few more months to see what the next model lineup looks like, as others have mentioned.

If it does what you need, or will with another 4gb of RAM, it's not broke, so don't 'fix' it. :)
 
I dont think you need any upgrade for now.

I would wait for the redesign if I were you.
 
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