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Should I Sell a Month Old Student rMBP?

M

mrmeister

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 26, 2010
139
1
Hi all,

Unfortunately my Late 2011 MBP died on me just over a month ago and I had to cave and buy a brand new rMBP... I was even more annoyed at this because I knew the refresh was coming soon.

My question now is this: the model that I've bought is a student model (in terms of the warranty). Is selling this model on ebay a viable option? It's only a month old, very clean, no scratches etc. Still have the original box, manual, chargers and even the plastic!

What to do...?


edit: one main reason for selling is the severe lag I'm getting on this 15" base model compared to the previous 15" I had (with the AMD 6750M). Any time I'm scrolling quickly, or even using Launchpad and Mission Control, everything stutters and the screen tears... Not happy, and I suspect that it's down to only having an Intel GPU. I couldn't upgrade to the higher spec as I didn't have the money for it, but I'm not sure if I can put with 3-5 years of this...
 
mrmeister said:
Hi all,

Unfortunately my Late 2011 MBP died on me just over a month ago and I had to cave and buy a brand new rMBP... I was even more annoyed at this because I knew the refresh was coming soon.

My question now is this: the model that I've bought is a student model (in terms of the warranty). Is selling this model on ebay a viable option? It's only a month old, very clean, no scratches etc. Still have the original box, manual, chargers and even the plastic!

What to do...?


edit: one main reason for selling is the severe lag I'm getting on this 15" base model compared to the previous 15" I had (with the AMD 6750M). Any time I'm scrolling quickly, or even using Launchpad and Mission Control, everything stutters and the screen tears... Not happy, and I suspect that it's down to only having an Intel GPU. I couldn't upgrade to the higher spec as I didn't have the money for it, but I'm not sure if I can put with 3-5 years of this...
Click to expand...

All retina MacBooks 'stutter' when compared to their lower resolution forebears. So far none of my rMBP can attain the constant 60 fps in animations that my 2011 rMBP 15 did with it's much lower resolution screen. Even if you switch the dGPU. Some people don't notice it as many of the population can't really tell between 30 or 60fps. I'm unfortunately one of those and that's why I have a Titan X on my gaming desktop...

You will take at least a $500 hit on resale there if you decide to sell your 2014 model if you sell on ebay and take the paypal hit along with it. You can probably sell with a $200-$300 loss by selling on Craigslist. (My figures are taking in account the hit you get from paying taxes, many of the posters here seem to conveniently forget that sales taxes on a >$1000 item are pretty big)
 
magbarn said:
All retina MacBooks 'stutter' when compared to their lower resolution forebears. So far none of my rMBP can attain the constant 60 fps in animations that my 2011 rMBP 15 did with it's much lower resolution screen. Even if you switch the dGPU. Some people don't notice it as many of the population can't really tell between 30 or 60fps. I'm unfortunately one of those and that's why I have a Titan X on my gaming desktop...

You will take at least a $500 hit on resale there if you decide to sell your 2014 model if you sell on ebay and take the paypal hit along with it. You can probably sell with a $200-$300 loss by selling on Craigslist. (My figures are taking in account the hit you get from paying taxes, many of the posters here seem to conveniently forget that sales taxes on a >$1000 item are pretty big)
Click to expand...


Ahhhhh, not what I wanted to hear, but mostly what I expected to hear! That comment about the rMBPs not being able to handle its own resolution... did not expect to hear that! It makes me feel better, but at the same time its absolutely stupid... Why sell a product that can't even cope with itself? Oh well, at least I'm not missing out...

----------
magbarn said:
Titan X
Click to expand...

I'm also very jealous of this... You're very lucky. What monitors are you driving? Is it all gaming, or do you use it for hi-res screen real estate too with "pro" apps?
 
mrmeister said:
Not happy, and I suspect that it's down to only having an Intel GPU.
Click to expand...

It's not. Even with discrete graphics, they are disabled most of the time unless you disable switching. The same would have been true with the 6750m, speaking of which that might be slower than the iris pro in the newer 15" models.

mrmeister said:
Ahhhhh, not what I wanted to hear, but mostly what I expected to hear! That comment about the rMBPs not being able to handle its own resolution... did not expect to hear that! It makes me feel better, but at the same time its absolutely stupid... Why sell a product that can't even cope with itself? Oh well, at least I'm not missing out...
Click to expand...

People post frequently post their worries about integrated graphics, but I think it's more an Apple software problem than an intel one. I'm not actually sure what hit you would take on resale. You would have to look into it, but there are enough used Macs to meet demand. If you bought it at a discounted rate, you'll lose less. You'll still lose something due to non-current model + it is no longer "new". It doesn't have a lot of display hours or battery cycles, so that counts in your favor, but you will lose something unless the buyer agrees to pay above typical market value.
 
mrmeister said:
Ahhhhh, not what I wanted to hear, but mostly what I expected to hear! That comment about the rMBPs not being able to handle its own resolution... did not expect to hear that! It makes me feel better, but at the same time its absolutely stupid... Why sell a product that can't even cope with itself? Oh well, at least I'm not missing out...

----------



I'm also very jealous of this... You're very lucky. What monitors are you driving? Is it all gaming, or do you use it for hi-res screen real estate too with "pro" apps?
Click to expand...

rMBP can 'cope' with their resolutions, but it's a combination of Yosemite along with the high res screen is why animations aren't as smooth as before.

It's not just the Intel iGPU being the main problem either as the dGPU isn't much faster so it's probably a coding issue with OS X.

It's for gaming on a 2560x1600 Dell U3014 screen as I haven't had the time to try to setup a hackintosh on my 4790K/Titan X system. My most CPU intensive thing that I do right now is FCPX which brings my 2012 iMac/rMBP to their knees as I'm editing 4K footage now from my AX100 recorded at 100Mbps. They had such an easier time editing video from my 1080P camcorder lol. I've tried Vegas Pro, but prefer FCPX as I'm used to it now.
 
As far as i'm aware, the Titan X is plug and play with the nVidia web drivers :)
 
mrmeister said:
As far as i'm aware, the Titan X is plug and play with the nVidia web drivers :)
Click to expand...

The problem is I'm trying to do a Clover Hack so I can get handoff and iMessage to work. Also, you have to remove the Titan X to install using the 4790K's iGPU, then you can finally put back in the Titan X after installing the web drivers. I find it amusing that Apple went full hog with AMD, when frankly I could never get my previous 290x cards to work well with Yosemite.
 
mrmeister said:
Hi all,

Unfortunately my Late 2011 MBP died on me just over a month ago and I had to cave and buy a brand new rMBP... I was even more annoyed at this because I knew the refresh was coming soon.

My question now is this: the model that I've bought is a student model (in terms of the warranty). Is selling this model on ebay a viable option? It's only a month old, very clean, no scratches etc. Still have the original box, manual, chargers and even the plastic!

What to do...?


edit: one main reason for selling is the severe lag I'm getting on this 15" base model compared to the previous 15" I had (with the AMD 6750M). Any time I'm scrolling quickly, or even using Launchpad and Mission Control, everything stutters and the screen tears... Not happy, and I suspect that it's down to only having an Intel GPU. I couldn't upgrade to the higher spec as I didn't have the money for it, but I'm not sure if I can put with 3-5 years of this...
Click to expand...

The Intel GPU inside it (the Iris Pro) is actually not as bad as you'd think it is.

The issue with lag within the animations is an OS X thing, not a hardware thing.

Don't believe me? The same lag on the Air happens on the Mac Pro. :)

As far as stutters and screen tears, well that one is actually odd. You could have a bad GPU. See if you can exchange it first. I'm on a 13" and I'm not experiencing that (with less GPU power)
 
mrmeister said:
My question now is this: the model that I've bought is a student model (in terms of the warranty). Is selling this model on ebay a viable option? It's only a month old, very clean, no scratches etc. Still have the original box, manual, chargers and even the plastic!
Click to expand...
Its viable, but you won't get what you paid for. How much money you lose is up in the air - at least to me. You'll then need to buy a newer model and that will mean that you're spending even more money.

I'd keep what you have and not worry about what apple released.
 
Reduce contrast and turn on dark mode (looks great).
Or use gfxcardstatus and force dedicated graphics and stutter will be gone. On OS X 10.10.4 (latest beta), I don't notice any stutter on dark mode (I quit using reduce contrast and keep my mbpr using integrated graphics).
 
SlCKB0Y said:
Did it die because of this?
https://www.apple.com/au/support/macbookpro-videoissues/
Click to expand...

Yeah it did. I was able to get it fixed for free, but I had to buy something in the meantime (it took a couple of weeks to get an appointment and get it fixed)... So now I have a new laptop that I wasn't planning on buying. If only I didn't have too much work on, I wouldn't have needed to buy a new one! So now I've got an extra laptop of similar spec...
 
mrmeister said:
Yeah it did. I was able to get it fixed for free, but I had to buy something in the meantime (it took a couple of weeks to get an appointment and get it fixed)... So now I have a new laptop that I wasn't planning on buying. If only I didn't have too much work on, I wouldn't have needed to buy a new one! So now I've got an extra laptop of similar spec...
Click to expand...

I just wanted to make sure you knew about it because i've had friends go and buy a new mac when they technically didn't need to due to this defect. I hate seeing that sort of thing happen to people.
 
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