Should I trade a rMBP 15 for a MBA 13

[cyberc]

Hi forum

I have a MBA mid 2013, totally maxed out. Its 10months old.

I have been given the option to trade the MBA(plus 500$) for a 5 month old rMBP(current model) 15", with i7 2.3Ghz, 16gb memory, 512gb flash.

Both machines are in mint condition.

Is this a fair/good trade ?

regards

Cyberc

 

[SarcasticJoe]

If I were you I'd bite... The price difference between the two is a lot more than $500 and the Pro is a much more capable machine.

Then again there are those who think the 15" Pro is too big, but I've been carrying 15" non-retina Pro's (i.e heavier and bigger) with me almost daily since 2008 and I don't think it's that heavy.

 

[cyberc]

Hi

thanks for you reply.


I like the weight of the MBA, and the rMBP is approx 650g heavier than the MBA. I do some photoshop editing and here the rMBA could come in handy. I also do some video conversioning, but here my mac mini late 2009 still come in handy.

According to geekbench the rMBP on single core cpu is only approx 10% faster, but almost 100% faster on multicore. I would assume on single core that it was more than 10% faster 1,7 vs 2.3.

How much faster is the rMBP in everyday use compared the MBA?

/Cyberc

 

[SarcasticJoe]

A single core comparison is not exactly fair when you compare CPU's where one has twice the number of cores compared to the other. Single core comparisons may have still carried some value when multi core machines were becoming the norm and the software wasn't quite there, but these days they're simply irrelevant. Geekbench is not a particularly good tool for comparison here when it's supposed to be a full machine comparison and factors in RAM and HDD/SSD speeds (which the two machines share) pretty heavily.

A better comparison tool for the CPU's would be the PassMark scores as it's a pure CPU benchmark, here's the Pro and then the Air:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4850HQ+@+2.30GHz
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4650U+@+1.70GHz

As for everyday use you probably won't see much of a difference because the limiting factor is mainly the speed of the HDD/SSD and RAM, which simply haven't kept up with the development in CPU's for the last two decades. For tougher stuff, specially when you can leverage the faster GPU, it's going to be pretty big. I'm not saying the Air is a bad machine, just that the Pro is quite a step beyond it and probably won't be getting outdated for quite a while.

So unless you're a complete wimp, go for it and if the person asks to reverse the trade, refuse.

 

[cyberc]

Hi

Thanks once again.

So Daily usage will remain the same speed wise.

What apps are able to benefit from the GPU? I'm not into gaming at all.

Regards

 

[Freyqq]

Hi

Thanks once again.

So Daily usage will remain the same speed wise.

What apps are able to benefit from the GPU? I'm not into gaming at all.

Regards

Many programs that do rendering will benefit, as they offload some of the work to the GPU.

Sounds like a good trade to me. Photoshop and video conversion will definitely benefit from the extra cores and ram. Both are usually going to be using multicore for rendering.

 

[yosemit]

So Daily usage will remain the same speed wise.

What apps are able to benefit from the GPU? I'm not into gaming at all.

Regards

Yes, for daily usage the performance is about the same. The high-end rMBP 15" is probably 10% faster than the high-end MBA for those programs.

Good news is that Photoshop CS can utilize multi-core CPU and GPUs (integrated and discrete). So for Photoshop, the difference can be very large.

That said, I use a 2013 MBA of i7/8GB/256GB to do photo editing from time to time. For light usage of photo editing, the MBA is quite capable, about the performance of a 2010 quad-core iMac. But if I would do heavy photo processing, I would opt for a high-end rMBP 15" or a Mac Pro.

According to geekbench the rMBP on single core cpu is only approx 10% faster, but almost 100% faster on multicore. I would assume on single core that it was more than 10% faster 1,7 vs 2.3.

The i7 in MBA turbo-boosts to 3.3 GHz, and the i7 in 15" rMBP turbo-boots to 3.8GHz. The memory and SSD performance are the same as I recall, so 10% looks to be a right number.