Suggestions with buying a new Macbook Pro

[Shuey]

Hey folks,

I need help in buying a new Macbook Pro. I myself have done quit a bit of research but I'm still in need of assistance.

I'd need it for college and I go to a design school and will be majoring in Design and Technology so a lot of coding/programming will be included in the program along with animation and running programs like Adobe Premier/Illustrator/Photoshop/Etc, Maya and other animation programs that require 3-D rendering.

I also intend to play games like Skyrim, and maybe the new Elders Scroll Online, I also would be watching movies, so using it for entertainment purposes.

I figured that since I'll be doing art related things with programming and coding and playing video games the first one would be better because it has a dedicated 650m GPU. But I've never played computer games like skyrim so I'm not sure about anything, really. Would the Intel Iris Pro run these things fine as well? I just heard that though the Intel Iris Pro isn't that great for gaming. I'm also not tech savy and don't know much. The new 2,599 one with the 750 is impressive but out of budget I think unless you guys think it's absolutely worth it and necessary . If you guys suggest I get a PC Laptop I'm open to that as well it's just that Pcs don't last for me in my experience. Majority of the students in my school though have Macbook Pros

I'm torn apart on these models:

http://store.apple.com/us-hed/produ...-24ghz-Quad-core-Intel-i7-with-retina-Display

Price:1,660

http://store.apple.com/us-hed/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=ME293LL/A&step=config

Price: 1,900

Thanks love you all!

 

[happyfrappy]

Animation software such as Maya *really* benefit from a dGPU for rendering, if you use an external monitor on top of that there wouldn't be any performance hit. With Intel Iris Pro if an external monitor is involved you'll feel/notice shared memory usage and since Iris Pro can eat up to 1.5GB of RAM your headroom shrinks on the base model. Gaming on Intel IGPs aren't supported by most developers, there are games which check the hardware when you launch so your milage will vary.

Most "real-world" benchmarks shows Iris Pro is somewhere between a GeForce 630M to AMD Fusion A10 IGP. GeForce 750M is ~10-15% faster than the 650M with CUDA accelerated software.
Keep in mind mid-2012/early-2013 rMBP uses SATA based SSD, yes you can aftermarket upgrade which is good at the moment vs current rMBP which is PCIe SSD which so far doesn't have any 3rd party upgrade solutions yet.

 

[Shuey]

Thanks Happy Frame for the suggestions,

I was also considering waiting for Broadwell because if it's coming out in late 2014 around Christmas it might be worth it but again I'm not sure how long apple would take to make a new macbook with the chip so

 

[Freyqq]

650M or 750M are going to be what you want if you are doing any gaming. Intel integrated GPUs are making great strides, but they are still behind.

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Thanks Happy Frame for the suggestions,

I was also considering waiting for Broadwell because if it's coming out in late 2014 around Christmas it might be worth it but again I'm not sure how long apple would take to make a new macbook with the chip so

Unlikely. More like a minor spec bump in November/December 2014 and mid-2015 for Broadwell..based on current info.

 

[Shuey]

650M or 750M are going to be what you want if you are doing any gaming. Intel integrated GPUs are making great strides, but they are still behind.

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Unlikely. More like a minor spec bump in November/December 2014 and mid-2015 for Broadwell..based on current info.

Thanks

 

[leman]

I also think that a dGPU is the way to go for you usage. I would recommend you to get the 2012 refurb over the 2013 model in this case. Or go straight for the 750M, but its much more pricey.