Right now I have MB403LL A Macbook (not Pro) Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz - 13.3″ that I've upgraded to 4GB RAM. Thinking of the new 13" sandy bridge Pro that just came out, but it says that processor is on 2.3GHz -- would that be slower than my existing 2.4 GHz for video editing, or faster since it's a different kind of processor? Also thinking of buying a close-out old 13" Pro, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz, 4GB RAM (would upgrade to 8GB), NVIDIA GeForce 320M, SuperDrive, Aluminum unibody(MC375LL/A) -- how would that compare in speed for video editing compared with the two models above? Would appreciate multiple opinions, so if you see this has been answered, still would love your two cents. Thanks!
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These 13" Pros Better Than My Old Macbook?
- Thread starter AppleOfMyOy
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Clock speed is not the only thing that affects the CPU performance. These new CPUs in MBPs are much faster than the old Core 2 Duos. Things like Turbo, Hyper-Threading and better microarchitecture play a big role nowadays. The new base 13" MBP scores 5900 in GeekBench while your old MBP scores only 3365, that is 75% difference.
This.
When you see 2.3 Ghz and 2.4 Ghz, it doesn't necessarily mean that the 2.4 is faster. The new Sandy Bridge processors are leaps ahead of the Core 2 Duos, so yes it is a better laptop. For video editing, you'd see a performance difference.
Buy what you *need* now, otherwise wait...
From all the benchmarks I have seen, the Sandy Bridge Mac's seem to be leaps ahead, except for frame rates on video games, due to the issue of the Intel graphics.
That being said, if you can hang out for a year, the chip will likely be on a smaller die, run a little cooler, and hopefully they will have improved Intel graphics. And oh, hopefully, they will have figured out the quality issues like the gobs of thermal paste & stipped screw that iFixit found on their take-apart:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Unibody-Early-2011-Teardown/4990/2
From all the benchmarks I have seen, the Sandy Bridge Mac's seem to be leaps ahead, except for frame rates on video games, due to the issue of the Intel graphics.
That being said, if you can hang out for a year, the chip will likely be on a smaller die, run a little cooler, and hopefully they will have improved Intel graphics. And oh, hopefully, they will have figured out the quality issues like the gobs of thermal paste & stipped screw that iFixit found on their take-apart:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Unibody-Early-2011-Teardown/4990/2
My decision, thanks to your input
All wise input, so thanks for that, but in the spirit of whoever wrote "buy what you need," I've come to realize that what I really need now is just a larger hard drive, since my editing on iMovie HD 6.0.4 is fast enough for me on my present macbook, so I'm springing for a $65 500GB internal drive to keep me happy for the time being. And by not buying a whole new Macbook, I may even be able to rationalize springing for an iPad2. Thanks again to all who commented!
All wise input, so thanks for that, but in the spirit of whoever wrote "buy what you need," I've come to realize that what I really need now is just a larger hard drive, since my editing on iMovie HD 6.0.4 is fast enough for me on my present macbook, so I'm springing for a $65 500GB internal drive to keep me happy for the time being. And by not buying a whole new Macbook, I may even be able to rationalize springing for an iPad2. Thanks again to all who commented!
What would help for video editing is to use an external hard drive as your scratch disk, but only if it's FireWire (or faster).
I don't think your mb has FireWire, but if it does, get an external fw drive
I don't think your mb has FireWire, but if it does, get an external fw drive