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Upgrade or buy new?

TSE

TSE

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jun 25, 2007
4,079
3,730
St. Paul, Minnesota
If I upgrade my 2011 MacBook Pro with the specs in my sig, I will buy a 500gb SSD for ~$300, 16gb RAM for ~$150, and a new battery for ~$130.

If I buy new, I will wait till the Broadwell MacBook Pros in Q1 2015.

I am an industrial design major, so the Retina screen and the lighterweight with better GPU will be helpful, but not sure if it's worth the money.
 
Sell the computer you have and buy a new one. Your 2011 model may have one of the affected Radeon GPUs.
 
I wouldn't think you have to go all out at once during the upgrade. The thing you'll notice most is the SSD, hands down.

You already have 8GB of RAM, what are your reasons for needing more? And do you think you'll really benefit from having 16GB IMMEDIATELY or is it just an upgrade with the future in mind (if so, you could hold off).

As for the battery, there can be some had on eBay that are OEM batteries for quite less than $130.

______

That being said, T5 does have a point in that it is a 2011 model and the incidence of failure seems to be raising as of late.
 
TSE said:
If I upgrade my 2011 MacBook Pro with the specs in my sig, I will buy a 500gb SSD for ~$300, 16gb RAM for ~$150, and a new battery for ~$130.

If I buy new, I will wait till the Broadwell MacBook Pros in Q1 2015.

I am an industrial design major, so the Retina screen and the lighterweight with better GPU will be helpful, but not sure if it's worth the money.
Click to expand...

If you sell your current model and put that 580 that you would spend on upgrades with it, you will have a large chunk towards a new retina model. 580 is a lot to put into a 3 year old machine only to have something else possibly go wrong down the line.
 
Isn't that the model with the failing GPU? In which case I would definitely go for the new machine.
Otherwise I would try to optimise the cost. You can get a battery for a lot less than that if you put it in yourself (if you upgrade RAM and put the SSD you have to open it anyway). The SSD is not lost as such, worst can in the future use it as a backup disc via a usb cable.
Not sure what you expect from the RAM upgrade. 8GB is already plenty for most things.
 
Are the Radeon GPUs covered with extended warranty like the old nVidia 8600m GTs are?

And also, this sucks!!! I went from a MacBook Pro that was killed by the nVidia 8600m GT to a MacBook Pro that could possibly be killed by the AMD Radeon 6750m GT. I think this is the last laptop I get with a discrete GPU.
 
Last edited:
TSE said:
Are the Radeon GPUs covered with extended warranty like the old nVidia 8600m GTs are?

And also, this sucks!!! I went from a MacBook Pro that was killed by the nVidia 8600m GT to a MacBook Pro that could possibly be killed by the AMD Radeon 6750m GT. I think this is the last laptop I get with a discrete GPU.
Click to expand...

Plenty of reading about that on this forum. If you still have Apple Care and it fails your are ok, otherwise you are SOL.

Some reading on 'radeongate' here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4766577
 
Don't hesitate and go for the retina. Most of 2011 MBP with AMD graphics tend to fail.

If you can buy the top of the line 15" model, great. If not, the base model is a great machine too.
 
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