Upgrading from mid 2012 MBP to 2020 MBP, i5 or i7?

[cap413]

Hi all. I currently have a mid 2012 Macbook Pro, 13 inch. It's gotten to the point now where every single application I open takes a very long time, Steam takes about 15 minutes and when I try to open Google Chrome, it usually crashes my laptop. There is an awful lot of spinning wheel and pausing to wait for things to load. I love my machine and have put off replacing as long as possible. It'll be hard to say goodbye.

I don't know an awful lot about computers, but I do like gaming and I game a lot through Steam and will probably use Bootcamp on my machine to game through a partition. I feel that if I'm going to invest in a new machine, I should probably ensure that I get the best processor, within reason. Is there in reality going to be much difference between an i7 processor 8th gen and an i7 processor 10th gen? There seems to be an awfully large price difference between the two. (taking into account screen size too)

I thought that I would be best off paying the extra £300 to go up from the i5 to the i7 on the 13 inch MBP. Will this make a difference really if all I'm using the laptop for is browsing, casual gaming and music editing. From what I've read online having the best processor will make my machine more 'future proofed'. How long will the i7 be good for in reality?

Thanks guys

 

[cmaier]

Hi all. I currently have a mid 2012 Macbook Pro, 13 inch. It's gotten to the point now where every single application I open takes a very long time, Steam takes about 15 minutes and when I try to open Google Chrome, it usually crashes my laptop. There is an awful lot of spinning wheel and pausing to wait for things to load. I love my machine and have put off replacing as long as possible. It'll be hard to say goodbye.

I don't know an awful lot about computers, but I do like gaming and I game a lot through Steam and will probably use Bootcamp on my machine to game through a partition. I feel that if I'm going to invest in a new machine, I should probably ensure that I get the best processor, within reason. Is there in reality going to be much difference between an i7 processor 8th gen and an i7 processor 10th gen? There seems to be an awfully large price difference between the two. (taking into account screen size too)

I thought that I would be best off paying the extra £300 to go up from the i5 to the i7 on the 13 inch MBP. Will this make a difference really if all I'm using the laptop for is browsing, casual gaming and music editing. From what I've read online having the best processor will make my machine more 'future proofed'. How long will the i7 be good for in reality?

Thanks guys

Won‘t make a difference with how you use your machine. But if you are going to keep it for 8 years i suggest the i7.

 

[cap413]

Won‘t make a difference with how you use your machine. But if you are going to keep it for 8 years i suggest the i7.

It won't affect gaming at all? I know when I tried gaming previously with my i5 games would skip, these were pretty old games too that came out before my MacBook.

 

[Patcell]

The integrated GPU in the 13-inch is the limiting factor for gaming. Either the i5 or i7 will do fine, but Intel GPU is not meant for 3D games.

The i5 and i7 options in the 13-inch use the same iGPU (Intel Iris Plus). The i7 may clock the iGPU very slightly higher (50mhz??), but this is not realistically going to make a difference in a game.

I you connect your MacBook to an external GPU via thunderbolt, I would guess the performance difference between the i5 and i7 would be indistinguishable for gaming. Although I have not seen this tested side-by-side.

The i7 is simply clocked a bit higher than the i5 and has a bit more cache (8mb vs 6mb), but I personally don't think the performance delta is worth the $200 price tag (on the 4 thunderbolt port model). That's a 10% increase in price that struggles to give 10% more performance - more like 3-6% faster. I don't think you're likely to notice a difference between the two in real-world (i.e. non-benchmark) scenarios. And definitely no benefit of i7 in gaming as the GPU is the same as in the i5.

 

[cap413]

The integrated GPU in the 13-inch is the limiting factor for gaming. Either the i5 or i7 will do fine, but Intel GPU is not meant for 3D games.

The i5 and i7 options in the 13-inch use the same iGPU (Intel Iris Plus). The i7 may clock the iGPU very slightly higher (50mhz??), but this is not realistically going to make a difference in a game.

I you connect your MacBook to an external GPU via thunderbolt, I would guess the performance difference between the i5 and i7 would be indistinguishable for gaming. Although I have not seen this tested side-by-side.

The i7 is simply clocked a bit higher than the i5 and has a bit more cache (8mb vs 6mb), but I personally don't think the performance delta is worth the $200 price tag (on the 4 thunderbolt port model). That's a 10% increase in price that struggles to give 10% more performance - more like 3-6% faster. I don't think you're likely to notice a difference between the two in real-world (i.e. non-benchmark) scenarios. And definitely no benefit of i7 in gaming as the GPU is the same as in the i5.

Thats really helpful thank you. My entry level 2012 machine was powerful enough To do everything I wanted, it was the gaming that I struggled to do. If it’s solely about the GPU, would I be better off getting an eGPU if I wanted to game on the Pro?

 

[Patcell]

Thats really helpful thank you. My entry level 2012 machine was powerful enough To do everything I wanted, it was the gaming that I struggled to do. If it’s solely about the GPU, would I be better off getting an eGPU if I wanted to game on the Pro?

Are you gaming exclusively in macOS? The eGPU support in macOS has gotten pretty good and you can boost gaming performance quite a bit.

If you dual boot to Windows, however, it's not a great experience... there has been some limited success in getting an eGPU to work in BootCamp, but it's a hassle at the very least.

Also, eGPUs are a very cool idea, but I'm not sure how cost effective an option they are. You're looking at around $300 for an enclosure plus the cost of the graphics card itself. For instance, let's check some quick math...

MBP 13 + eGPU
10th Gen i5: $1799
Razer Core X: $300
Radeon RX 5700 XT: $419
Total: $2518
Note: You could go with a let expensive graphics card (i.e. RX 580 ~$170) and you have the option to upgrade the GPU down the road very simply.

OR...

MBP 16 BTO
i7 base: $2399
Radeon Pro 5500m: $100
Total: $2499
Note: This option has the GPU built in, so there is no thunderbolt bandwidth bottleneck, and the experience of gaming in Windows via BootCamp will be a much better experience. Downside is you cannot later upgrade the GPU. Also, if you need the portability of the 13", this option is a non-starter.

 

[ctjack]

What are you playing? I wouldn't suggest you any MBP 13 for gaming. Because it is still underpowered in terms of iGPU.
You should definitely buy whatever Mac 13 inch you like (Air or MBP 13) and buy PC for $350.
So probably you are looking at $1000 Air + $350 PC = $1350. Or $1300 MBP 13 + 350 PC = $1650.

 

[foo2]

Hi all. I currently have a mid 2012 Macbook Pro, 13 inch. It's gotten to the point now where every single application I open takes a very long time, Steam takes about 15 minutes and when I try to open Google Chrome, it usually crashes my laptop. There is an awful lot of spinning wheel and pausing to wait for things to load. I love my machine and have put off replacing as long as possible. It'll be hard to say goodbye.

I don't know an awful lot about computers, but I do like gaming and I game a lot through Steam and will probably use Bootcamp on my machine to game through a partition. I feel that if I'm going to invest in a new machine, I should probably ensure that I get the best processor, within reason. Is there in reality going to be much difference between an i7 processor 8th gen and an i7 processor 10th gen? There seems to be an awfully large price difference between the two. (taking into account screen size too)

I thought that I would be best off paying the extra £300 to go up from the i5 to the i7 on the 13 inch MBP. Will this make a difference really if all I'm using the laptop for is browsing, casual gaming and music editing. From what I've read online having the best processor will make my machine more 'future proofed'. How long will the i7 be good for in reality?

Thanks guys

There is nothing that's happened that would inherently make your Macbook Pro 13" 2012 slower or crash-heavy, so your drive may be dying. My suggestion is to buy a cheap 500GB SATA SSD for $75 or so, remove the old drive and trash it, put the new one in (it's simple and takes a small screwdriver and no technical skill whatsoever), boot off the internet to reinstall MacOS, and be happy. And while you're at it, you could add some RAM too, which would help. Back up anything crucial to iCloud Drive first. Realize your 2012 Macbook Pro likely only has another year or two of OS upgrade support left, but as long as that doesn't matter to you, it could easily last for another decade. I'm typing this on a i7 2012 Macbook Pro 15" with nVidia 650; it still works perfectly. I upgraded it to 16GB RAM and a 256GB SSD and it's perfect.

For gaming, a 15" MacBook Pro (with GPU) is a far better, far wiser choice. Get the cheapest Macbook Pro 15 with the best GPU (5500XT at this moment) that you can. Realize that compared to Wintel, these GPUs are nothing special - on the slow side - but vastly, vastly faster than the built-in Intel graphics you've been using on the 13".

For gaming, the GPU matters more than any other choice you can make, within reason. An i3 with a great GPU will be fra, far faster at (the vast majority of) games compared to an i9 with integrated GPU.

 

[Patcell]

What are you playing? I wouldn't suggest you any MBP 13 for gaming. Because it is still underpowered in terms of iGPU.
You should definitely buy whatever Mac 13 inch you like (Air or MBP 13) and buy PC for $350.
So probably you are looking at $1000 Air + $350 PC = $1350. Or $1300 MBP 13 + 350 PC = $1650.

This is probably the best solution actually... just have a separate dedicated gaming computer.

 

[foo2]

And note Apple just introduced a 16" Macbook Pro with 5600XT graphics. $700 upgrade.