Wanting to upgrade my MBP, but not sure if now is the time

[tofagerl]

If you mean Hyperthreading, that's partly true, but it's also true of Clarksfield, which will then use 8 threads simultaneously instead for the four on Arrandale.
And Hyperthreading is not a doubling of cores, it's just an optimization techonology.

 

[kasakka]

I disagree. The low clockspeed needn't be an issue, and indeed shouldn't be an issue on the 13" and 15" considering it's quad-core. The Arrandale is supposedly slower than the Clarksfield (in pro apps), and will be positioned as core i3 and i5. The i3 one might be great on a Macbook Air, and the i5 on the non-pro, but on the pro line Apple will definitely want the i7s, and those will be Clarksfield.
The heat is an issue, but considering the ovens some of the G4's were, this is hardly a new proposition

Both the power consumption and heat will be an issue with Clarksfield. The TDP for them appears to be 45W, which is 10W more than the first Intel Core2Duos used in Apple Macbooks. This would have a significant effect on battery life and the laptop would require heavier cooling and would make it noisier. For most people using a laptop getting less battery life and having a noisier machine is unacceptable. It's possible that we may see an iMac with Clarksfield though. If there is a laptop with Clarksfield, it'll be only the 17" model and most likely the most expensive one too.

Regarding the lineups, there are Arrandales in Core i5 and i7 series.

 

[tofagerl]

Believe me, Apple doesn't want to be stuck on Penryn for three months while Dell, Lenovo and HP are pushing out (slightly hotter yet OH so much better) Clarksfield machines. And then when they do push out next-gen machines, they're still slower than the competition? Steve would throw a fit!

 

[Meever]

I dunno man, Apple doesn't exactly seem to care too much about keeping with technology.

They released a Macbook Pro with 9600gt when Asus is shipping out 280gt... hell, even friggen HP is pumping out computer with 9800gt for sub 1k....

They were releasing laptops with 2gb of ram when 4gb is a standard even in the cheapest of the cheap laptops.

Oh and don't get me started with hard drive space....

 

[dcmike]

I've got a 1st Gen MBP and I'm holding on until next spring. I figure one more update, then I'll get a new one. For $29 Snow Leopard should help make things a bit faster until I get a new one.

 

[tofagerl]

SL didn't do a lot on my machine, but my bottleneck was always the CPU anyway, not the OS. (At least it feels like it now)

As for the graphics cards, Apple never cared about games. And the RAM? They just want to sell you their upgrades which are EXPENSIVE!

 

[Scottsdale]

SL didn't do a lot on my machine, but my bottleneck was always the CPU anyway, not the OS. (At least it feels like it now)

As for the graphics cards, Apple never cared about games. And the RAM? They just want to sell you their upgrades which are EXPENSIVE!

Ok, the CPU cannot possibly be the "bottleneck" on your Mac unless you have an OLD version - like pre Intel and pre G3 like Macs.

Your bottleneck is the one slowest component that everything else waits on - Drive (first optical followed by system HDD/SSD). Followed by RAM, then GPU (unless Intel GMA/3100), and finally CPU.

Any computers biggest slow down is the drive. That's why replacing an HDD with SSD can make such a huge difference - especially the slower the HDD.

Sorry a little clueless on your Mac... but the CPU is definitely not the problem. You could speed it up dramatically by tossing an SSD in it...

 

[tofagerl]

I do a lot of video work, and yes - I have an SSD, but in the end I went back to my 7200 250gb drive because I couldn't store enough on the SSD
The video conversion didn't go much faster on the SSD anyway, thus the CPU is the bottleneck.

Why the disbelief?