What to go for??

[nick676]

So now the new rMBP have been announced, i really cant decide between the following:

Base level Haswell 15, 2GHz i7, 8GB memory, 512GB Hard Drive upgrade, for around £1785

OR

High end Ivy Bridge (Feb '13) 15, 2.7GHz, 16GB memory, 512GB Hard Drive, 650M dGPU, for around £1650

What's going to be the better option? Will there be much performance difference between the two? I want something as future proof as possible, for music stuff, a light bit of gaming etc. Battery life isnt a huge deal to me, as i'd mostly be using it at home or office really. Will the faster PCIe storage make much difference from day to day? I really can't decide at all.

Which is the better machine??

 

[omgitscro]

Depends on your usage. The Iris Pro graphics can be significantly faster than Nvidia discrete graphics for certain applications (e.g. CAD), but can also be a little bit slower in other applications. You likely won't notice the faster storage in day-to-day use. The memory difference isn't significant either given the memory efficiency improvements in Mavericks; my 8GB Retina is more than enough for my computationally-heavy Ph.D. work, but my 2GB Air runs just fine under Mavericks as well (it couldn't keep up as well before Mavericks). I believe OS X will continue to become more efficient; I'd say the 2013 Retina is the better choice here.

 

[bbapps]

So now the new rMBP have been announced, i really cant decide between the following:

Base level Haswell 15, 2GHz i7, 8GB memory, 512GB Hard Drive upgrade, for around £1785

OR

High end Ivy Bridge (Feb '13) 15, 2.7GHz, 16GB memory, 512GB Hard Drive, 650M dGPU, for around £1650

Seems to me, it is between the dGPU for "light gaming" and the 802.11ac router you will eventually get at home or in the office (e.g. transferring those music files from a NAS or Time Capsule). Of course you are going with 512G, off-line storage might never be of interest...

 

[nick676]

Depends on your usage. The Iris Pro graphics can be significantly faster than Nvidia discrete graphics for certain applications (e.g. CAD), but can also be a little bit slower in other applications. You likely won't notice the faster storage in day-to-day use. The memory difference isn't significant either given the memory efficiency improvements in Mavericks; my 8GB Retina is more than enough for my computationally-heavy Ph.D. work, but my 2GB Air runs just fine under Mavericks as well (it couldn't keep up as well before Mavericks). I believe OS X will continue to become more efficient; I'd say the 2013 Retina is the better choice here.

As in the haswell model from today? Thanks very much for the reply.it would have been a much easier choice if the ssd upgrade didn't bump up the price so much! I could try getting by with 256 gig hard drive and upgrade it myself in future, but my music collection is over a hundred gig.

 

[omgitscro]

As in the haswell model from today? Thanks very much for the reply.it would have been a much easier choice if the ssd upgrade didn't bump up the price so much! I could try getting by with 256 gig hard drive and upgrade it myself in future, but my music collection is over a hundred gig.

Have you considered getting iTunes Plus? It's only $25/year.

The problem with it of course is that you can't listen to your collection in lossless quality if that's why your library is so large. I decided to go for the 512GB SSD as well due to my iTunes collection.

 

[nick676]

Have you considered getting iTunes Plus? It's only $25/year.

The problem with it of course is that you can't listen to your collection in lossless quality if that's why your library is so large. I decided to go for the 512GB SSD as well due to my iTunes collection.

I haven't actually considered that, although I'm not sure it would work for me. I generally need to have all my music with me all the time, for dj software etc. Although the software links in to my iTunes library,I don't think it could access media in iTunes plus.