Which MBPr setup for best real-world CPU performance/usage?

[marcoma]

Hi there,

I'm pretty close to hitting the buy-button for a MacBook Pro Retina 15" without the GeForce, 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB SSD. I'll wait till next week just in case Apple presents something unexpected next Thursday...also I'd be happy if Yosemite is already pre-installed.

I decided against the GeForce since the most gfx I'll do is watch some HD videos and use Lightroom.

But what I'll be doing is a lot of very CPU and Memory intensive processing. So on some days it's going to process and calculate on complex data-models multi-threaded on all cores using all RAM available for multiple hours.

Now I've read about the MBPr getting quite hot and then starting to throttle the CPU. There was a comment somewhere that due to this the 2.5 GHZ CPU can actually be faster in real-world usage than the 2.8 GHZ.

So the last thing I'm still not sure about is which CPU I should take. Now I don't really care if my calculations run 4 hours and 15 minutes instead of 4 hours for example. In this case I'd rather like a CPU that maybe is a bit cooler and needs less RPM from the fans. But I'm still unsure if there's actually any difference here.

So my question can be summed up in which CPU (2.2/2.5/2.8) is the best for running at 100% for hours in regards to real-world performance considering CPU-Throttling and if taking a "slower" CPU will make a difference regarding heat and fan usage.

Another thought I had is if it's possible to limit the 4 cores to each running at max 70% for example (maybe in parallels) to be able to decide to not hear the fans for 4 hours and instead rather wait 5 hours till the jobs done. In this case maybe the 2.8 GHZ would be the best choice if it's as hot at 70% as the 2.5 GHZ for example?

Thanks guys!

Marco

 

[Bending Pixels]

It's unclear as to what specifically you'll be using your rMBP for. Certain programs such as PS CC, Lightroom, Premier Pro, FCPX, Motion 5, etc. will take advantage of off-loading some of the processing to the GPU. If you do a LOT of 3D or video editing, then getting a rMBP with the nVidia GPU is a good choice.

As to heat, certain programs (video editing, games and Flash Player in particular) will make the CPU work harder. Heat is a natural byproduct of this.

From a real world standpoint, you really won't notice that much difference between an i7 2.2 and 2.5 (and even 2.8) processor.

 

[2984839]

I don't know if the top end CPUs throttle frequently or not, but you can always get a cooling pad for the laptop if you need it. I'd get the fastest CPU if you are looking for the absolute fastest performance. It's easy to cool it down if you have to.

Real world differences outside of your specialized tasks will not be noticeable.

 

[someoneoutthere]

It's unclear as to what specifically you'll be using your rMBP for.

Kindly re-read the original post:

But what I'll be doing is a lot of very CPU and Memory intensive processing. So on some days it's going to process and calculate on complex data-models multi-threaded on all cores using all RAM available for multiple hours.
So the last thing I'm still not sure about is which CPU I should take. Now I don't really care if my calculations run 4 hours and 15 minutes instead of 4 hours for example. In this case I'd rather like a CPU that maybe is a bit cooler and needs less RPM from the fans. But I'm still unsure if there's actually any difference here.
Thanks guys!
Marco

 

[Bending Pixels]

Kindly re-read the original post:

I'll rephrase my question, and I'll use small words - what application will you be using to do this?

 

[marcoma]

I'll rephrase my question, and I'll use small words - what application will you be using to do this?

It's an application I've written myself in C#. It's taking gigs of data from a mysql-database and then running calculating different results of the same model again and again. You can think of it like calculating climate-change scenarios. No graphics will be involved, it's just going to read GBs of data into RAM, do calculations, put the results on the SSD and repeat with the next chunk.

 

[ayeying]

It's an application I've written myself in C#. It's taking gigs of data from a mysql-database and then running calculating different results of the same model again and again. You can think of it like calculating climate-change scenarios. No graphics will be involved, it's just going to read GBs of data into RAM, do calculations, put the results on the SSD and repeat with the next chunk.

If you don't use OpenCL or CUDA then go for any of the other rMBP will be fine. A faster CPU will process information faster but the amount of heat isn't going to be any different between the lowest vs highest. Unless you choose i5 vs i7, then thats where I notice a bit of a difference