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Why do people keep saying i7 speed is barely noticeable over i5 in 13" rMBP?

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brucen36

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 22, 2015
19
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According to the stats on this site: https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/macbook-pro/
for the 13" rMBP, the early 2015 i7 performance score is 6741 vs 6395, about 5% increase. But this is a similar increase of early 2015 i5 vs early 2013 i7 (about 8% increase). Almost 2 years older computer! So if that 8% increase is good enough to upgrade, why not i5 to i7?
 
Most would argue that it is just not worth the cost for such a negligible performance increase. BTO premiums are essentially ridiculous.
 
brucen36 said:
According to the stats on this site: https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/macbook-pro/
for the 13" rMBP, the early 2015 i7 performance score is 6741 vs 6395, about 5% increase. But this is a similar increase of early 2015 i5 vs early 2013 i7 (about 8% increase). Almost 2 years older computer! So if that 8% increase is good enough to upgrade, why not i5 to i7?
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Because the price premium is more than 5% higher. If the price difference percentage to performance percentage ratio was 1:1, it would have been more worth it.
 
So you guys are saying it would be pointless to upgrade from 2013 mbp to 2015 mbp?
 
Just my opinion, but I'd not bother. I'd wait at least one more cycle. The 2015 MBP added some much needed disk I/O, but unless your tasks are I/O bound, I'd probably hold off.

As for the i7, I decided to go that route, just because I need all the CPU I can get when doing virtualization, even with the small bang for buck the i7 upgrade gives.
 
I was only talking about 13" MBP not 15". I want the form factor of 13"
 
I imagine 2015 13" MBP is quite a bit more expensive than 2013 13" MBP, yet the performance change in cpu is pretty similar to i5 to i7 in 2015 13" MBP, so why not upgrade.
 
I'd only personally go for the upgrade if you're wanting the quickest possible 13" Macbook then for sure go ahead.

The price to performance however is not great and so you're better of with the 2.9 i5.
 
brucen36 said:
I imagine 2015 13" MBP is quite a bit more expensive than 2013 13" MBP, yet the performance change in cpu is pretty similar to i5 to i7 in 2015 13" MBP, so why not upgrade.
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Going from the 2013 i5 to the 2015 i7 may well be worth it if you really max out your CPU. However at that point unless portability is your number one priority you'd be better off going for a 15 inch one with a quad core and better graphics and get the performance you need.
 
dual core i5 to dual core i7 performance is negligible. On the iMac, quad core i5 to quad core i7 does have noticeable results if you're into video rendering or other tasks that take advantage of hyperthreading as quad core i5's don't have hyperthreading.
 
Do the dual core i7s have hyperthreading? I noticed VMWare Fusion allowed for four vCPUs per VM, so I am guessing that is each core, hyperthreaded?
 
mlts22 said:
Do the dual core i7s have hyperthreading? I noticed VMWare Fusion allowed for four vCPUs per VM, so I am guessing that is each core, hyperthreaded?
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All dual core i5s and i7s have hyper threading, hence the difference between them is negligible.

However, quad core i5s do not have hyper threading, while quad core i7s have hyper threading. In this case, the difference can be massive.
 
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Quad core i5 = 2x dual core i7 due to higher core clocks on the quad. Not to mention overclocking.
 
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OP wrote:
"it would be pointless to upgrade from 2013 mbp to 2015 mbp?"

Don't "upgrade" yet.

Wait until at least 2016 and the release of Skylake.

Much nicer offerings will be comin' down the pike by then!
 
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Fishrrman said:
OP wrote:
"it would be pointless to upgrade from 2013 mbp to 2015 mbp?"

Don't "upgrade" yet.

Wait until at least 2016 and the release of Skylake.

Much nicer offerings will be comin' down the pike by then!
Click to expand...

it's far more likely to be exactly the same with a skylake processor, an extra hour of battery life and a few percent of CPU improvement.

The only thing skylake gives that I care about is a 64MB eDRAM cache on the IRIS graphics in the 28W dual core chips destined for the 13 inch rMBP, this may be a thing worth caring about.
 
Samuelsan2001 said:
it's far more likely to be exactly the same with a skylake processor, an extra hour of battery life and a few percent of CPU improvement.

The only thing skylake gives that I care about is a 64MB eDRAM cache on the IRIS graphics in the 28W dual core chips destined for the 13 inch rMBP, this may be a thing worth caring about.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's what I'm thinking. Like all other updates, eg. 2013 to 2015 rMBP, it's only a few percent increase with SKylake.

I realize the 15" rMBP quad core will offer a lot more power, but I really need the portability of the 13". Plus, my company is paying for it, so I figure why not get the i7. The only reason I asked is I saw so much negativity with respect to the i5 to i7 upgrade not being worth it, and then why I looked at the numbers, it looks as if each time the rMBP is improved (eg. Haswell to Broadwell), there is only a minor improvement in cpu. Granted there are other improvements to make the overall speed much better, but on cpu alone i5 to i7 makes sense.
 
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