Would you upgrade/downgrade from a mid 2012 15" Macbook pro retina?

[chad.petree]

I have a 15" mid 2012 Macbook pro retina with 250 gb SSD, geforce 650m and 8 gb of ram, which I bought in January 2013, the 2013 refresh came 2 weeks after I got my device but I didn't feel like returning it since I already had exchanged it because the screen had an extremely yellow cast and didn't want to play lottery again.

I'm not sure if I should upgrade or should I say downgrade to a 13" broadwell model if it actually gets refreshed today, I'm studying to become a designer so I use my macbook a lot, I use photoshop, illustrator, indesign, after effects, final cut, I also open chrome tabs like crazy, would that be too much for the 13" model to handle? it is also my only machine , I don't have a desktop computer.

I've been struggling with the low storage for quite a few months ( 250 gb), I want 500 gb , so my question is, would you get a 13" 2015 model with 500 gb knowing that it only has a dual core cpu and no GPU?

I originally wanted to upgrade to a 16 gb 500 gb + dedicated GPU skywell 15" model , but those won't come out until the end of the year (probably october) or even 2016 , the thing is I don't want to lose that much money when I resell it, I got it for 2200 eur back in January 2013 and if I sell it right now I don't think I would be able to get more than 1300 eur for it (which sucks but it's kind of ok) and if I wait until the end of the year or maybe until 2016 when Skylake comes out how much would I ask for it? 1000 eur? 900 eur?

I would also love to play GTA V , but I don't even know if that is possible with my macbook pro, I've read the geforce 650m is not really powerful.

Also if I'd get the 13" broadwell model this week I would upgrade next year to the 6 gb 500 gb + dedicated GPU skywell 15" model.

What would you guys suggest?

 

[TechZeke]

First world problems.

Your 2012 rMBP should be more than powerful enough(Including RAM, CPU, and GPU) to hold you over until 2016. In terms age, your MBP is still technically only 2 years old techwise, because there was literally no upgrade in 2014. A 13" would be a massive downgrade in performance regardless of the extra RAM and SSD. From the sounds of it, storage is the only real problem anyway. Just use an update external.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Not for that use case

I have a 15" mid 2012 Macbook pro retina with 250 gb SSD, geforce 650m and 8 gb of ram, which I bought in January 2013, the 2013 refresh came 2 weeks after I got my device but I didn't feel like returning it since I already had exchanged it because the screen had an extremely yellow cast and didn't want to play lottery again.

I'm not sure if I should upgrade or should I say downgrade to a 13" broadwell model if it actually gets refreshed today, I'm studying to become a designer so I use my macbook a lot, I use photoshop, illustrator, indesign, after effects, final cut, I also open chrome tabs like crazy, would that be too much for the 13" model to handle? it is also my only machine , I don't have a desktop computer.

I've been struggling with the low storage for quite a few months ( 250 gb), I want 500 gb , so my question is, would you get a 13" 2015 model with 500 gb knowing that it only has a dual core cpu and no GPU?

I originally wanted to upgrade to a 16 gb 500 gb + dedicated GPU skywell 15" model , but those won't come out until the end of the year (probably october) or even 2016 , the thing is I don't want to lose that much money when I resell it, I got it for 2200 eur back in January 2013 and if I sell it right now I don't think I would be able to get more than 1300 eur for it (which sucks but it's kind of ok) and if I wait until the end of the year or maybe until 2016 when Skylake comes out how much would I ask for it? 1000 eur? 900 eur?

I would also love to play GTA V , but I don't even know if that is possible with my macbook pro, I've read the geforce 650m is not really powerful.

Also if I'd get the 13" broadwell model this week I would upgrade next year to the 6 gb 500 gb + dedicated GPU skywell 15" model.

What would you guys suggest?

I would keep what you've got the 13 inch is nowhere near as powerful as what you have and your apps use that quad core and the dGPU the 13 won't hold a candle to it. I reccomend you don't use chrome it uses resources like crazy.

If you need more storage for files (media and docs) then maybe one of the SD slot storage drives listed here may help...

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1852227/

 

[chad.petree]

First world problems.

Your 2012 rMBP should be more than powerful enough(Including RAM, CPU, and GPU) to hold you over until 2016. In terms age, your MBP is still technically only 2 years old techwise, because there was literally no upgrade in 2014. A 13" would be a massive downgrade in performance regardless of the extra RAM and SSD. From the sounds of it, storage is the only real problem anyway. Just use an update external.

I would keep what you've got the 13 inch is nowhere near as powerful as what you have and your apps use that quad core and the dGPU the 13 won't hold a candle to it. I reccomend you don't use chrome it uses resources like crazy.

If you need more storage for files (media and docs) then maybe one of the SD slot storage drives listed here may help...

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1852227/

Thanks for the recommendations guys! That Jetdrive doesn't look bad, maybe I'll get myself one to have my music on it , since that is what eats up most of my space, I have 150 gbs of music ( I use alac) , would an SD card be fast enough to read and write alac files?

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Should be fine it's just audio

Thanks for the recommendations guys! That Jetdrive doesn't look bad, maybe I'll get myself one to have my music on it , since that is what eats up most of my space, I have 150 gbs of music ( I use alac) , would an SD card be fast enough to read and write alac files?

You can run 1080p films with 5.1 surround sound from them can't see why not..

From Nifty's site

Most modern microSD cards have read/write speeds of up to 90MB/s (and that’s getting faster each year).
Your MacBook’s SD card reader. For pre-2012 MacBooks you can expect a maximum read speed of 60MB/s, while later models ramped that up to a blistering 6.4GB/s.