Macbook Pro debate...

I am very close to buying my second macbook pro. I bought one in 2006 and sold it earlier this year to a friend due to the lack of portability I needed at the time. Now I find myself in a situation where I need portability, and definitely a notebook vs an iPad.

So here's the debate... I can get a 15" and upgrade the processor to 2.8GHz, the faster hard drive, and high res screen. Or I can get a 17" with a 2.66GHz processor and the faster hard drive as well. It's a $10 difference.

Will I notice the .14GHz difference? I had a 17" before, 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo. Loved it and miss it.

Any insight is appreciated.

If they're are both the same type of processor I can't see where you're going to see a practical difference between the two clock speeds.

They're both i7's. The 2.66 can hit 3.33 and the 2.8 can hit 3.43 with Turbo Boost.

2.8 is 5% faster than 2.66. 3.43 is 3% faster than 3.33. A 10% increase is borderline noticeable. Save your money and forget about the 2.8.

Between the 2.8GHz and 2.66 GHz i7s, I highly doubt you'd be able to notice any real-world performance. I'd imagine you'd have to run a synthetic benchmark for you to see any difference. Both, however, are noticeably more powerful than a Core 2 Duo. Additionally, Turbo Boost is temporary, as prolonged use can lead to overheating.

My personal opinion is get the smaller one, and dump money into a SSD and more RAM.

It will be faster than getting the faster processor without the SSD.

Higher res and more real estate for editing > a few seconds in real world processing.

Thank you all for the response. I planned on upgrading the RAM after my purchase, but not through apple obviously. The SSD is out of the question for me. I know it'd be fast, but 128GB just isnt enough for me, and doubling it to 256GB is another $400...

Now I am just debating screen sizes again... 15's are convenient, but 17's are nicer to edit photos on.

What about a 15" and an external 24" monitor?

SoaringUSAEagle wrote in post #11321423
Thank you all for the response. I planned on upgrading the RAM after my purchase, but not through apple obviously. The SSD is out of the question for me. I know it'd be fast, but 128GB just isnt enough for me, and doubling it to 256GB is another $400...

Now I am just debating screen sizes again... 15's are convenient, but 17's are nicer to edit photos on.

You can also get a 256SSD and replace the DVD drive with another Hard Drive (Not an Apple option yet, but an aftermarket one.) I did it myself, and now I have two 500Gb drives in a mirror RAID configuration. It affects the battery, but since the new batteries are so much better than the old ones I still get better battery life with my new i7 than I did on my C2D model.

I went 15" I take it everywhere and those 17" models are huge and heavy.

I can't see a 17" for portability so I went with the 15" MBP i7 and bumped the memory to 8GB after purchase from OWC. Loving it.

Define 'portability' - I don't consider the 17" remotely 'portable', and even the 15" is a stretch for me, but I do all 'proper' editing on an external monitor (and these days on my mac pro). High screen res is worth it, but (after checking instructions) I'd never buy memory or drive upgrades from Apple. It's easy enough to upgrade yourself, and much, much, much cheaper.

mattia wrote in post #11341184
even the 15" is a stretch for me

Agreed. I would have loved a 14" or smaller, but the processing power just wasn't there.

You'd probably never notice a difference even if the clock speed dropped by 33%. Processor speed is only part of the performance equation.

tim wrote in post #11341264
You'd probably never notice a difference even if the clock speed dropped by 33%. Processor speed is only part of the performance equation.

Processor type is more important than speed. The fact that the 13" are Core 2 Duo and not i5 or i7 is a big deal. The i7 is noticeably quicker than the i5 because it's HyperThreaded, making it effectively a quad-process machine.