Thursday, January 17, 2013

Apple newbie shopping for Macbook Pro, need help deciding.

Hello! Welcome to MacRumors, I definitely would like to try and help you out with your purchase decision.

For one, the 13 inch Retina is not a better preformer than the 15 inch Retina. The base models of both, a have 8GB of RAM. This is where it starts to differ, the 13 inch Retina has a Intel i5 2.5 GHz dual-core processor compared to the the 15 inch Retina?s Intel i7 2.5 quad-core processor. The 15 inch retina has four cores at its processor, which makes it more able to preform certain things including more intensive tasks like video editing, photo rendering and so forth, while also being better at every day tasks. The four cores at the heart of the 15 inch Retina is more than the two cores at the hear of the 13 inch retina, thus making it a more powerful computer.

With that in mind, you?re saying you?re looking toward the ?best? processor and increasing the RAM, which is a smart move. The RAM increase in both laptops will get you to 16GB, which is something that is going to be pretty future proof moving forward. However, regarding the maxed out 13 inch?s 2.9 GHz dual-core i5 vs the maxed 15 inch?s 2.7 GHz quad-core i7 is where you?re slightly confused: the 15 inch?s processor is actually more powerful despite being a lesser number/clock speed. You?re talking about the 13 inch's only two phyiscal cores vs the 15 inches four physical cores, not to mention the 13 inch?s processor is an Intel i5 vs the 15 inch?s Intel i7 - The i7 is more powerful than the i5, and the i7 plus the four physical cores really gives the advantage despite being a lower number.

Wherever you read that the 13 inch Intel i5 2.9 Dual Core retina outpreforms the 15 inch Intel i7 2.7 Quad Core retina is false. The 15 inch retina outpreforms the 13 inch, and here are two resources to go along with it - Geekbench, which registers the average score of a Mac (higher score is better), and a review of the 13 inch with Retina Display from The Verge. As far as the Geekbench score goes, the 15 inch MacBook Pro with Retina display and its 2.7 GHz Intel i7 quad-core scores an average of 13260, while the higher end 13 inch retina MacBook Pro with a 2.9 Intel i5 dual-core scores just 8334.

The Verge?s review of the 13 inch retina machine may help your decision as well: in the review, the reviewer said that the 13 inch retina machine felt a little slow compared to the 15 inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, making the 15 inch MacBook Pro with retina display a better buy. Neither machine is slow, but this is something to keep in mind.

Either way, I think if you?re going to max out things like processor and RAM, I would go with the 15 inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display. It?s easily the more powerful computer, and at 4.45 pounds (which is even lighter than the regular MacBook Pro 13 inch non-retina) with a dedicated graphics card, it flies. It would definitely take just about any task you throw at it, intensive or not.

I hope that helped, and I?d love to answer your questions if you have some more!

Source: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1526703&goto=newpost

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