Quick question about difference in Macbook Pro models

[theMusicMan]

Hiya All

I wonder if someone seeing this can answer pretty quickly for me please.

I am today going to the Apple Cardiff store to get my new MacbookPro, and up until this morning I was set on getting the MacbookPro 13" i7 model, however... for £300 less I can get the MacbookPro 13" i5 and I am wondering if that £300 is worth an i7 instead of an i5.

OK, there's a few GB difference in the HD too, but I can easily upgrade that myself for around £60, but apart from the HD and processor, everything else is the same.

I fully intend to buy an additional 4GB RAM as well, to take the total up to 8GB.

So... is an i7 with 8GB RAM worth paying £300 more than an i5 with 8GB RAM...?

Can anyone advise please... many thanks all.

John

 

[jcooke]

The i7 allows for higher memory bandwidth as it allows for triple channel configuration, although I believe there are only two slots on a MacBook Pro. Also the i7 allows greater hyper-threading (simulated cores) as it has four cores and eights threads compared to the i5 have four of each which means in hyper-threading mode the i7 could show up as eight cores. This is for the higher end models of i7s which have four cores, however the 13" has dual cores so I'm guessing the ratios are the same, just cut the numbers in half.

Since you are getting the 13" model that doesn't have independent memory for video and isn't as much of a power house as the other laptops. I am guessing that you will use the computer for day to day activities and possibly the occasional CPU demanding task. If that is true, then the i5 will suit you just fine, it is already a crazy powerful processor as it is so I think you would be very impressed with just that. Also, in that case you might not even need 8 gigs of RAM, generally 4 gigs will be more than enough for most tasks.

 

[DeltaMac]

The i7 (even if you choose that) is not a quad-core in the 13-inch.
regardless, I think you will be pleased with the performance, even with the "slow" i5