roboguy Posted September 21, 2009 Share Posted September 21, 2009 Basically ive decided to get a 15" macbook pro and need to know if the upgrade from the 2.66ghz model to the 2.8 is worth the £190 its gonna cost me. I cant find any definitive benchmarks anywhere some say theres an 8% increase in performance and some say 3% im going to be doing a lot of photoshop, illustrator etc and maybe some video editing and video conversion. Also a little bit of gaming through windows via bootcamp I was also planning to bump it up to a 7200rpm drive aswell so basically my questions are... 1) Is 6mb cache noticeably better than 3mb 2) 512mb vram noticeably better than 256mb 3) is it worth £190, for all you americans over there, $300 ($2025 to $2335) Any advice is great thanks Joss Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/188013-macbook-pro-266-vs-28-need-buying-advice/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
wixdfast Posted September 21, 2009 Share Posted September 21, 2009 Difference between 2.66GHz and 2.8GHz: Not noticeable. Difference between 3MB cache and 6MB cache: Noticeable Difference between 256MB VRAM and 512MB VRAM: Noticeable (especially when dealing with higher resolutions) Difference between 5400RPM and 7200RPM: Battery life, not huge, but will affect it somewhat. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/188013-macbook-pro-266-vs-28-need-buying-advice/#findComment-1275580 Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrock42 Posted September 21, 2009 Share Posted September 21, 2009 vram is gonna be the big one, i always get the cheapest and add all of the ram I can afford. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/188013-macbook-pro-266-vs-28-need-buying-advice/#findComment-1275612 Share on other sites More sharing options...
abhi262 Posted September 21, 2009 Share Posted September 21, 2009 if youre gonna do dome video editing, strongly consider a 7200RPM HDD. no, £190 is not worth it for 133MHz extra. the higher CPU cache would be nice (for multitasking mainly) but given the price, just leave it. about vram, depends on what games you play (for you, the difference will only be in games). extra Vram only usually allows you to have higher res textures but at 1440x900, i dont suspect it should make a big difference. also, one note, im sure you have considered this and have decided to go mac for good reasons, but have you considered a windows laptop? you dont seem to be doing anything that cant be achieved on windows (with the GPU acceleration on CS4, i would go as far as to say that apps like photoshop and after effects run more smoothly than on macs in my experiences). programs like adobe's premiere elements or premiere pro (or Sony vegas pro for that mater) will be more than adequate for video editing, depending on your needs. i recently bought a dell studio 15 for a friend which does all of the above fine considerably cheaper. (we payed just under £500 but skimped on the CPU clock speed). anyway, the improvements arent worth £190 and the effects would only be obvious when gaming, not in photoshop. the faster HDD should be considered though. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/188013-macbook-pro-266-vs-28-need-buying-advice/#findComment-1275783 Share on other sites More sharing options...
roboguy Posted September 21, 2009 Author Share Posted September 21, 2009 yeah i have a windows laptop im buying a mac partly just for the luxury, and i find the os much more efficient compared to windows which makes me want to vomit. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/188013-macbook-pro-266-vs-28-need-buying-advice/#findComment-1275919 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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