new mac book pro procesor 2.66 vs 2.93

i know in this foum there is thopic similar to this but teh question i this: i am going to buy the new mac book pro 17" and dont know which procesor to chose. i plan to use my new mac for longer period and i need it for editing films ads stuff like that. is there going to be a noticable difference while rendering in the 2.66 core 2 duo and 2.93?! Is the 2.93 worth for +300$ or not? Btw i dont have much $ to spend. And i wounder where i can feel the differnece of +300 mhz??

Message was edited by: stef_mkd

Message was edited by: stef_mkd

asdasd, Mac OS X (10.4.2), Nth

Posted on Jan 21, 2009 2:59 PM

19 replies

Feb 2, 2009 7:16 PM in response to RadMD

I have only seen this as a Chicken vs. Egg type argument.

Yes, the 2.93 would require more wattage/amperage. However, over the long term, depending on workload type, the 2.93 would process a larger volume of calculations/processes/cycles/flops (whatever you may like to label it) in a lesser amount of overall time because it's capable of so much more computation in general. So it wouldn't have to work AS HARD for AS LONG.

So, theoretically, it would take less power depending on the workload.

RadMD wrote:
would there be much of a difference in the battery consuption between the 2.66 and 2.93 ghz processors?

Wolfpup

Level 1

31 points

Feb 2, 2009 8:18 PM in response to Peacheasy

Peacheasy wrote:
It's interesting that nobody has focused on the "shared" aspect. What does it get shared with? How much of it is shared? Is this the same BS that they do with the on-board graphics chips that "shares" memory with the main memory??

Anything that is "shared" is usually much "slower" and further robs your system of extra cpu cycles that are dedicated to figuring out "where" the memory needed is at.

It's shared between both CPUs, and that's a good thing. It's faster (or at worst no slower) than having separate L2 cache (or L3 in the case of Core i7).

Feb 2, 2009 8:48 PM in response to Wolfpup

Both cores of the 1 cpu, to be technical.

As for having separate L2 cache, it can be faster for memory hogging apps like photo editing, video editing, science type stuff - only in the fact that both cores can allocate the full size of the cache, but in intel's infinite wisdom, they don't tell the other core what is on that core's cache, so both cores have to load "mirrored" data - so for programs using a significant amount of cycles but low amount of data, it could slow things down.

Wolfpup wrote:

Peacheasy wrote:
It's interesting that nobody has focused on the "shared" aspect. What does it get shared with? How much of it is shared? Is this the same BS that they do with the on-board graphics chips that "shares" memory with the main memory??

Anything that is "shared" is usually much "slower" and further robs your system of extra cpu cycles that are dedicated to figuring out "where" the memory needed is at.

It's shared between both CPUs, and that's a good thing. It's faster (or at worst no slower) than having separate L2 cache (or L3 in the case of Core i7).

Wolfpup

Level 1

31 points

Feb 2, 2009 8:55 PM in response to Peacheasy

Well, there are advantages and disadvantages to having inclusive or exclusive cache hierarchies...that honestly I don't even remember right now. 😀 Suffice it to say that most of Intel's designs are really strong.

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new mac book pro procesor 2.66 vs 2.93