The new 13" MacBook Pro - i5 or i7?
12" G4 Powerbook, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
12" G4 Powerbook, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
The biggest difference in benchmarking and day to day performance between the i5 and i7 MBP 13" isn't so much the processor as it is about hard drive performance. I owned the i7 version for a while, but returned it as I couldn't justify the high price in a machine that was just suplimenting some light duties away from my high end iMac. In picking up the i5 version, it was OK for speed, but really slowed down over the month I've been using it. I traced this back to the poorly performing Seagate 320 GB 5200 rpm drive. Now that I've upgraded that to a Hitachi 500 GB 7200, my boot time is 26 seconds -- identical to the i7 version. My 64 bit Geekbench testing has jumped from 5800 to 6450 -- a huge increase. And take note that the i7 version, with it's faster HD, clocks in around 6900 in geekbench.
I picked the i5 MBP 13" up at MicroCenter in the states for just over a grand, and the hard drive replacment was around 60 bucks. I saved roughly 400 and got a machine thats 95% of the i7 version.
so I'm wondering if you all think this would be a good pick for running Aperture and perhaps Photoshop. I have an iMac but I really need something I can use to edit on the road.
The new 13" MacBook Pro - i5 or i7?