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The new 13" MacBook Pro - i5 or i7?

Regarding the new 13" MacBook Pro, how much of a speed difference will there be between the i5 and the i7 versions? Is it worth the $300? My G4 Powerbook is going to be retired shortly and the new 13" are here just in time.

12" G4 Powerbook, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Feb 24, 2011 2:23 PM

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18 replies

Feb 24, 2011 8:35 PM in response to Humancapo

Hello. Two days ago I purchased a MBP 13, bootcamped with XP pro and had a number of things running very smooth. Today I found out the i5 are out in MBP 13. SOOOO with much hesitation I restored my system and exchanged it for the newer system for the same price. I am now into 12+ hours of work on getting XP to load into my Bootcamp partition. After running the tutorial and rebooting, it stops on a black screen at "setup is checking your system configuration..." It stays on this screen until even after the drive stops spinning the disc. I have tried a different install XP disc, changing the partitions, formating the partition to NTFS first, an external CD/DVD drive. Important to note is that I also tried Win 7 (32 and 64) and they install fine! Is anyone aware if the new i5 MBP 13 only supporting Win 7... or any other suggestions to try and get this to load? I have to have XP in a non-VM/Parallels enviroment.

Thanks. John

Feb 25, 2011 10:39 PM in response to thebairsden

I printed the Boot Camp setup guide on my new Macbook Pro and on page 3 the requirements do not mention XP or Vista.

It says: Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate.

The alternative is virtualization, but if you need to run without VM/Parallels I don't have a suggestion for making XP or Vista work with boot camp on the MBP Early 11. Mentioning what I read in the setup guide should at least take some of the mystery out of it though.

Boot camp on the new Macbook Air is Windows 7 only as well.

As far as i5 or i7, it beats me, but I went with the i7 because it's the only difference between the two new 13's that can't be upgraded later!

Mar 9, 2011 7:11 PM in response to thebairsden

It appears the new 2011 line of MBP's DO NOT support Win XP (see http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4410).

I also exchanged a recently purchased 2010 2.4 Ghz MBP 13", where winclone was restored onto flawlessly and was then backed up, before I couldnt get it, a previous backup, or winxp to boot up on my 2011 MBP.

Unhappy with the lack of WinXP support and Apple's short notice, I think I'll still keep the 2011 version with the newer tech. Although, I am left asking some questions:

Just out of curiosity, why isn't WinXP supported on the 2011 MBP line?
How I can move my files from WinXP backup to a Windows 7 bootcamp partition (assuming I buy a copy)?

Aug 6, 2011 10:37 AM in response to Humancapo

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.

The new 13" MacBook Pro - i5 or i7?

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