SSD vs Flash, CPUs, RAM, Graphics? I GIVE POINTS

1) Nothing, they are exactly the same. A SSD is Flash Storage.

2a) Difference between and i5 and i7. i7 run faster then an i5. Hence the naming and the cost difference. As to the new CPU that may be included in a Mac computer well it is not out yet and no one knows if it will be included in Mac computers or when if it is.

2b) Sorry but if you can't figure that one out I don't know how to explain it to you. That's like asking what is the difference between a 4 cylinder engine and a V8 engine and or what is the difference between a car that has 100 horse power and one that has 500 horse power.

3) RAM is Random Access Memory. It is what the OS and program load into from the hard drive or SSD/Flash when the system starts and or when you open a program. It has no baring on overall performance unless you have to little of it.

4) That is the Graphics card that powers the screen and renders what you see on the screen. Bigger is better but basically it is the same as RAM. To small for what you do on the computer is bad, lower performance, and one that is bigger then you need for what you will be doing is just wasted as you will never use it all.

1 - SSD and Flash storage are two names for the same thing. Both are solid state storage as opposed to rotating disks in a hard drive. SSD storage is about seven times faster to access than a hard drive, but costs a great deal more and is more limited in size.

2a - The Core i5 and i7 are available in a variety of core configurations, that is, two cores and four cores. The four or quad core is going to be faster for heavy use programs since there are more cores, think of it as more cpus, so more work gets done in the same period of time. For the best performance, as much as double the throughput, the i7 quad core is the star of these two processors. There are not enough statistics that I have seen to comment much on the newest cpu from Intel...the chip speeds and throughput increases fairly smoothly year by year but don't get caught in the trap of always waiting for the next item to come out...you never get your computer when you do that.

2b - An increase in GHz speed is the measure of how fast the instructions set built into the cpu can perform its work...faster chips do more calculations, or instructions, per second than the lower speed chip...but this has to be coupled with the number of cores, two chips at the same speed will differ in the number of calcs they can do according to the number of cores they have. A four core will do almost twice as many calcs per second as a two core cpu. Turbo boost is a technique that raises the speed, or over-clocks, the cpu for a short period of time. CPUs are rated at a particular speed as the speed they can run for a sustained period of time, but all can be over-clocked and forced to run at a higher speed, but things like heat build up faster and they cannot run at that higher speed for an indefinite period. Circuitry usually limits the time a cpu can sustain an over-clock period.

3 - Ram is random access memory - the memory the cpu uses to bring in a program from the mass storage (the SSD or Hard Drive) and the data used for the program. Calculations are done by pulling the instructions to use from the program and the data to be used by those instructions. This is many times faster than doing the same thing from the mass storage. More ram is going to mean a faster computer if the ram installed is not sufficient to hold the software instructions and data, thus forcing the system to use the mass storage as a virtual memory, that is much slower access than the ram. The ram is on the same circuit as the cpu so can be accessed much easier and faster than the mass storage. More ram than is necessary to support the software instructions and data needs of the cpu does not have any affect on system speed. Just sits their idle doing nothing.

4 - These are brand names of graphic cards, which have their own processor like the cpu but called a gpu, and some memory of their own. They take the display output from the cpu, proess that data stream and then generate the signal necessary to drive the display so you, the user, see the output as graphs, pictures, video, etc. Like with the cpu and ram, the gpu performs better with more memory if you are making heavy demands as to material for display...things like photo editing, video, games, things that are heavily graphic and detailed are handled bette and more smoothly with more memory. Makes things like transistion from picture to picture smoother and faster and not jerky as you would see with too little memory for the graphic module.

Does that get at what you want?

When buying you have to list your intended use, software, etc and then match the speed and memory and storage access speed that is important to you.

In that case, you will want to have a fast cpu, the i7 is well worth it, speed of the mass storage is not a huge factor but if you have the resources for SSD (large SSD) that will help, but the highest-end graphics you can get. Had to look back at the original to make sure you are interested in a laptop...for your usage you would be better off with the regular MacBook Pro over the Retina since the Retina cannot be upgraded once it has been purchased. The Retina has better display detail, but everything is soldered to the logicboard, the motherboard in PCs, and cannot be altered. The 15" MBP can be upgraded in ram by the user from the stock 4 GB to 16 GB for half the price Apple charges. It also has two GPUs, the normal use Intell HD 4000 and a discrete GPU with its own memory that comes into play automatically when the graphics demand is too much for the 4000. If you are going to do a lot of photo and video work and play games, you will really appreciate that discrete graphics module. And with the 15" you have options on internal mass storage...you can get the standard hard drive or opt for SSD, smaller in volume but huge increase in access speed. Boot up is almost instantaneous with the SSD.

If you are going to do a lot of video and photo work, also think about an external hard drive as those files can get huge...there are excellent third-party suppliers like OWC, http://www.macsales.com who are Mac specialists and have great support and guarantee policies. I have three of their Mercury Pro Elite 2 TB drives and they are outstanding drives. If you are intersted in that, more discussion is always possible.

In reverse order, the i7 processor will give you more flexibility in future use if your interests change and you get into work that needs more processor power. Since the cpu cannot be changed after the MBP is built it is good to think ahead and plan for the most you may need.

The speed of the SSD is not going to change from one size to another. If you are going to keep all of your data files on an external hard drive, you might want to look at the mid-size SSD, the 256 GB, for your software storage. Users always see their software grow and grow as they keep adding things they want to use, so the smaller SSD might make you feel limited in the future. If you are like most of us, you will get more and more excited about all you can do with this computer and start adding things you have not thought of today. So, give yourself room to grow with your storage.

If you go to the Store button at the upper left of this window, then the MacBook Pro and select the 15" to buy, you can then see the options that are currently available, the cpu speeds that are offered, the memory, the storage. You can click on the different options and see what the new price is on the right side of the page and decide how much you want to spend and where your money will do the most good for what you want to use the MBP for. All you do is change what you have clicked on until you get the configuration that suits your needs the best.

And before deciding on the memory, take a look at that OWC site I linked in the previous posting and you can get a price comparison for the memory. Also, OWC has on-line videos that show you how to install the memory if you have never done so in the past...lets you decide if you will be comfortable adding memory or would rather pay to have it installed. Apple will not install the memory unless you buy it from them.

Then one more thing to think about, AppleCare - that is the Apple extended warranty policy. The standard warranty is one year from purchase, the AppleCare extends that to three years of coverage. I bought that with my MBP and iMac just to be safe. Becomes a personal thing for the user...and you do not need to purchase it immediately, Apple will send you an email before the year is over reminding you that you have this amount of time to purchase AppleCare if you want it. Once the year is over you cannot then buy AppleCare. But anytime in that first year you can do so.

Hope this helps the decision process...but definitely go to the on-line store and spend some time playing with the configurations and costs so you can make an informed decision.

You are welcome and good luck with your purchase.

That is one I really don't know about...but SSDs are going to pretty close to the same performance...still a lot faster than hard drives...you are getting down to fractions of a second differences between SSDs, will you in reality notice those differences?

Apple's SSD aren't always going to be the fastest. Without knowing the exact manufacturer of them and the chipset they use or at least look at some performance test results, you won't know for sure. There are a ton of sites like tomshardware that has SSD Performance tests published so you can see how all the different ones perform, but ultimately what you'll see is that OWC stuff isn't always going to be the fastest stuff. They just tend to take faster aftermarket drives and brand them as their own and try and sell them. They have a couple of the fast Hitachi 7200rpm 2.5" traditional drives that they make the webpages seem like it's something they and only they have for sale (i.e. like it was custom built for them) and they weren't... they're available at other places too. Their prices also aren't always the cheapest for the same stuff. A lot of user on here will recommend them because OWC has been the only original aftermarket outlet for Mac components for a while and people have only know them. The fact remains that if someone tells you that only memory from OWC can be trusted to work in a Mac, they aren't telling you the full truth, just what they've experienced or learned. You can source your memory from other manufacturers/resellers, but you must buy the right stuff and from manufacturers that aren't in the habit of making cheap stuff. Macs can be picky on things like memory, etc., but they're still computers like everything else and as long as you get the right hardware for the right job, it'll work just fine or better.

In terms of SSD's as it sits right now, I think the Samsung 840 Pros are still the fastest in most tests. I'm sure as the year goes on, more and more will come out with better performance, etc. Just remember that after a certain point, you won't notice a difference yourself in terms of perceived speed... just testing software will show it for the most part if it's slight jumps in read/write performance. People moving from a traditional HD to an SSD notice the speed bump immediately, but if you swap SSD on them to another brand that has the same negotiated speed setting, they probably won't notice a difference at all even though the new drive may rated at a higher write speed than the previous one. The reason being is that the throughput jump isn't as drastic as when moving from a traditional drive to an SDD. Think of it like when someone goes from a normal consumer car to a supercar. There's a big difference in terms of performance and perceived speed/quickness there, but moving from one supercar to another won't be such a big jump (within reason of course)... some will notice it, some won't. Again, people normally notice perceived difference in huge jump, not small ones.

Every part in every computer can only run so fast. The overall speed of any computer is based on the slowest part in that computer. In years past that has always been the storage media, hard drives, as all other parts, CPUs, GPUs, RAM and the bus (the system that interconnects everything), always ran faster then the hard drives installed in the system.

Today that has changed slightly with the advent of Solid State Drives. SSDs can deliver data to the rest of the system much faster then any hard drive could or can even with the most advanced hard drives on the market. But still not even an SSD can file the bandwidth of the bus and the rest of the parts in a computer. That is why it is still necesary to have large amounts of RAM in the system. So data can be read from the storage media and loaded into RAM which then the CPU and GPU can read that data from RAM, which it XXXX times faster then any storage media, even a SSD. But to much RAM does not speed up the system as once the data that the other parts need to do the work you want to do is placed in RAM the rest of the RAM is just sitting there doing nothing. So if you typically use 2-3GBs of RAM and you have 4GBs installed the system will not run any faster if you increase the amount of RAM to 8GBs. That other 5GBs of RAM will be doing nothing. But if you have 4GBs installed and you typically use 4-6GBs of RAM then the system had to use the storage media, hard drive or SSD, as Virtual RAM. Which is always slower then Physical RAM. So in that case increasing the RAM installed in your system from the original 4GBs to 8GBs will give you better performance. But then if you went from that original 4 to 16GBs you would not see any more performance out of the system then if you have just installed 8GBs. That extra 8++GBs of RAM would just sit there doing nothing.

You are getting a good machine with those specs...but the only things that can be upgraded are the ram and mass storage. The VRAM the graphics mosule uses cannot be upgraded, only the specified VRAM is possible.

The bus is the logicboard and cannot be altered.

Full utilization of the components is really up to you the user and the use you make of the computer...you have a machine there that has a lot of power and potential so go ahead and pursh the limits.