Upgrade i5 processor to i7 OR 4 GB Ram to 8 GB?

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Upgrade i5 processor to i7 OR 4 GB Ram to 8 GB?

Me again!

I have finally settled on the MacBook Air 13" w/ 128 GB hard drive. I keep most of my storage in iCloud or a seperate USB hard drive, so space isn't a concern. My last decision/concern is on the processor or ram. I might upgrade the ram to 8 GB as I've heard it's a wise $100 spent, saving possible future troubles since it isn't upgradable at a later date. I was thinking about the extra $250 for the processor though. If you were in my situation, which would you upgrade? Any recommendations? Will the i7 upgrade be more noticeable than the 8 GB ram, or vice versa? I'll be using it for Word/iWork, YouTube, music streaming, some Netflix, Skype and Adobe Connect for school work. Whats the advantage of upgrading each?

Thanks in advance everyone!! :)

MacBook Air

Posted on Jun 24, 2013 5:12 PM

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Answer 1

hawknelson24 Author

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Jun 24, 2013 5:19 PM in response to hawknelson24

$150 for the ram, sorry! Not $250 :p

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Answer 2

hawknelson24 Author

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Jun 24, 2013 5:22 PM in response to hawknelson24

* processor

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Answer 3

Kappy

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Jun 24, 2013 5:22 PM in response to hawknelson24

In order of being essential:

Maximum RAM possible.
Larger SSD.
Faster CPU.

A larger SSD makes sense because you cannot easily upgrade it (or may not be able to upgrade at all.) You eventually run out of disk space. Given the demands of OS X you can expect to have about 80 GBs of free storage space from the 128 GB SSD.

The i7 will provide about a 35% speed increase over the i5.

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Answer 4

Jun 24, 2013 5:25 PM in response to hawknelson24

For that work load, the i5 processor is probably going to be fine. The memory increase will help, especially with streaming since you will do much less use of the internal storage for virtual memory and buffering your content. The memory will give you the room you need to have more than one program open at a time. So for that work load I would go for more ram than the processor upgrade.

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Answer 5

Jun 24, 2013 9:32 PM in response to hawknelson24

absolutely would not get the I7, users are reporting it hotter running, obviously, but a real battery vampire

I5 users getting 12+ hours, but many I7 users getting up to 4 hours less battery life.

considering MOST apps have no use for an I7 processory, i wouldnt even get it if was free due to battery drainage and heat.

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