Early 2013 vs. Late 2013 Retina MacBook Pro - which is better? Refurb or New?

Should be no difference. The guarantee is exactly the same.

Could be the reburb is simply one that the box was opened and returned- still a refurb and gets checked out just the same. Comes in a refurb box not the orginal packaging.

I have had excellent results with the price savings of refurbs.

> Will Older-2.7Ghz vs. Newer-2.3Ghz be noticeable for an average user (not a Pro editor etc.)?

You will not notice the difference. The newer one is 4% faster on GeekBench 2 benchmarks.

Since the RAM and SSD are the same and the CPU performance is the same then there is not significant difference in system performance among these machinies. The newer has faster graphics processors.

The newer 2.3 GHz model has the NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M and Intel Iris Pro 5200 GPUs.

The older 2.7 GHz model has the NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M and Intel HD Graphics 4000 GPUs.

Comparing Late-2013 15” rMBPs.

The 2.6 GHz model is 17% faster on GeekBench 2 benchmarks and has more RAM and so will run faster, but will this percentage be noticeable?

The extra RAM will matter if and when you run enough programs so they do not all fit in memory. For light duty processing that should happen rarely in 8 GB. Even if you run a memory-hungry program like PhotoShop, the extra RAM does not make much of a difference. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5659174?tstart=30 There are larger-memory programs where it would matter but those are not in the mix you have mentioned.

Again the GPU speeds will differ:

2.0 GHz model: Intel Iris Pro 5200 (2.0 GHz)

2.6 GHz model: NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M and Intel Iris Pro 5200

For graphics intensive applications the rendering speed differences will be noticeable.

On the applications you mentioned it willl be hard to tell the difference in speed on these two models. Thus you might as well get the one with the larger SSD. If you were to include graphics rendering programs then the 2.6 GHz model speed would be faster, but those are not in the mix of programs you mentioned.

Message was edited by: hands4

Just to make sure you got this edit, I updated the conclusion.

"On the applications you mentioned it willl be hard to tell the difference in speed on these two models. Thus you might as well get the one with the larger SSD. If you were to include graphics rendering programs then the 2.6 GHz model speed would be faster, but those are not in the mix of programs you mentioned."

The differences between these machines is small. You will do well with either of them.

I am quoting MacTracker: You can download it yourslf and look at the specs: http://mactracker.ca/.

When I look at the purchase options at Apple.com I see the 2.3 and 2.6 GHz designations are ambiguous.

The base 15” rMBP model comes with the single GPU but has three speeds: 2.0, 2.3, and 2.6 GHz with a base cost of $2,000.

The higher-end 15” rMBP model comes with the dual GPUs and has two speeds: 2.3 and 2.6 GHz with a base cost of $2,600.

So if one is looking at the difference in speeds among the base unit then the GPU rendering speeds would be the same.