2.8ghz Quad Core Vs. 3.3ghz Dual Core

Hi,

The quad core is going to be almost twice as fast as the dual core. This will be much more evident on more CPU intensive tasks like video editing. The 13" dual core will probably do ok creating/editing music, but the 15" will do it faster, plus the extra display size, obviously (which to me is a big difference). The Radeon 550 graphics will also help more on video processing, but not have an effect on sound processing.

Now that you already have the 13", you and your husband should try it out with your heaviest tasks and see if it meets your needs satisfactorily. If not, or if feels slow, then you have 14 days to return it for refund (EDIT: find out if that's true for custom configurations like the 3.3GHz is; if you can't return it, then all this is moot), then you can choose to get the 15".

Also, the 15" comes with 16GBs of RAM, while the 13" stock configuration has only 8GBs of RAM. Looking into the future, at some point the two of you may wish you had gotten 16GBs as OSes and apps get more and more RAM hungry, as the RAM is not upgradeable (nothing on these machines is), so even if you decide to go with the 13", get 16GBs of RAM. Also, if you stuck with the stock 256GBs of storage, you may wish at some point in the future that you had gotten at least 512GBs. Again, this is not upgradeable, so it has to be done at time of purchase. I've never heard of anyone complain about having too much storage, but I've heard from lots of people who wish they had gotten more storage.

The Radeon is the GPU, which takes care of all the graphics. The 13" uses whatever Intel stuffs inside the CPU, with considerable less performance. So you get much faster graphics response for any app that needs it. And there's more: where do you store the screen images? The dedicated Radeon GPU has its own private VRAM for that, the 13" has to stuff that info in with the rest of the programs/docs/whathaveyou in the [smaller] main RAM, which in turn creates a bottleneck as the CPU and piddly integrated GPU wrangle for access.

So yeah, a lot faster. The 15" have a 4-core Core i7 which is a more advanced CPU than the 13" 2-core Core i5.

I just recently retired my 2009 MBP, a 13" and put my 2012 MBP back in use, the 13 is a 2 Core, the 15 is a 4, clock speeds are similar, but the 15 is so much nicer to use, the extra speed makes for smoother running, and my eyes appreciate the extra screen space.

"this alone will make the twin core blow the quad core away."

I think you meant that to be the other way around 🙂

The Quad core will be a lot faster.

Sorry, misread. It is the Core i5 vs i7. The 15" with 4-core i7 + dedicated GPU with its own VRAM will blow the 13" away every time. Managed to correct that in the editing window.

🙂