2017 MBP vs Late 2013 MBP Retina

Question

2017 MBP vs Late 2013 MBP Retina

Greetings, I have a few days left before my 14 days runs out if I want to return my new 15" MBP. I've maxed this thing out with the 3.1 GHz processor with 1TB SSD. I upgraded from a Late 2013 15" MBP with Retina display, 1 TB SSD, 16gb RAM. I would think I would see a bigger difference in speed on the two devices, but I don't. I use Lightroom and Photoshop extensively and some FCP X. I've done all of the benchmark tests and I see major differences in scores, but in real world use... I don't see it.

What am I missing? Anyone else?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Posted on Jun 20, 2017 3:37 PM

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Answer 1

tjk

Level 9

51,192 points

Jun 20, 2017 8:33 PM in response to Scott Loeffler

Hi,

All that counts is your real world experience. If you're convinced that there isn't much difference in speed between the two, and the 2017 doesn't offer anything you can't live without, I don't think you're missing anything and would probably be wise to return the 2017 and save yourself over $2000.

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Answer 2

Ocean 17

Level 2

202 points

Jun 20, 2017 11:18 PM in response to Scott Loeffler

Benchmarks test the potential power of the computer, but software has likely a lot of bottlenecks that doesn't allow the computer to run at its fastest.

I have a late 2012 retina MBP and I'm not upgrading because the upgrades are not that big. The current computer technology has pretty much been maxed out - those big increases of processing power we saw in the past are no longer there.

Particularly the software has to be optimized.

I'm really surprised that FCP X doesn't run much faster on the new machine. I mean this should be profiting of multi-core processing.

But if there's not increase in computing power the upgrade doesn't make sense for you (except if you like the bigger hard drive and the newness of the machine)

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Answer 3

Aug 22, 2017 9:46 AM in response to Scott Loeffler

I have a top-of-the range late 2013 MBP and just purchased the top-of-the range 2017 MBP. It was very, very expensive. As the others already commented, there is no noticeable increase of speed for the tasks that I do. However, the reason I am keeping the 2017 model is due to the 2TB SSD. Otherwise, the upgrade is not worth it.

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Answer 4

dwb

Level 7

33,244 points

Aug 22, 2017 9:58 AM in response to Scott Loeffler

Real world use means everything - benchmark tests mean little. I'm a bit surprised that FCP doesn't show much of a speed bump with the new machine but otherwise I'm not too surprised by your findings. Between home and work, for the last 10 years, I've been getting a new computer about every 2 years and I've not been seeing much difference between the oldest of the three and the newest. The one exception is when I apply Photoshop affects or filters to a batch of files. A speedup of 2 seconds for a single photo means nothing. That same speedup for a batch of 30 does.

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