The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    2.4ghz or 2.5ghz?? A little help

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by bcom77, Feb 28, 2008.

  1. bcom77

    bcom77 Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    47
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Just curious, for mainly photoshop graphic design work and maybe a little bit of dabbling in video editing in my spare time (nothing too heavy), would I really notice much of a difference between a macbook Pro with a 2.4ghz 3mb L2 cache processor and one with a 2.5ghz 6mb L2 cache processor? With a price difference of almost $1000 I'm just wondering if it's justified.
     
    bcom77, Feb 28, 2008
    #1
  2. Eleison

    Eleison Thanatos Eleison

    Reputations:
    1,677
    Messages:
    1,462
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    $1,000?!? No, it's not justified. I assume the two processors are the T8300 and the T9300? There should only be a $90 - $100 difference (more than worth it for the added cache). If it is a choice between the T8300 and T9300, I would call Apple up, call shenanigans, and ask them if they would be willing to give you a price that is closer to reality for the T9300 (e.g., $100 - $150...$150 to account for the markup they give to anything that bears the Apple name). If they aren't, stick with the T8300.
     
    Eleison, Feb 28, 2008
    #2
  3. hollownail

    hollownail Individual 11

    Reputations:
    374
    Messages:
    2,916
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Um... you're not really looking at this right.

    The price difference is $500 and you're gaining more memory on the video card as well as a larger HDD.
     
    hollownail, Feb 28, 2008
    #3
  4. bcom77

    bcom77 Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    47
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Sorry, I may have exagerated slightly :) It's a difference of $700 Australian dollars between the base model and high end 15inch. I'm not too concerned with the difference in hard drive space as I'll be getting an external drive to switch between laptop and work computer and the 512 mb graphics card I've been told is only any good if I intend to play games on it (which I don't) so I'm curious about the cpu.
     
    bcom77, Feb 28, 2008
    #4
  5. Arquis

    Arquis Kojima Worshiper

    Reputations:
    844
    Messages:
    1,688
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    I run CS3 very well with 2.4 GHz C2D. I don't think you'd even notice any difference. However I have 4mb cache...
     
    Arquis, Feb 28, 2008
    #5
  6. hollownail

    hollownail Individual 11

    Reputations:
    374
    Messages:
    2,916
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    You will see a very marginal difference between the two CPU's. The extra cache is nice but only having an increase of 100 mhz is fairly 'meh'.
    I'd probably go with the cheaper one and pop in 4 gigs of ram.

    *edit*

    Arquis is right, you really wouldnt' notice a difference. You'd have to have some long processes going on and time them to really see a difference.
     
    hollownail, Feb 28, 2008
    #6
  7. bcom77

    bcom77 Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    47
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Exactly what I was thinking of doing hollownail. Even with bumping up the RAM I still save money on the difference between the base model and high end model.
     
    bcom77, Feb 28, 2008
    #7
  8. Arquis

    Arquis Kojima Worshiper

    Reputations:
    844
    Messages:
    1,688
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    do yourself a favour and buy RAM elsewhere. Apple charges you 5-10 times the price.
     
    Arquis, Feb 28, 2008
    #8
  9. Johnny T

    Johnny T Notebook Nobel Laureate

    Reputations:
    6,092
    Messages:
    12,975
    Likes Received:
    201
    Trophy Points:
    481
    Mind you, 8600GT can't utilise all 512mb of Vram anyway. :) Because of the 128-bit bus.
     
    Johnny T, Feb 28, 2008
    #9
  10. burningrave101

    burningrave101 Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    109
    Messages:
    756
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    The upgrades in the higher-end 15.4" definitely aren't worth $500. Hard drives can be bought and upgraded for less yourself, the 8600M GT 512MB really doesn't provide any major benefit over the 256MB version because of being bottlenecked by a 128-bit bus, and while the T9300 is a nice little upgrade it's not worth more than $100 to gain. You're unlikely to notice any difference between the T8300 and T9300 no matter what you're doing unless you're doing something like heavy encoding where it takes a long period of time to complete the task.
     
    burningrave101, Feb 28, 2008
    #10
  11. thecommish16

    thecommish16 Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    23
    Messages:
    485
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    The 1999 version is perfect for the price.
     
    thecommish16, Feb 28, 2008
    #11