Need help choosing rMBP config

Hello,
I am interested in buying a rMbp 15 inch. I am coming from the windows world and never owned a machine with OSX. I am a little nervous paying so much for a laptop. However, the laptop seems awesome and the screen is a huge plus as my regular screen is killing my eyes. I want to make sure I get the right configuration. Could you help me out? Here are my needs:

- I am looking at a late 2013 or 2014 machine
- I Definitely want 16 gb of ram
- I will need to run windows 8 in bootcamp or vm. Mostly vm.
- will use the machine mainly for programming, web surfing, typing documents, lot of reading
- no gaming( well maybe star craft 2 )
- i watch a lot of movies and online streaming videos. Can the intel gpu handle this with no problems?
- I plan on driving 1 thunderbolt display, maybe 2. Would the discrete gpu help with this or is intel enough?
- not sure if i need 256 or 512 ssd. Right now all my files, including windows, takes up 113gb. With the 512 being the larger drive, does it have better read and write speeds over 256?
- I am not doing any video or photo editing. Just cropping of photos.
- want to spend 2k ish. But want to make sure money is spent on components I will use.
- thinking of doing config to max ram and cpu and skimping on gpu. Make sense with my requirements?
- usually keep machines for a while


Thinking of following 2 configs:
1.) late 2013 refurb - $2k
2.3 ghz cpu
16 gb ram
512 gb ssd
750m gpu

2.). 2014 new - $2.2 k
2.8 ghz cpu
16 gb ram
256 ssd
Intel iris pro

Any other configs you recommend?

 

I will provide my limited experience response...

I would go for config 1 (as I own a similar setup). You will get a dedicated GPU along with a larger hard drive. Starcraft 2 will run great on a decent resolution with medium/high settings. Everything else you have listed, either config will do great without any hiccups. The only question I cannot answer is about thunderbolt displays as I don't own one or have any experience hooking one up. Ultimately, the decision is yours Good luck and you will love MAC OS X.

 

config 1 the dGPU really helps in dual/triple screens

 

We bought one a month ago with iGPU and 512GB of SSD.

This is a spare laptop for traveling for our family and it needs to be able to connect to work in Windows, OSX and Linux environments and is used for some gaming. The kids wanted about 2/3rd of the SSD for their work/game stuff and the rest is for OSX logging into work. We deliberately chose the iGPU because MacBook Pros have a long history of problems with discrete GPUs. We have three Merom/Penryn MacBook Pro that had a total of 6 motherboard replacements for the nVidia problems. My son had his 2010 MBP motherboard replaced for an nVidia problem and he had to debug various crash problems with nVidia/Apple drivers related to that model.

I've seen lots of articles of MBPs running hot with Discrete Graphics on Windows via Boot Camp. It appears that you don't get switchable graphics with Windows under Boot Camp so you may have battery issues compared to Mac OS X.

We're very happy with the performance of this machine to date. I have not used it with any external displays yet but it's on my list of things to try. I have the cables and the monitors but I need to dig one of the cables out of my huge box of cables.

 

Thanks so much for your post. You really gave me some great info. You also reminded me that I stayed away from a discrete gpu on my current windows machine for the same reason. The machine i had previous to my current one was susceptible to gpu failures. So it looks I will go for an iris only models. I have the following questions:

1.). I am looking to drive 2 external thunderbolt monitors. I will probably have an ide on each one, or maybe an ide on one and a you tube video on the other. Can the iris drive this kind of load without shuttering?

2.). Trying to decide which ssd to get 256 or 512. In terms of speed are they equavelant or is the 512 faster. Sometimes larger ssds are faster than smaller ones. If that is the case, i might go for the larger one just for the speed, even if i dont need the additional space.

3.). I am looking for the following config now:
2014 rMBP, 2.8 ghz, 16 gb ram, ??? Hd, iris only

What would be an authorized seller that would have the best price on this? Any place throw in freebees like software etc?

 

either one is more than sufficient for what you need. the cpu difference is not major between the two. the r/w speeds on the drives are the same. they are both pci-e flash. as for the gpu, the dedicated 750m is significantly better than an iris pro, not that you would need it to be honest. the iris pro will definitely be enough for starcraft 2 and videos. best bang for buck between those two will be the late 2013 with 750m.