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    Question about speed difference in 2 MacBooks.....

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by elazarus, Oct 7, 2012.

  1. elazarus

    elazarus Notebook Geek

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    Hi,

    Do you think/know if there is a difference in speed and "lack of delay" between a 2012 MacBook Air (standard Config) and a 2012 MacBook Pro 13" standard config with 8gb/HDD 2.x processor?

    I am willing to sacrifice the weight difference if the MBP would work without a delay in using. I would prefer 500gb for business use as a backup computer to a desktop.

    Also, is there any weight difference in a MCP 13" with a SSD instead of a HDD?

    Thank you
     
    elazarus, Oct 7, 2012
    #1
  2. Mobius 1

    Mobius 1 Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    The SSD will make the MB Air seem faster, but in terms of CPU/GPU benchmarks the MB Pro wins.

    What you can do is buy an aftermarket SSD like the Crucial M4 (128/256GB) and use it in the MB Pro, that way, it can have at least the same responsiveness as the MB Air. You can reuse the stock apple 500GB if you buy an optibay and ditch the Optical drive for a 2.5" HDD Bay
     
    Mobius 1, Oct 7, 2012
    #2
  3. kornchild2002

    kornchild2002 Notebook Deity

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    The benchmarks for the two are pretty similar even when both are equipped with SSD. The MBP pulls ahead when the processors are over clocked. This will be noticed when gaming and encoding videos. Day-to-day activities are going to be the same on either model though. The MBA is going to operate faster on a day-to-day basis with stock configurations but both will be about the same if they each feature an SSD. The weight decrease by putting an SSD in the MBP isn't going to be noticeable. The heaviest part of the unit is the battery, the HDD weighs just a fraction of the battery.

    In my opinion, the MBA is the better buy. I had a 13" MBP and feel that I drastically overpaid for it. The 13" MBP should actually cost around $700 for the baseline model, $1000 for the higher end version. It also has a lower resolution display than the MBA, the MBP's display is glossier, and it doesn't really have anything over the MBA other than having a built-in optical drive and the ability to use an HDD. For the performance that the 13" MBP is offering, I think it is priced way too high. I went from a faster 13" MBP to a slower 13" MBA but haven't noticed a huge drop in performance in anything except Handbrake when I am encoding videos. It isn't really a huge drop but now it takes 45 minutes to encode a DVD whereas my MBP could do it in 30. Other than that, everything else has been about the same whether I am executing multiple 4000+ lines of code of MATLAB in my Windows 7 Virtual Machine or if I am surfing the internet.
     
    kornchild2002, Oct 7, 2012
    #3