Refurbished MBP 2.4 or 2.53?

Hey all,

My old dell 860o died on me 2 months ago. been searching for something light and can do some gaming. Wonder if there are any video card issues like the previous generation.

So far nothing beats the mbp for the size. is mbp 5.5 lbs?

so it seems the refurb is down to some decent pricing.

is the 2.53 worth 150 dollars more? which is lower heat?

is the 2.4 a p8600?

just want to know a few tidbits of the laptops.

 

they are both low power consuming processor and neither will really make a battery life difference.
Its a p8600 2.4ghz and p9500 or p8700, i cant remember which.
Even in gaming, you wont really see a difference between 2.4 and 2.53, the gpu is the one that makes the difference.

ur on about the 15" mbp right?

 

I would take the 2.26 version. It has the real pro (screen on par with the 15 and 17) grade screen, 7 hour battery, SD card, illuminated keyboard.

 

why do you want a mac for gaming? these tend to become real hot while gaming (80's degrees celcius)

 

For Gods Sake Stop Saying That 80+ C Temps Are Dangerous!!!

 

well it will be mainly a surfing laptop. but like when i go on vacations and stuff i want to play a few hrs of games, ( or even in my bed when i am too lazy to sit at the desk). Plus the 9600m gt seems great for gaming.

Yes the heat from my search in the forums is what concerns me.

the 2.26 version is the non 9600m gt?

its just the 1299 price is really attractive for refurb. my wife doesnt want a big beast of a laptop.

Thanks for hte CPU tidbit. i think 2.4 is good enough for me. i can use the extra on upgraded ram.


I was pretty much gonna get a t500 , sony FW490 or maybe a dell studio xps. but the refurb MBP $1299 puts me in the range to get one. Plus its SOOOOOOOOOOOO much lighter than the rest of them

 

80 deg C is NOT dangerous? am i understanding that correctly? that seems awfully high and dangerous to me, esp when water boils at 100 deg C and many electrical components have their thermal range max out at 100. granted this is 80 and not 100, but still..

 

I didn't know that you were considering the 15" version.

Yes, the 15" 2.4 version for $1299 offers the best bang for the buck- you can probably resell it a year from now for at least $1000-

It is not worth spending over $2000 on these machines since they tend to depreciate quickly.

You will be fine with the 9600GT since your gaming habit is on the mild scale. It is better to get a cheap desktop w good GPU(or console) for that job.

 

i mainly just play W-O-Warcraft.

here is the full specs ( sorry for the confusion)
Refurbished MacBook Pro 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo15.4-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display
2GB memory
250GB hard drive
8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Built-in iSight camera
Illuminated keyboard


The heat topic is whats making feel unsure on the purchase.

 

yes you are! I have(just sold one) 3 notebooks with 9600gt(actually,2 are fx 770 but they are the same) and all of them run ~85+ degrees while playing games or doing anything intensive and ~62 degree on idle.

OP-modern GPU's have "thermometer" and if they reach max temp. they downclock to stay cool.No problems

 

WoW is not that GPU intensive (compared to games like far cry 2 and crysis) - expect 60-70c in places with reasonable room temperature.

 

that is hot, just not dangerously hot.
i use to have a dell studio xps 16 and it would never pass 70c while i played games.

 

your temp picking up at 80ºC is not that bad. if your used to using º F instead of º C, then 80 and 100 seems really close together. That main temp people go by like in SMCfancontrol is really reading off the processor. The processors used in the current laptops have a rated max operating temperature from Intel at 105º C.

80º C is 176º F ...
105º C is 221º F .... its actually a big difference.

even running at 85º isnt that bad... when I'm pushing my laptop really hard, with the 9600 enabled and maxing it all out, the fans get to 6200rpm and the temp stays around 85º and it runs great.

 

why does it seem like 80c is like 2nd degree burn. can someone tell me if its worse since the unibody is the acutally heatsink?

 

body dose not got to 80C its the components like CPU and GPU,which is totally normal! max the body gets is ~ 40-42 under heavy gaming!

 

The main reason why so many say that unibody Macbooks get really hot is because aluminium is a conductive metal. So, instead of the heat being concentrated at the bottom of the machine or at the fan outlet, it can be felt throughout the casing.

It is by no means dangerous however, although using the machine on your lap while doing highly intensive tasks is not recommended for the Macbook or any other laptop.

And modern day laptops have safeguards in place to prevent them from reaching dangerous temperatues. Computer chips operating at 80+ degrees is very normal, similar to car engines operating at hundreds of degrees. You will not feel anywhere near those temperatures, as the computer (or the car) have adequate cooling systems in place.

 

@OP: If the only game you'll be playing is WoW, the 9600M GT will be overkill. You could easily play WoW with the 9400M in either the lower end MacBook Pro or the regular MacBook.

 

The aluminum casing on the MBP gets hotter because it acts as a heatsink.

So the only thing you can rely on to determine how hot your CPU is, is from software monitoring your temps.

80C - 90C for the CPU is safe, but saying that these are normal operating temps is simply not true. It may be normal for a macbook, but its not normal for the rest of the PC world. My dell laptop gets 40C idle, 70 load. I could never get this sort of temps on my 13MBP.

Most of this heat comes from the MBPs being so thin so there are sacrifices for having a smaller enclosure. Even if the laptop is a giant heatsink.

When playing games you pretty much have to ramp up the fans to 6200rpm to stay around 80C. If you are keeping your macbook at these temps, you should be fine. Do not let your laptop get to around 90C though, thats when the laptop is thinking about doing an emergency shut down.

 

don't lump all PCs together. There are several out there that will operate at the same temps as the Macbooks. Speaking of Dell i have an older one that usually ran close to 80ºC maxed out, Dell said it was normal, and its processor had a lower max operating temp than the processors used now.

Some larger sized notebooks that fit in a lot of clunky cooling run at lower temps, just cuz they don't design it so compact, but not because it really needs to run at lower temps.

 

I think you've contradicted yourself there.

Actually CPUs have a operating temperature limit of 105 degrees. See here on Intel's site So even running at 90 degrees is acceptable and would not cause any issues.

So in other words 80-90 at full load is perfectly acceptable. The main reason why MacBooks is run hotter than the typical system (ala PCs) is due to the heatsink design which daisy chains the GPU along with the CPU. GPUs in general run a lot hotter than CPUs(especially the 9600), and while gaming it would rise to about 80-90 degrees if not hotter. The CPU may not be necessarily be running that hot, but since the heatsink system is connected the temperatures are skewed.

All that said, I believe that Apple deliberately designed the system to run a little warmer than usual simply to have a more quiet system. It's using more passive cooling than compared to other notebooks, you can negate this benefit to your ears by downloading SMCfancontrol and simply running your Macbook at 4000RPM or higher and i'll sound more like your average PC. I for one run with the default settings and never once has it overheated or crashed under OS X.

 

The 2.4 has a P-series processor, while the 2.53 has a T-series... also, if memory serves, the 2.4 model had a 9600M with less memory.

 

My MacBook has not much luck with WoW on it's 9400m. Framerates a solid 30-45fps and on many parts of Lich King. But many parts drops to 1-5fps, sometimes stopping completely for 10 or so seconds