Hi!
I'm a Uni student who is studying design.
Although I bought it in 2010 from Apple, I own a MacBook Pro (13') - the late-2009 model (i think)... 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB memory (but upgraded to 8GB) and 160GB hardrive.
The i7 has twice the number of cores, all of them hyperthreaded. Each core is faster, it's removed the need for some of the chips on the motherboard, and it uses DDR3 RAM which is faster than the DDR2 you have to use with the Core 2 Duo. As a side note, the Core 2 Quad and Extreme have four cores, like the i7, but they aren't hyperthreaded.
Basically, I'd prefer the 15' MacBook Pro - I think 13' is too small, and I know you can connect it to an external monitor and stuff, but I'd prefer just working on the laptop itself. Using Photoshop is annoying with all the different palletes everywhere, and I think a bigger screen would be better.
But the cheapest 15' MacBook Pro has a 2.2GHz processor, and my MacBook Pro has a 2.26GHz processor. Does that mean my current MacBook Pro would be faster?
Also... if I were to get the 15', i'd sell my 13' before. How much do you think I could get for my MacBook Pro if it;
- comes with original packaging,
- when cleaned, it looks brand new,
- 8GB memory (upgraded from 2GB)
- 160GB hardrive
- OS X Lion
- charger supplied but not original and not Apple (got a cheap one off of Amazon - which works perfectly, when I lost the one which came with it)
- Battery lasts about 4:30hrs to 5:00hrs - according to coconutBattery, it's had 696 loadcycles, and battery capacity is 95% - current capacity 5183mAh - original; 5450mAh.
- Case
How much (maximum) would you be willing to pay for that?
Thank you!
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3), 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo|8GB|160GB
Posted on
The Core i7-660UE 2-Core and the Core 2 Duo both have 2 cores, and so are quite likely to struggle with the latest games, or at least bottleneck high-end graphics cards when running them. With a decent accompanying GPU, the Core i7-660UE 2-Core and the Core 2 Duo may still be able to run slightly older games fairly effectively.
More important for gaming than the number of cores and threads is the clock rate. Problematically, unless the two CPUs are from the same family, this can only serve as a general guide and nothing like an exact comparison, because the clock cycles per instruction (CPI) will vary so much.
The Core i7-660UE 2-Core and Core 2 Duo are not from the same family of CPUs, so their clock speeds are by no means directly comparable. Bear in mind, then, that while the Core 2 Duo has a 1.07 GHz faster frequency, this is not always an indicator that it will be superior in performance, despite frequency being crucial when trying to avoid GPU bottlenecking. In this case, however, the difference is probably a good indicator that the is superior.