Quick opinion deciding between 2 MacBookPro's

News & General Discussion
1

My G5 officially blew up, and I resolved not to spend more than $2000 on a computer again. Trying to decide between these two:

MacBook Pro 15-inch 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (previous generation)
15.4-inch widescreen display
2GB memory
200GB hard drive
8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB of GDDR3 memory

MacBook Pro 15-inch 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (previous generation)
15.4-inch widescreen display
2GB memory
250GB hard drive
8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 512MB of GDDR3 memory

The second computer is $200 more.

In your opinion, is it worth the extra cost for 256 MB more VRAM, 50GB more hard drive, and a slightly faster processor (although with double the L2 cache - 6 instead of 3)?

Does the extra VRAM make that much of a difference in Unity projects considering it is the same card, just more memory?

With my educational discount (sometimes it pays to teach), I can get these at significantly lower price than what they were just a month ago. I can’t afford the new MacBook Pro, and I need more screen than the MacBook offers.

Thanks in advance for all thoughts and opinions. I can’t wait to get back into Unity after my hiatus.

2

I say go for it!

It’s really a small amount of money considering the total amount of the overall purchase.

In two years, will you be sorry you bought the faster machine? Unless, you really need that extra money for food, living indoors or the family, live it up.

3

You are going to want the extra HD space. Unless you plan on swapping it out yourself.

I have the first one with 4gb of a ram and a recently upgraded 320gb 7200 rpm drive. I wish I had the 512mb card.

Get the upper one for $200 more.

4

I doubt you would run up against VRAM problems before the GPU choked on other computations. It’s probably possible to contrive some tests with huge textures that would show lots more advantage with 512MB, but I would bet that most cases would be little difference.

People say that VRAM is a mostly a marketing ploy and also dates back to when graphics cards were nothing but dumb, fast memory (now they have their own powerful parallel processors). They’re putting 1GB of RAM on some low-end/mid-range graphics cards and charging an extra premium, knowing that consumers will go for it because they think bigger is better, when it’s the number of GPU “cores” that matters more.

One other thought: there’s a slight risk that the 8600M will die due to a manufacturing defect.

5

Keep in mind that you’re buying this laptop to last you awhile. Starting with Snow Leopard, the OS will be taking advantage of the Graphics cards GPU and memory to perform tasks. So that extra VRAM “marketing ploy” will not be up for debate for very much longer.

6

Not just the vram is different also the cache size (3mb vs 6mb).

The cache can do the difference for some cpu intensive task such 3d application.

7

I had just started to pay attention to that rumor when my G5 blew up! Thanks for the link.

The models affected by that problem in the article are listed as this:

  • MacBook Pro (17-Inch, 2.4GHz)
  • MacBook Pro (15-Inch, 2.4/2.2GHz)
  • MacBook Pro (Early 2008)

I guess that makes the 2.5Ghz with the 512MB of VRAM the safer purchase- it isn’t listed as one of the chips that will blow up. I don’t mind paying a little bit more for the piece of mind.

8

All MacBook Pro are affected.
Its mainly a question if the manufacturer updated the bios / fan control to cool the GPU appropriately.

9

Even the 9600Ms?

10

Gah, I can’t win. Macrumors is full of people going bonkers over the GPU in the 2008 silver MB Pros.

Apple does cover it, but I can’t afford a new MBP, and I haven’t seen the new MacBooks locally yet.

God, what a pain in the butt. I didn’t feel like buying AppleCare, but perhaps I’ll go with the cheaper laptop with AppleCare.

11

I’m going to call the Apple Store tonight and ask if they can tell me if the clearance items are among the affected batches.

I’ve read in a couple of places that it was like the problem with spinach in the US a while back- there were some bad batches. Not all of them, but a run off the assembly line that had the problem.

12

I respectfully disagree with the opinions above. It wasn’t worth a $500 difference when they were new, and it’s not worth $200 now. The investment idea is a foolhardy holdover from PC land. The way to get the best value out of your Mac is to sell it every year and get a new one. You get a great return from eBay. But you’re not going to get close to $200 more for the better machine, come next year.

13

Well, I did a bunch more research and I can definitely say I’m not comfortable buying a MBP with the 8600 GPU. I might just stick with the new glossy MB, hate the screen size, but love the small footprint and portability.

I was kind of hoping for something that could really push Unity well, but I may have to settle for acceptable.

I’m not buying a computer with a chip that will almost certainly go out in 12-14 months, even if apple does guarantee it. It’s not worth the hassle.

14

New MBP are heaven for adapter makers: no firewire 400, no standard- or mini-DVI, no Antiglare Screen…