<p>I want to buy a macbook pro for college (please dont try to sell me on a pc, i already made up my mind) but I am trying to decide which processor to get...so its between 2.3 ghz or 2.7. buying the 13" mbp with 2.3 ghz processor is $1099, 2.7 is $1399 (plus $180 to upgrade to 8 GB of RAM). So will 0.4 ghz actually make a difference when it comes to speed and multitasking ability?</p>
<p>Unless you’re doing really intensive tasks such as rendering or encoding movies, you won’t notice the difference.</p>
<p>As for the 8GB RAM: $180 is really overpriced for an upgrade; you can do it yourself for under $100.</p>
<p>I was also told that for most people the 2.3 ghz is enough. Most people are buying it that way. There is a company called crucial selling the memory upgrade for about $95.00. You could take the 4GB and sell it.</p>
<p>2.3ghz. I’ve heard quite a bit of discussion about the 2.7ghz 13" having a pretty high fan speed for not even CPU intensive tasks which make it irritating.</p>
<p>So, speed and multitasking:</p>
<p>If by speed you mean loading and such rather than computational power, then the biggest change you can have is your Drive. The MBPs by default have small 5400rpm drives which are pretty much the cheapest option there is, and the tradeoff is storage space and speed.
For better performance and storage you can get a 7200rpm drive with more storage which will be faster (hotter too, but not as much as say a .4ghz increase in a laptop). Additionally there is quality control by being able to pick the drive you get. There is also SSDs, but that is an expensive choice and usually necessitate buying an external storage drive. SSDs are considered by quite a few to be the biggest performance upgrade that can be made to any PC.</p>
<p>multitasking: Depends on what you multitask. I have 8gb and the only time I go over 4gb really is when I run a memory heavy program (2gb+) or when I have a memory leak from a program, but then that program becomes slow anyways. Still its always better to self upgrade. Replacing one of the sticks with 4gb should give you 6gb and more than enough.</p>
<p>TL;DR: Get the 2.3ghz, get a reliable harddrive that isnt 5400rpm or get an SSD, and if upgrading RAM do it yourself.</p>
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<p>And there’s one called Kingston selling it for $62.99 (after mail in rebate) on newegg.</p>
<p>Crucial’s price on newegg is $80</p>
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<p>Meh, no hard drive maker is totally reliable.</p>
<p>The price of the memory upgrade keeps coming down. I found the Crucial price reduction but could not find the Kingston. Thanks for the update.</p>
<p>There will be NO difference in 0.4 ghz and 8 GB RAM unless you are doing very demanding tasks. But if you were doing CAD, modeling, video rendering, etc you would need the dedicated GPU in the 15’’ or 17’‘… so then there would be no point in getting the 13’'…</p>
<p>Even if you have 20 internet tabs up, facetime, word, and excel up you still probably won’t notice a difference.</p>
<p>My rule: If you don’t know whether you need it, then you don’t need it.</p>
<p>Even if you are doing intensive tasks, I don’t think you’ll notice the difference. However, I think the difference between the cache size of the upgrade is worth noting… I HEARD, I HEARD!, that the difference is like 16%ish?.. Not too sure. </p>
<p>But for the price, not worth it. The 8GB RAM? Buy elsewhere. If you truly want SPEED, go buy an SSD. If you want to multitask, RAM :)</p>
<p>And if you game, go buy the high end 15" instead.</p>