2.0 GHz or 2.2 Ghz MacBook Pro for Engineering student?

Student Lounge College Life
1

<p>I'm going to get a 15 inch MacBook Pro. I have to money for either one. I will be running programs such as AutoCad and other engineering programs. Should I get the 2.2 GHz since I will be running these programs?
Thanks!</p>

2

<p>Bumpity Bump</p>

3

<p>if you have the money for it i would say go for it. It will help but wont make a HUGE difference. Plus with the 2.2 ghz i think some other things on the mac are upgraded to. I may be wrong just check it out.</p>

4

<p>To run heavy stuff spend the difference on an SSD. AutoCAD runs nicely on an SSD :-)</p>

5

<p>2.2 is only a 15% speed upgrade (if you ever even use get up to the 2.8 gHz or w/e it makes faster). I agree with turbo an SSD would be a better investment, you’ll actually notice that.</p>

6

<p>Check with your school about the need for running engineering programs on your own laptop. I can only speak for my university for certain, but here there are more than enough engineering computers with far more power than any laptop, and a wide assortment of programs. If your school is the same, then running engineering programs on your laptop is never a major consideration.</p>

<p>But if you are absolutely set on it, a 13" macbook pro + desktop combination might be more feasible, since a desktop with a budget of the price differential between the 13" and 15" can still easily have much more power than the best 15" at a lesser cost.
Three Reasons:

  1. Going for processing power is always in the favor of desktops in terms of pricing as well as reliability.
  2. Many engineering programs are windows-exclusive, so you’ll likely be getting windows anyways.
  3. Easy to upgrade, in the case you feel like it later on</p>
7

<p>AutoCAD will run PERFECTLY FINE on both models. The current quad cores can run almost anything (unless you have some extremely demanding job which you don’t).</p>

<p>The 2.2 ghz vs the 2.0 ghz doesn’t even matter for a college student. It is the upgraded AMD 6750m graphics card that matters. That card is a beast in that slim laptop.</p>

8

<p>Pretty much what aStyle said. The thing here is that the upgraded GPU from the 2.0 to the 2.2 model is a significant jump. It’s worth dropping the extra cash to make it just that much more future proof.</p>