2013 MBP vs 2015 MBP

[saha.anjan86]

So I last month, I got the rMBP which is the early 2013 edition with 16 GB RAM and Nvidia GPU. My question is that does it differ in performance by a large factor, compared to the 2015 rMBP ? Because I heard that in order to reserve higher battery life, they reduce the clock speeds on the GPU in the latter models of MBP thus giving less throughput to the GPU.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

There is very little difference to be honest, until the 2016 comes out its not worth an upgrade.

 

[joelank]

If I recall correct, when I made the switch from the 2013 model to 2015 model, I remember a good amount of performance boost. Thinking back, it's probably just excitement.

 

[JTToft]

Depends what you mean by performance. SSD speeds should be 4 or so times faster for sequential reads, a bit less for writes. Newer machines than yours with discrete graphics can drive two 4K monitors in addition to the built-in display; yours can't drive one. Newer machines have AC Wi-Fi and Thunderbolt 2, both of which are much faster than what's on yours.
So in those areas, yes, there are large differences.

CPU performance is not very different; about 10 % faster according to Geekbench.

 

[nutmac]

So I last month, I got the rMBP which is the early 2013 edition with 16 GB RAM and Nvidia GPU. My question is that does it differ in performance by a large factor, compared to the 2015 rMBP ? Because I heard that in order to reserve higher battery life, they reduce the clock speeds on the GPU in the latter models of MBP thus giving less throughput to the GPU.

I have both.

Unless what you do is either highly disk I/O intensive (2015 has much faster flash storage) or graphic intensive or use external display simultaneously, you wouldn't notice much difference in all but A/B testing scenario.

Having said that, there are few functional differences.

1. WiFi can be much faster. 2013 is 450 Mbps max. 2015 is 1.3 Gbps max.
2. 2013 is limited to two 1440p displays over Thunderbolt or single 4K display (unsupported). 2015 can drive two 4K or one 5K displays over Thunderbolt 2.
3. Force Touch trackpad.
4. Longer battery life.

 

[saha.anjan86]

So I have always been a windows user prior to getting this early 2013 MBP and so far I have never seen any windows machine perform as good as this one does. And I have worked on the surface book as well as the dell XPS 13. I dont think there is any comparison between the clean optimized MBP with that of a buggy, glitchy windows box.

 

[BoneDaddy]

That's because, contrary to what ignorant fan boys believe, a similar specked Mac will always outperform a similar specked PC, and will be similarly priced in most cases. Some will say "uh uhhhhh, not with video gaaaames". That's true, but Apple and it's users generally can give 2 poops about gaming. Those who use Apple computers and want to game, can, and well enough.

And my vote goes for the 2014.