i5 or i7? Which would choose?

[simon22]

I'm going to be ordering a new 13" MBA as soon as I can answer this question.

How much faster is the i7 compared to the i5?!?

I'm sure there's others on here thinking the same thing. On the UK store the i7 costs an extra £100, which is fine with me if I'll see the performance gains, but if it's only 10% faster I don't think it's worth it. Anybody got any experience that could shed some light? Apple seems to be very non-specific about the potential gains and as there's none in the wild yet there aren't any geekbench scores.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

[axu539]

Calm down. They were just released today, and the few who got their hands on one already just got lucky. Apple isn't actually selling them in stores yet, so the earliest you're gonna get any good user reviews is tomorrow.

 

[bp1000]

You must be talking about the ultimate 13" which is : £1,449.00 with the CPU and SSD Upgrade.

Thats one hell of a jump over the base 13" model at £1,099

Unless you need the extra SSD space i would get the base model because as far as i'm concerned the extra 0.1ghz base clock speed, extra 1mb L3 cache and 0.2ghz turbo boost and 50mhz GPU dynamic clock speed is going to be very negligible and you won't notice it day to day, imo... unless you do LOADS of encoding, decoding, video and music work. Even then you are talking a matter of seconds.

I posted in another thread about buying 2 of the same laptops a few years ago, mine had 0.2ghz faster clock speed, faster bus and more cache but i don't notice any difference. Unless the CPU Is significantly different i wouldn't bother. I.e. the 11" 1.6ghz with 2.3ghz boost v the 1.8ghz with 2.9ghz boost is well worth the extra £150.

 

[Bigmacduck]

I ordered 22 minutes after the MBA 2011 was available in the Apple online store a MBA 11" CTO with 4GB RAM, 256 GB flash storage, 1.8 GHz dual core i7. Can't wait to get this little cutie. It will make a nice travel laptop as I don't want to carry around my top of the line 2011 MBP 15" i7 everywhere I go. I always buy the top model because it lasts longer and the resell value is higher.

 

[JLatte]

I ordered 22 minutes after the MBA 2011 was available in the Apple online store a MBA 11" CTO with 4GB RAM, 256 GB flash storage, 1.8 GHz dual core i7. Can't wait to get this little cutie. It will make a nice travel laptop as I don't want to carry around my top of the line 2011 MBP 15" i7 everywhere I go. I always buy the top model because it lasts longer and the resell value is higher.

This. I also make my living on a computer, so it needs to be the maxed little portable I can get my hands on.

 

[simon22]

Calm down. They were just released today, and the few who got their hands on one already just got lucky. Apple isn't actually selling them in stores yet, so the earliest you're gonna get any good user reviews is tomorrow.

Calm down?!? I've been waiting for these updates for over a month, I'm desperate for a new mac now Just kidding (maybe)

You must be talking about the ultimate 13" which is : £1,449.00 with the CPU and SSD Upgrade.

Thats one hell of a jump over the base 13" model.

You have a valid point, I'm now a little worried that I mentally spent an extra £400 without good reason. I think I'm too used to buying the best from back when I was in uni used every ghz for graphic work. In all honesty I don't think I need that processing power anymore. And for the price I could go without the extra storage space. Thank-you a lot!

 

[bp1000]

You have a valid point, I'm now a little worried that I mentally spent an extra £400 without good reason. I think I'm too used to buying the best from back when I was in uni used every ghz for graphic work. In all honesty I don't think I need that processing power anymore. And for the price I could go without the extra storage space. Thank-you a lot!

No problem, i was exactly the same as you, always buying the top spec CPU but since buying 2 of the same laptop, as mentioned, a few years ago, 1 with an upgraded CPU of similar proportions to this scenario, i noticed no day to day difference and concluded with such a small change, it isn't worth it. I still question myself even now about getting the i7 because it's what i'm used to. But i know, with my past experience it's a waste.

Perhaps why it states on the apple web site that the i7 is only available online as they anticipate it not selling in volumes.

The extra space sounds nice at first but if i'm realistic, i have a 16gb storage on my phone and ipad so i fit my music collection around that and my photos are certainly under 20gb the os is about 12gb and i need another 12gb for testing designs on a windows virtual machine. So in my case 128gb is plenty.

I do have family HD video but i normally burn it straight to disk and archive on a back up drive. And i also archive music that i'm not currently listening to. But everyone is different and like to listen to music and movies on their laptop. I use the TV and grooveshark