Leaving for tokyo on 20th need help deciding which MBP to buy

[skippy911]

I am looking at the Refurbished MacBook Pro, 15-inch, 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo for 1599 or a new MBP core 2 duo 2.16ghz for 1799 after student discount. Now the main difference other than processor is the core duo has 256ram on the video card and the core 2 duo only has 128. Is it worth the extra 200 to get the core 2 duo or will the refurb be a better deal all around?

Thanks a million I need to order the refurb by tomorrow night in order to have it in time before I head off to tokyo.

PS: The 1599 only has a 100 gig hard drive but unlike the c2d it can be upgraded easily.

 

[T0mmyGunZ]

i thought u cant change hard drives in mbp's? no?

 

[bousozoku]

To me, refurbs are always a better deal because it's more likely that you'll get a machine that isn't a problem.

It's probably a better idea to get the extra video RAM because it's more likely that someone will have a CPU upgrade sometime in the future.

 

[skippy911]

Thanks for the info guys. Anyone else have an opinion? I am thinking to buy tonight or tomorrow so the more opinions the merrier.

 

[taliz]

You cannot upgrade the CPU in the laptops, they are soldered to the mainboard.
IMHO you should definitely get the C2D.
It should be running much cooler, the gfx is clocked higher and it'd have a better 2nd hand value.

 

[bousozoku]

You cannot upgrade the CPU in the laptops, they are soldered to the mainboard.
IMHO you should definitely get the C2D.
It should be running much cooler, the gfx is clocked higher and it'd have a better 2nd hand value.

The CPU is soldered to the motherboard in the PowerBooks and you can still buy upgrades.

 

[Tat]

You should buy C2D MBP.
128MB extra Video RAM in this case doen't make any difference. As Both Macs have the same Video chip and the GPU in C2D MBP has higher core/memory clock. Take a look at the comparison of X-bench result between these two models.

http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=199620&doc2=197907

The reason for this is that C2D MBP has:
- Higher CPU clock
- Higher GPU clock / memory clock
- better floating point units
- bigger L2 cache (double in size)

The differnece above kills the advantage of CD MBP.
Plus, C2D MBP is way much cooler and more stable than CD MBP.

 

[iBorg20181]

<snip>
PS: The 1599 only has a 100 gig hard drive but unlike the c2d it can be upgraded easily.

The HD upgrade on the CD or C2D units are the same - not easy. May be another good reason to go with a C2D with a larger HD.

The MacBook is the one with the "easy upgrade HD."

iBorg