MBP vs. Current Setup

[TheSith]

Hey guys,

I (like many others) am just waiting for merom to be released for the MBP. At that time, I'd purchase the upper 15" model of the MBP (and add a third party 1GB stick of RAM, totaling 2GB). It will mainly be used for college work as well as gaming (WoW, maybe some Empire at War, etc.). My current computer's specs are:

Dell Dimension 8300
3.2GHZ P4
1GB DDR400 RAM
120GB HD
128MB ATI Radeon 9800 Pro

And I was wondering if I will see a speed improvement at all during regular usage. I'm a huge novice when it comes to comparing desktop speeds to mobile processors so maybe just some insight on what type of performance boost--if any--I will be looking at?

Thanks!
Matt

 

[gadgetgirl85]

If you are doing college work (ie word processing, surfing etc) only you wont notice much (if any) difference with merom...video editing is another matter.

 

[McKellar]

The upper merom processor likely to be in the MBPs will probably be the 2.16 or 2.33Ghz, dual core. These chips from what I've read, should smoke a 3.2 P4, even my Core Duo 2Ghz is quite capable of doing so. Everything about a merom MBP should be better than what you currently have (except for maybe the hard drvie), especially the video card, it will at least be a 256Mb X1600, or perhaps a X1800. The memory in the MBPs is DDR2 667, so is also much better than in your Dell.

Bottom line is, you should see a nice improvement in gaming over what you currently have, and for everything else, you get the added bonus of Mac OS X, and no malware, in a nice 1" thick package.

 

[zap2]

Your eyes will notice the change!