Yet another MacBook question

[zolaman]

I've been lurking here for a while without ever posting and have learned quite a bit but I figured that it's time I ask a question or two.

So I am definitely purchasing a MacBook in the next week or so and have no intentions of waiting so please don't advise me to just 'wait until Rev B'. ^_^

Anyway, my question is, how much difference does the 100 mb 7200 rpm HD make in actual performance over the 100 mb 5400 rpm HD? Because I've set a pre-tax upper limit of $2200 (+/- $20), this means I can either get the 1.83 GHz model with 1 gig of ram and the 5400 rpm drive... Or the 1.67 GHz model with 1 gig of ram and the 7200 rpm drive (with student discount of course).

Basically, what would be the expected actual performance difference between a system with a slightly faster processor but slower HD and a system with a slightly slower processor but faster HD?

Being a grad student in mathematics, I hardly use any video and photo editing software at a full-time professional scale. But I do quite a bit of mpeg-4 and h264 encoding as somewhat of a hobby and enjoy a few old PC games (i.e. Starcraft).

That said, and penny-pinching not being an issue (between the two options mentioned above), which option would give me the better performance?

Many thanx in advance!!

 

[mad jew]

Considering your usage, I think you'd benefit most from the faster CPU, the 1.83GHz machine.

 

[NewbieNerd]

Being a grad student in mathematics, I hardly use any video and photo editing software at a full-time professional scale. But I do quite a bit of mpeg-4 and h264 encoding as somewhat of a hobby and enjoy a few old PC games (i.e. Starcraft).

You mean you have time on the computer for something other than LaTeX?

 

[sw1tcher]

If they're both the same $, I'd go with the faster machine.

I think the extra proc speed would be more helpful than a faster HDD, especially if you have to run programs under Rosetta.

 

[Dr_Maybe]

The faster harddisk should make loading of native intel apps faster. Games will be faster with the faster CPU.

I would probably go for the faster CPU, since it is easier to upgrade the harddisk than the CPU later.

 

[zolaman]

Thank you for all the responses.

Faster processor it is! Here's to hoping that they're not already 'sold out'.

 

[MUCKYFINGERS]

You mean you have time on the computer for something other than LaTeX?

that was dirty.