new MacBook Pros - £170 for extra 0.1Ghz?

blade007 · 25 Nov 2016 at 08:41

Looking at new MBP prices .. save oneself £170 and get the bigger SSD in the lower model?

Take the 2.6i7 and upgrade from 256->512gb drive =

15-inch MacBook Pro - Space Grey Item Price:£2,529.00 Quantity (15-inch MacBook Pro - Space Grey) Line Price:£2,529.00
Remove from bag(15-inch MacBook Pro - Space Grey) Part number: Z0SG
Dispatched: 3-4 weeks
Hardware
Touch Bar and Touch ID
2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz
16GB 2133MHz memory
512GB PCIe-based SSD
Radeon Pro 450 with 2GB memory
Four Thunderbolt 3 ports
Force Touch trackpad
Accessory Kit
Backlit Keyboard (British) & User’s Guide (English)

or

the Top of the range 2.7i7

15-inch MacBook Pro - Space Grey Item Price:£2,699.00 Quantity (15-inch MacBook Pro - Space Grey) Line Price:£2,699.00
Remove from bag(15-inch MacBook Pro - Space Grey) Part number: MLH42B/A
Dispatched: 3-4 weeks
Hardware
Touch Bar and Touch ID
2.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz
16GB 2133MHz memory
512GB PCIe-based SSD
Radeon Pro 455 with 2GB memory
Four Thunderbolt 3 ports
Force Touch trackpad
Accessory Kit
Backlit Keyboard (British) & User’s Guide (English)

Ranger07 · 25 Nov 2016 at 09:17

Its not just 0.1 GHZ. The higher spec one has 8mb cache instead of 6mb. Not sure how much of a difference that would make.

DanF · 25 Nov 2016 at 09:53

It's completely pointless upgrade, the performance difference will be like 2-3% for £170. Most mac CPU upgrades are terrible in the £ per performance you get.

Just make sure to get enough ram for what you'll use it for, 8gb is plenty for most stuff. Then just spec the SSD to taste. You can get SSDs with usb-c adapters now that are really really fast.

shiver · 25 Nov 2016 at 09:55

GPU is upgraded too.

Radeon Pro 450 with 2GB memory vs Radeon Pro 455 with 2GB memory

PU7E · 25 Nov 2016 at 12:52

shiver said:
GPU is upgraded too.

Radeon Pro 450 with 2GB memory vs Radeon Pro 455 with 2GB memory

The GPU is really what you're paying for with the 455 offering a resonable performance increase over the 450:

Pro 450:

Clock Rate: 640 Mhz
Compute Units: 10
Pixel Rate: 12.4 GP/s
Texture Rate: 31 GT/s
Floating Point: 992 GFOPS
Shading Units: 640
Texture Units: 40

Pro 455:

Clock Rate: 850 Mhz
Compute Units: 12
Pixel Rate: 13.6 GP/s
Texture Rate: 40.8 GT/s
Floating Point: 1305 GFOPS
Shading Units: 768
Texture Units: 48

blade007 · 25 Nov 2016 at 16:23

Cheers guys. Don't really need the speedy GPU. I'll get the 2.6+512GB SSD upgrade.