06-10-2010, 10:16 PM

Getting ready to pull the trigger on a new 13" macbook pro. I'm a college student getting ready to graduate so right now it'll mostly be used for music/movies, surfing, email, and microsoft office but who knows after I graduate. I plan on using it for quite a few years so my question is, would it be better to buy the 2.4ghz processor with 8gb of ram or the 2.66ghz processor with 4gb of ram? The 2.66 with 8gb is a little outta my price range.

06-10-2010, 10:44 PM

I seriously doubt that you will ever need more than 4GB of RAM if all you are using it for is college work. The only people that actually might utilize 8GB of RAM are people that deal with heavy 3D rendering, people that deal with music for a living, and photographers who work with RAW files.

Just get what you can afford, as you can always upgrade the RAM yourself for cheaper than you can get it through Apple.

06-10-2010, 11:43 PM

Originally Posted by CrimsonRequiem

I seriously doubt that you will ever need more than 4GB of RAM if all you are using it for is college work. The only people that actually might utilize 8GB of RAM are people that deal with heavy 3D rendering, people that deal with music for a living, and photographers who work with RAW files.

Just get what you can afford, as you can always upgrade the RAM yourself for cheaper than you can get it through Apple.

So the extra processing power would be better suited?

06-11-2010, 03:06 AM

Originally Posted by simpsonn

So the extra processing power would be better suited?

i was in the same situation, and decided that the minimal gain in ghz is not worth the three hundred dollars or what ever it is. I went with the 2.4 with 8gb of ram and have been more than happy. I dont beleive you will really see a difference in preformance between the 2.4 and 2.6, and its deffinatly not worth a few hundred bucks

06-11-2010, 06:04 AM

There's NEVER any point in paying extra for Apple branded RAM. RAM is easy to install and tons cheaper from places like newegg.com etc.. If the price is the same for lesser RAM but a better processor, go for the faster processor without a doubt. If the processor is going to cost you $300 more, I'd say save your cash, without a doubt.

If anything, put the money towards a RAM and bigger HD upgrade in the future. Both are easy as pie to replace and cheaper to do post purchase of your MBP.

Doug