2GB Aluminum MacBook (with DDR3) or 4GB White Macbook (With DDR2)

I'm looking to get my first Macbook. Im either going to get:

2GB Aluminum MacBook (with DDR3) or
4GB White Macbook (With DDR2)

The DDR3 is supposed to be faster, but will I succeed that speed with a 4GB DDR2?

Thanks

If you can afford the newer aluminum MacBook, buy it instead. Not only is the memory and bus faster, it has a much enhanced video chipset. It uses the faster and more powerful nVidia chipset rather than the Intel.

Regards.

I was afraid of that. The white macbook is way cooler looking... I was hoping to get that faster with the 4gb memory, but it seems the 2gb aluminum is the way to go. Can't afford the 4gb aluminum though.

Buy the new Aluminum MacBook......save up for the 2.4ghz if you have to because it's got a backlit keyboard which is well worth it!

Khris said:

Buy the new Aluminum MacBook......save up for the 2.4ghz if you have to because it's got a backlit keyboard which is well worth it!

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I disagree. for the $300 you are not going to notice a difference in speed, so make sure the backlit keys are really something you want. Otherwise you are wasting your money for .4 ghz and 90 GB of hard drive space. I type in low light areas all the time without backlit keys and the ambient light from the bright lcd along with the fact the because the keys stay in the same spot I know how to type without looking at them all the time.

400 mhz isnt worth it. its just "sounds" like alot more. 2.0 vs 2.4. wow it almost sounds 4 levels higher. 400 mhz more not ghz more. hehe. real benches show that its not as big of an upgrade as it sounds.

i love my 2.0 and it screams doing pretty much everything. i wanted to drain the battery so i could calibrate it and had like 10 instances of diffrerent movies running at the same time plus writing 0s using disk utility to a spare hard drive for security and it still wasnt using max cpu.

chscag said:

If you can afford the newer aluminum MacBook, buy it instead. Not only is the memory and bus faster, it has a much enhanced video chipset. It uses the faster and more powerful nVidia chipset rather than the Intel.

Regards.

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The White MacBook ships with the same nvidia card as the others now. The FSB is slower though.

the aluminum will not fall apart in 2 years from normal use.

kgeier82 said:

the aluminum will not fall apart in 2 years from normal use.

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My 2 year old white and my wife's black 2 year old Macbooks would beg to differ with you on that one.

kgeier82 said:

the aluminum will not fall apart in 2 years from normal use.

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The aluminum has been out for 4 months...how do you know?

My white one fell apart... My gf's white one is also falling apart. The build quality of the aluminum is incredible... I cant imagine it falling apart the same way those two did.

safarisurfer said:

400 mhz isnt worth it.

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To add some "future-proof" to your laptop, it sure is. You also have to consider resale value of the 2.4 combined with bigger HD and backlit keyboard over that of the 2.0.

As someone who has both (work macbook is last-gen white 2.0Ghz, private MacBook is aluminum 2.4Ghz), I'd definitely go with the aluminum model. You can always upgrade the RAM later and the build quality alone is worth it.

Plus the aluminum models will have a higher resale value later on - the white already looks a bit dated.

The difference is the screen. Namely, the aluminum MacBook has an LED-backlit screen, which is brighter, more vibrant, is instantly at its full brightness, and never loses brightness over time.

The RAM makes little or no difference. The biggest difference between DDR2 and DDR3 is that DDR3 costs twice as much. Performance-wise, there is virtually no benefit to DDR3.

The backlit keyboard is worth the money, specially if you are in a dorm and have roomates that like to turn the the lights off on you.

get the white one IMO

love my white macbook. had it for a year now and it stays nice looking and has never made me feel like I need a new one. I find it to be plenty fast. i plan to save for a year or two and buy the next generation.

Having had both the white was nice but the 2.4 alum was very nice and much better, HOWEVER. I bought the 2.4 for the keyboard and really dosent do all that much. I will be buying a 2.0 tomorrow

Mama Luigi said:

The RAM makes little or no difference. The biggest difference between DDR2 and DDR3 is that DDR3 costs twice as much. Performance-wise, there is virtually no benefit to DDR3.

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Cite a source please?

Khris said:

Cite a source please?

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AnandTech: DDR3 vs. DDR2

There are advantages to DDR3, but it seems a lot of them come from it being a newer platform with new development centered around it. It's got room to grow and become better in the future (whereas DDR2 is eventually going to be phased out).

That article demonstrated that DDR2 and DDR3 performance on the same chipset (one that supports both) was similar, and better than the performance on an older DDR2-only chipset.

I am going to go out on a limb and guess that the MacBook isn't going to be able to take advantage of what small speed difference DDR3 might give. It's a midrange laptop, not a media center desktop or workstation.