Are upgrades good value for money on macbook retina?

I checked out Geekbench scores for 15" macbook retinas, and despite having different levels of specifications, their geekbench scores are surprisingly similar. Apart from being able to store more data on it, what is the point of these upgrades?! Am I missing something?!

What upgrades?

I meant at the time of purchase, such as processor and RAM

General rule of thumb - always buy as much processor as you can afford.

What are you going to be using it for?

I was going for the 2.6ghz i7 instead of the 2.3. The 2.7 is £240 more than the 2.6, so isnt that much of a benefit given the outlay.

I am a mature student and often have 7-8 websites open simultaneously whilst I word process. I will keep the macbook for at least 5 years, which is why I was contemplating a well specced 15" retina. I currently use windows, which I detest

Any of the lower end dual core i5 chips will handle what you are describing.

The 2.6 quad i7 should keep you going for 5 years with what we currently know about CPUs and already a hefty price jump from the 2.3. The 2.7 is for people that just have to have the best they can get when they buy a computer.

You're getting 8 GB RAM with the jump in CPU. No reason to pay Apple to bump that up any higher for your usage.

The SSD option would easily decrease boot times by 50% and significantly in application start up and data read times if you're keeping say large photo libraries, etc. If you've never had an SSD, the HD is fine.

Thank you for your advice, Bobtomay. I'll go for the 2.6ghz, 16gb ram, and the 512ssd.