I guess my next question is how much of a difference in performance would the dedicated graphics card be? Don't know the ins and outs of hardware like most here. Won't really play games on it.
Hey Ganz, welcome to the forum.
There are a lot of answers for your questions, but really need to know more about what software you will want to use before a accurate answer can be given.
See Photoshop has been using GPU rendering for a long while, however just past few months with the release of Lightroom 6/CC, it also now uses the built in GPU. While the debate is still strong on how much better performing if any Lightroom is now since it uses your computer GPU, the fact is it isn't any slower. Most people that currently notice the boost are those using 5k displays. However keep in mind performance boost will likely come with new updates. That said, I still have no idea what software you will want to use, so I will not dig any deeper into this.
Also you may want to use iMovie or Final Cut Pro, both will use all of you systems resources to speed up and FCP will respond and encode faster using a dedicated GPU, however it still performs amazing well compared to other movie software, GPU or not. On my system for example I can encode a average 10min video clip in just under 2mins, a heavily edited 10min clip using green screen, multiple angles, external audio and transitions with adjustments in about 6min. So you can see FCP just works great.
In the end, for the money you will want the better GPU. Intels integrated crap is just that, crap.. I just honestly can not see how they have never been able to make a reasonable video card since i can remember. Even their on-board GPU options from the 90s was crap. Even my system while very good over all, its the GPU that will end up causing me to get a new MBP next summer.
