2.2 GHz Merom vs 2.1 GHz Penryn

karen731karen731
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Can anyone please advise if it would be better to purchase a refurbished macbook with 2.2 GHz Merom processor vs. a brand new macbook with the upgraded Penryn processor but it's 2.1 GHz?



The refurbished model is cheaper and has a 'more GHz' but older processor?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,326moderator
    Personally I would get the old one. The Penryn CPU should have better battery life and it supports SSE4 optimizations that should make some things much faster but for the price difference, I'd still go for the older one. I was about to buy a refurb MBP myself because they are only £930 now and they have a really nice video card but I'm not keen on the two USB ports and still having a laptop hard drive.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    Unless money is a problem, always get the new model. If you sell it in 2 years, the resale will be higher, so the added cost will not be so much of a difference in the long run, unless you're an aggressive investor.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    I would suggest the 2.1ghz Penryn as it should run cooler.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    john.bjohn.b Posts: 2,742member
    The Merom Macbooks are crazy cheap with the availability of the new Penryn Macbooks, I bought a refurbished 2.2GHz blackbook for $1050.



    I still haven't seen a rigorous battery test comparison between the two, if the Penryn had a feature I would really want, it would have to be the lower heat output. I'm using a 2.16GHz MB now and it can get a little hot doing CPU intensive stuff with the laptop actually sitting on my lap (I wouldn't want to do video encoding wearing shorts).



    In case you didn't see the link from the homepage, the guys at Primate Labs ran some Penryn vs. Merom MacBook performance benchmarks for both the top and entry level laptops. Your experiences IRL will obviously be different but its nice to have a direct apples-to-apples (no pun intended) comparison between the different models.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    john.bjohn.b Posts: 2,742member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sunshine View Post


    Well personally I think it is better to get a brand new macbook, 2.1 GHz is quite nice also.



    For any other product I would agree with you, but the quality on the Apple refurbs is actually quite high. They probably get better QA than the NIB MacBooks you order from Amazon or MacMall or wherever. And they come with the same warranty, the same AppleCare, etc.
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