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But still using DDR2 667 instead of 800 is not.

It is only a Laptop... Every other "high spec" laptop I've seen is about three inches thick and radiates more heat than the Death Star. DDR2-667 is fast enough - especially considering that the real bottleneck is the hard disk. 800 RAM with a 5400RPM disk would make near enough no difference to overall performance other than a few extra FPS in a game.

Going by that logic why even go with the SR platform with faster bus speeds?? Hardrives will always be "the" bottleneck. Anyone shellling out this kind of money for a high end notebook and does not switch out the HD for a faster one 7200+ before even booting for the first time has got to have a screw loose. More ram you have, less HD access you have, faster system performance you have. These are high end pro machines with matching "pro prices" with the latest and greatest. DDR2 667 is not the latest nor the greatest.

According to a lot of the test I've seen, 7200rpm drives don't perform noticeably better for random access IO.

Anyone shellling out this kind of money for a high end notebook and does not switch out the HD for a faster one 7200+ before even booting for the first time has got to have a screw loose.

So,
* Everyone who do not have the technical inclination to replace the HD is crazy.
* Everyone who do not want to spend extra money for 1800 more RPMs is crazy.
* Everyone who simply lack the desire to do so are crazy.
* . . .

:-( What a terrible thing to say.

And also, in technical aspect, sufficient RAM will minimize thrashing so a jump from 5400 to 7200 RPM will make a very small difference if RAM size is 2GB.

Also a 7200 rpm harddrive will use more electricity and be warmer than a 5400 rpm one.

"

How do you figure my post has no relevance when the previous poster says 677 + 5400 is enough and that HD are the bottlenecks??

If HD is slow then having more RAM is going to help you out the less you access said slow device. How is that irrelevant?

"

OK maybe I should just retype everything into a single post since you can't seem to make sense of anything.

All I was arguing is that they should have used 800 instead of 677, I did not bring up storage.

Then someone said that "it's only a laptop so 677 is plenty fast because the hard drive is the bottleneck". I merely stated that you could help yourself out by increasing the amount of ram installed. I was not talking about ram speed anymore but amount.

Anyhow if you want to justify your $2500+ with "good enough" or "fast enough" when you could have gotten more bang for your buck then that's your business. All those spec sheets for the SR platform came out way before DDRII800 was out so no one knows but I'd like to think that apple would stay on top of this stuff and "know" these things.

Still a great machine and I'm ordering my 15" 2.4 tonight then hopping over to crucial and getting me some DDRII-800 x 4GB

As people have pointed out, nobody is shipping DDR2-800 in notebooks, and it's not even clear that Santa Rosa supports it. Moreover, the loss in battery life probably wouldn't be worth it anyway in a laptop (DDR2-800 is notoriously power hungry).

As for the drive, the 160 5400 RPM model is quite reasonable given the price point. Dell seems to be shipping a 80 GB 7200 RPM disk by default on its high-end machine (M1710), but the 160 GB 5400 RPM disk is actually a $100 upgrade. And again, I'd rather have the extra battery life in a laptop, especially one with 2GB of RAM.

It's interesting to compare Dell's prices to Apple's in this case. A tricked-out E1505 is less than $200 cheaper than the lowest-end MBP, but has a 200 MHz slower processor, the older 945M chipset, no LED backlighting, and a much slower graphics card (Radeon X1400 versus GeForce 8600M). At the super-high end, the M1710 is $600 more than the top-end 17" MBP, and you still get a slightly slower processor, no LED-backlighting, and a substantially slower graphics card!

Edited 2007-06-05 17:15

@Lambda
Actually, you're paying for the engineering of the hardware (as well as some for the sofware, I suppose) so the word 'tax' is not appropriate because it would suggest that Apple's hardware doesn't have any added value compared to a similarly spec'd notebook from another vendor.

It does however have the added value of better engineering. This is why, for instance, their notebooks are thinner, quieter yet very rugged.

(let alone the fact that the aren't many similarly spec'd notebooks to be found in the wild yet)

Edited 2007-06-05 20:27

Better engineering my ass. I would rather take a Lenovo than an Apple if it was delivered with OS X.

But yes, you get the software. I won't argue if it's more worth or not than Vista thought.

For the HDD, is it better to do it in Apple store or does a 160GB 7200 rpm disk cost less if you just buy it yourself? What 7200 rpm 2.5" discs are the fastest currently?

Intel makes the chipset, not Apple. According to [1] the chipset supports DDR2 533 or DDR2 667, unfortunately not DDR2 800. Perhaps we'll have to wait until Penryn before we'll see DDR2 800.

[1] http://download.intel.com/design/mobile/datashts/31627301.pdf

Edited 2007-06-05 15:48

i'm sorry, but several sources have stated today, that the new macbook pro is using the intel "santa rosa" platform, which indeed supports DDR2-800.

Did you see the pdf document I linked? If not, check it out. It is the datasheet for the Santa Rosa (i.e. Mobile Intel 965 Express) chipset, in which is states that only DDR2 533 and DDR2 667 are supported. We can hope, however, that the chipset indeed supports higher speed memory than Intel says, but don't bet on it.

If you're going to go by any source today, I suggest believing Intel on this one ;-)

Depends on if there are no speed improvement or not, I guess the FSB on the Intel CPUs and their external memory controllers are to slow anyway... Or something, or 800MHz just cost more.

eh - the new screen apparently will only extend your battery time, and unless your are a design/production professional where every tick of the clock brings you closer to a deadline, you probably aren't missing out on anything important. (i bought my MBP last October and while the geek in me would like the latest/greatest... I feel pretty content)

Look at it this way, a year from now you will see bigger improvements in all aspects of the machine - you can sell your current one and look forward to your new beauty.

I know that feeling. I bought a Macbook in August 2006. I lived in fear for months hoping they wouldn't update the laptops

I know, I know, it's sad and I should get help for it ... But so do you! And probably everyone who reads this site.

Unless the added value of Leopard is worth more to you than the longer-in-the-toothedness of the MBP at that moment, of course

Thought of course ATI/AMDs driver will get better now, so both would probably be ok in the future. Intel 965 GM or whatever it's called is slooow, thought 70% faster than 945.

I did a quick search for "15 inch LCD native resolution" and the most common native resolution is 1024x768. There's one 1280x800 which I guess is widescreen.

So the MBP's 1440x900 isn't so bad. Apple is able to increase the specs and keep the prices roughly the same as last rev. I don't think they could have done that *and* put in better LCD panels.

I did a quick search for "15 inch LCD native resolution" and the most common native resolution is 1024x768. There's one 1280x800 which I guess is widescreen.

So the MBP's 1440x900 isn't so bad. Apple is able to increase the specs and keep the prices roughly the same as last rev. I don't think they could have done that *and* put in better LCD panels.

It's not bad, but not spectacular considering I had a Dell D800 (about 3 years old) that had 1920x1200 native on a 15.4" widescreen.

It was small, but wow....once you got used to it, that kind of real estate on a 15" is NICE!

While for me personally I would mostly agree as my eyesight is quite good, many (if not most) people would really struggle with reading text at 1920x1200.

What would sell me would be to keep the existing resolution, but to make it possible to run 2 external monitors spanned in twinview (or whatever nvidia calls it for mac)>

Don't get me wrong, they already have my business, I have a 1.83 core duo mbp, but if they offered that feature I would buy a new one anyway.

I must admit though that I am in a somewhat unusual situtation where I use my laptop for very elaborate media presentations where I must plug into external video mixers with multiple video / camera feeds and what not.

i my situtation an adaptor that would allow me to run dual external monitors off of the existing dvi port would be fantastic.

Edited 2007-06-06 05:39

It's certainly better than 1280x800, which is standard for 15 inch displays, but these are professional grade laptops, and most professionals I know who have the option go for the higher resolution (Dell, Lenovo). I'm crazy about desktop real estate, and I hunger for more. Pixels! Pixels!!!

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