rMBP early 2013 vs late 2014

[Ahmed S]

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen,

So I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013) 2.4 GHz Intel Core i7 w/ 16GB Ram. For over a year, I've been running in in "Scaled Resolution Mode", and I've been connecting it to a Thunderbolt Display's power. After a while, the laptop started heating up, a lot. Eventually, it randomly gets slower, memory usage gets unexpectedly high even when I'm not running anything much really. For example, Mail.App with iCloud and 2 Gmail accounts with hundreds of thousands of emails in them would drive the computer nuts in memory and heat.

I think that it is my mistake for running it in Scaled Resolution mode for so long and I may have just permanently shortened it's life and negatively affected it's performance, but I'm not sure.

Now, if I run something as simple as Photoshop, Coda, or VMWare for long periods of time, it just gets to point of where's it's unusable until I quit all those applications.

Also Safari randomly slows things down drastically, and unexplainably. I only have 2 Addons in Safari, 1Password & AdBlockPlus.

At any given moment, it's using 10 to 13 GB of memory:


I admit that I use it for a lot of work stuff for at least 18~20 hours per day, every day, and said work stuff could be coding in Coda, working in Photoshop, 24x7x365 multiple SSH connections in terminal etc..., and at any given moment I have Safari and Chrome open with multiple tabs.

Furthermore, I wonder if the power connection from the Thunderbolt display may have also caused some internal damage.... I am saying that because my Mid 2013 MacBook Air seldom experiences any slowness, and I use it almost as often as I use the rMBP. However, it is seldom connected to the Thunderbolt display and never connected to the Thunderbolt display power. Meanwhile, connecting the rMBP to the Thunderbolt display will heat it up, badly. Notice the temperature here, and the CPU running at full speed:



That all being said, I think I may need a more powerful rMBP. The 5K iMac with 32 GB Ram is an ideal computer for me, but I need the portability of the rMBP as I move around a lot, from the office to the living room to Starbucks etc... And I often have to work while on the road.

Now, my question is: Does any of you have a late 2014 rMBP with the 2.8 GHz Processor that boosts up to 4 GHz? If yes, how do you like it? Is it significantly faster than the 2013 rMBP? I'd assume it's faster as it has a more powerful processor. For those of you who has it, how do you like it? Is it ready for heavy-duty?

If anyone can give me some insight on what I'm experiencing with my current rMBP, that would be wonderful!

Cheers!


Edit: Sorry for posting in the wrong forum... It was 4-ish in the morning!

 

[Just_Me_D]

Your current device should be more than sufficient for the work you mentioned, however, using it for 18 to 20 hours everyday is a lot. How often does the fan come on? How many apps do you have open simultaneously?

 

[Ahmed S]

Hi,

Well, I can't help using it for so many hours, I work that much every day... Also using the scaled resolution was not very helpful.

As for Apps being open simultaneously, I have anywhere between 7 and 14, that includes at times Coda, Transmit, Photoshop, and two or three browsers. I sometimes have VMWare Fusion with a Windows VM running at times.

However, I have been able to track down that Google Chrome makes the CPU and RAM go berserk, at least on the rMBP. The MBA has no problem with Chrome. Opera is a little less of a resource hog than Chrome, but still not as easy on the CPU as Safari 8. I do however need a secondary browser to run all the time... There aren't many options except for Chrome, Opera, and FireFox which are all a resource hog one way or another it seems. This is why I'm considering the higher-end rMBP.

 

[Ahmed S]

@Karenkcoulter

Well, buying a new Mac has been planned anyway as I need more local storage for my work and for storing virtual machines etc... Also with the Intel Iris Pro Graphics and NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M with 2GB of GDDR5, it's idea for graphics work.

As for Canary, I'll give it a shot and see if that helps.


Meanwhile, if anyone owns the 2014 rMBP with the 2.8 to 4 GHz CPU and the Iris Pro graphics card, can they tell me whether or not it's significantly faster than the 2013 version?