MacBook Pro 2017 vs 2018 / cores vs RAM

[iMore Question]

Hi.

I'm an average user - 15-20 tabs on Chrome, Excel, Mail, VLC, some Photoshop editing from time to time, and one game which I play on lowest settings. I can buy right now one of two options. For my purposes, which of the following would be better? (I know there are more ideals variations, but I'm asking specifically of these two, which is the better one)

- MacBook Pro 13 2017 with i5 Dual Core 3.1GHz and 16GB of RAM (Iris 650)
OR
- MacBook Pro 13 2018 with i5 Quad Core 2.3GHz and 8GB of RAM (Iris 655)

Thanks for your time

 

[Damien_Eternal]

What it sounds like you are doing is going utilize RAM more than CPU, so I would go with the 2017 with the 16GB RAM. Even Photoshop, unless you are doing some really heavy effects, is going to hit RAM more than CPU.

 

[Just_Me_D]

I will almost always take more RAM than CPU speed and in this situation, I’d definitely go with the 2017 model containing twice the RAM as the 2018 model.

 

[imwjl]

Virtualization comes to mind with possibly needing more cores. I do it (VMware) with 2 and 4 core Macs and the 2 core laptop limits what I can give to virtual machines.

If you already use a Mac you can use the Activity Monitor program and top in a terminal window to know where you have or might have performance bottlenecks. As the senior IT admin I get a lot of requests for power and features that come from clueless people so on occasion I see people spending money on the wrong resource. Assessing exactly what's needed ahead of time can pay big time.