# faster processors and battery life



## dtbain (Sep 9, 2014)

Sorry, I've asked a very similar question before but today is decision day and I want to ask about a slightly different aspect of the issue:

I have a 15 inch rMPG with 500GB ssd and 2.5 processor a month ago.  It is much faster than my old computer and plenty fast.  I was always going to buy two, one for my wife, one for me, so she's getting that machine, and I am about to buy a second rMBP and am trying to decide whether to get the slightly faster 2.8 processor (both the 2.5 and 2.8 are quad core).

MAIN QUESTION:  will the 2.8 use more battery than the 2.5, or does the machine throttle it back so that it won't use more (perhaps even using less?)?  If there were ANY risk that the faster processor would reduce battery life than I think I definitely wouldn't get it, since I suspect you'll all tell me (rightly) that the faster processor will make very little difference to my workflow.

MUCH LESS IMPORTANT:  While the rMBP has been plenty fast, just occasionally there's a pause while it applies an edit (e.g. increase in whites, or something like that) or builds a preview.  This very slightly makes me think, "IF and when I get a new camera and produce larger, higher res images, this rMBP might cope less well than the 2.8 would have.  On the other hand, I am using LR on an external drive (so I can share my drive and catalog with my wife), and it might very well be that those very short lags (a second or less in the case of building some previews, and a couple of seconds, very occasioanlly, when applying an edit) are due to that, i.e. using an external drive, rather than the processor not being as fast as it might be.  If that's probably the story, then I won't get the faster processor and will just tolerate the lags, since they're only occasional and very short and a price worth paying for sharing my catalog.

Any thoughts welcome, esp about battery life.

All best

d


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## Victoria Bampton (Sep 9, 2014)

I'm not sure on the battery life, sorry.  That might need a mac forum.

On the processing, the speed of the edits updating on the screen is partly down to the preview size.  If you shrink the window, it should be faster.  The time to load the file will slow down slightly with larger files, because they take a little longer to read off the hard drive.


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