Which upgrade to get?

Hello guys, i am looking at purchasing a MBP 15". However, i am having a very hard time deciding which model to get.

For starters, i know the i7 processor is more than i need. And can easily make do with the i5 (2.4-2.93) or (2.53-3.06). In fact i won't even consider the i5-540m as a worthy upgrade.

However my question pertains to overall performance. Due to money's sake, i feel comfortable only doing 1 upgrade.

The two upgrades are:

Momentus XT Hybrid Drive or SSD or the upgrade to the I7 model and a standard 7200 RPM Drive. (256 mb vs 512 mb) graphics card.

My question is what do you guys suggest upgrading?

I recently upgraded my desktops GPU from a 128mb to a 512mb and i honestly saw little upgrade (probably due to clock speeds).

But anyways, do you guys think i will see a better performance upgrade with the SSD or Hybrid on the I5 or the graphics card on the I7?

Yes, i know you don't buy a mac for gaming; however, i like gaming on a laptop and i don't need full blown max graphics to do it. I just want playable FPS.

Also, will i even seen a performance increase with a Hybrid over the 7200 rpm drive? or Should i just go SSD?

Thanks for reading guys.

 

1. If I remember the reviews right, the Seagate hybrid drive can show 50-60% performance increase over the standard 7200 drive but still 40-150% slower than SSD depending on SSD model. The downside of SSD in OS X is that TRIM is only supported (for the moment, we can hope this changes) in Windows so it is possible that over time SSD performance will decrease as bad blocks accumulate in the SSD as happens in all flash media - TRIM helps keep this problem from affecting performance.

2. Buffers in gpu only offer a modest increase in overall performance - clock speeds, shader units, etc are 90+% of gpu capability. But paying for the i7 isn't going to improve things since the i5 and i7 will perform nearly the same for gaming.

3. Playable FPS depends first on the title and second how far you're willing to turn down the details in order to get 30-40.

 

I visisted a mac store yesterday, and the manager suggest i install an OCZ Vertex if i wanted an SSD and he also suggested a Hybrid if i wanted to save the money. Two after market upgrades, and he highly suggested i don't have Apple install an SSD for me.

And i'm not 100% sure that the 120 GB's will suit my uses (Room mainly).

 

The SSD will definitely offer more everyday performance benefits. But as I think you realized, SSDs are quite expensive ($/GB). I think you'll really like the speed of your system with an SSD, but you have to figure out if you can live with the lower storage capacity.