How well does Photoshop Cs6 run on the 15" Macbook Pro with 2.6gHz?

I'm currently 'in the market' for a new computer. My desktop is fine, but no longer can handle all the tasks I can toss at it for work (i.e. graphic design). I have been carefully biding my time, getting as much use out of it and my essentially crummy Paint Shop Photo x2, and I believe now for it to be the time to invest in a Mac and the newest edition of Photoshop (CS6). My question is this: Which one of the two Macbook Pro 15" will work best with it, and yet still survive through the next few series of upgrades? My boyfriend says the higher one, the 2.6gHz guy, will do just fine for what I need, I'm just chewing my nails off at the price. And no, I'm not interested in the retina display model. Suggesting it is just pointless.
Basically, I'd like to know which Macbook Pro 15", the one with 2.3gHz or 2.6gHz, will suffice for the jobs I need to do, which include all areas of graphic design and artwork (hence Photoshop), along with heavy internet usage (7-9+ tabs open at any time), Word documents or the equivalent (Pages) and any extras (iTunes, Spotify). Bonus if it can gently tolerate things such as the Sims 3 and all its expansion packs.

The nice thing about the 2.6GHz model is that it comes with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory. The 2.3GHz model only has the NVIDEO GeForuce GT 650M with 512MB of GDDR5 memory. And Photoshop will take advantage of that extra video RAM.
That said, I have an older (late 2011) 15" MBP with a 512MB video card and Photoshop CS6 (and the entire Adobe Design & Web Premium suite) works just fine. If I were you, I would buy the base 2.3GHz model with 4GB of RAM and upgrade the RAM, and possible the hard drive with a SSD, as you need it. You can upgrade your RAM yourself to 16GB and you will notice an appreciable difference in Photoshop speed. And I would recommend the RAM upgrade straightaway. You can then look at putting in a 512GB SSD for around $400 and you'll have one of the fastest machines around.
So go with the 2.3GHz and upgrade the RAM immediately. Good sources for RAM are Crucial, Corsair, etc. You'll get far more out of a RAM upgrade than you will the processor upgrade.
Clinton

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