Graphics Card Differences?

[Caleb Reynolds]

I'm about to buy a new Macbook Pro...budget is 3k so I was going to get a 13in with 512SSD 8g ram
or a 15in set up the same way. The big difference is the 13in has the intel 3000 and the 15in has the AMD 512mg. Also the smaller ones a duo core instead of a quad core.

I will be editing on an external monitor most of the time except when visiting a client. The question is, should I spring for the higher price of the 15in?

Also, this mac will be running Adobe suite also. Thanks!

[Craig Terott]

The difference between quad and dual is major.

With no effort, in about 1 minute of searching I can find a Crucial 512SSD for about $500 less than what Apple charges. And swapping out the MacBook drives is real easy.

[Caleb Reynolds]

Yea...I found that I won't be able to edit 4k in the future with a card with anything less than the AMD 500 and I have determined I will buy the bigger 15in with the standard drive and buy a Crucial or OWS drive and put in 15gig ram.

Though I don't see myself editing 4k anytime soon, I may run across it with a client at some point.

Thanks!

[Thomas Smet]

Any reason why you want the SSD?

You would be better off getting a 17" now and using a much cheaper external raid for editing.

SSD's are nice but they will do nothing to help your editing or rendering unless you plan on putting your material on the same OS drive.

For what you would pay for a $500GB SSD you could buy the 4TB Promise Pegasus thunderbolt raid with equal speeds.

Is booting up within 15 or 20 seconds really that important?

[Caleb Reynolds]

No.

I couldv'e sworn the reviews that I found said that rendering and/or overall NLE performance was improved by the SSD. But is thats not true, I would rather have a raid 0 hd set up.

So this is what you have found correct?
Also, why the 17in? I could buy the Pegasus with the 15in. Or do you mean, I may as well get more screen real estate instead of buying an SSD?


Thank you!

[Ben Fullerton]

Never pay Apple for HD or RAM upgrade. It's usually worth it to pay for upgrades in processor. But HD and RAM are so cheap and easy to do yourself versus what Apple wants for hte upgrade, that it's never worth it. Buy the computer with the lowest HD and RAM options possible, and then upgrade them yourself. It doesn't even void your warranty. Apple wants $200 for the 8gb upgrade, but I just upgraded mine for $60 and 5 minutes; and they want $1,100 for the 512gb SSD, but as someone already said, you can find one or $500.

Spring for the options with the best processor, then upgrade the rest on your own. And the SSD will speed things up quite a bit, especially boot up and app launching. Get a smaller one, and just run all your operations and scratching disking on that, and then use an external for storage. The new MBPs have Thunderbolt, and you should take advantage of it.

[Thomas Smet]

Originally Posted by Caleb Reynolds

No.

I couldv'e sworn the reviews that I found said that rendering and/or overall NLE performance was improved by the SSD. But is thats not true, I would rather have a raid 0 hd set up.

So this is what you have found correct?
Also, why the 17in? I could buy the Pegasus with the 15in. Or do you mean, I may as well get more screen real estate instead of buying an SSD?


Thank you!

Yeah I meant get a larger computer with more options for the same price. You will appreciate the larger screen and updated graphics card in the 17". The 17" is also the only system with an express card slot. Now with thunderbolt that isn't as important anymore but sometimes it is nice to have the option if you need it.

SSD's are faster, no doubt about it. My point point however is how they typically get used. Most people buy smaller SSD's for the OS drive and use regular drives for data. This is fine for music and photos but for video it will not help you at all. When you render video you are typically only touching the drive the video files are on. You will also touch the drive you are rendering to. If both of these are regular drives then the SSD doesn't help you one bit.

Like what was said SSD help a lot in boot up time and application launch but how important is that to you? I myself typically get into work at 8:30, setup my MBP and once it is running launch Photoshop, Flash and a couple other programs. These programs usually do not get closed again until 5:30 so the entire day I am working I hardly touch my OS drive other then random files here and there. Other then bragging rights as to how fast my system starts up I see very little real world use for a SSD.

This all changes of course if you have a larger SSD and actually plan on storing data on it. Video on a SSD would scream although typically with the formats we shoot today your cpu and gpu are bottlenecks long before the storage. Even a 5400 RPM laptop drive can run at 60MB/S + and AVCHD video is no larger then 4MB/S. If you convert to ProRes you need a bit more drive speed but more and more we are going to start seeing people use FCPX with native formats. In order to actually use a SSD for editing you have to have one large enough to hold video. 1 hour of ProRes video takes up 75GB. For the same price of a SSD capable of dealing with hours worth of footage you can get a raid that will run data just as fast for the same price or cheaper.

[Caleb Reynolds]

Thank you very much for everyones responses. I know what I'm getting now!