13" MBP 2010 or 2011 for video work?

[fishcough]

I'll be doing mostly FCE work with HD footage (moving footage around, assembling rough cuts, etc.) with the heavy lifting happening on a bigger machine. Also planning to hook to an external monitor.

I was about to pull the trigger on a new 2010 with a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. Then I found that a new 2011 with a 2.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 is only $30 more.

Would the "better" video card and the speed of the thunderbolt port (I'll be moving footage to and from an external drive) make up for the slightly less powerful processor? Or, is that even accurate? Is the i5 far and away better than the core 2 duo?

Thanks very much

 

[simsaladimbamba]

The i5 is faster than the C2D, as it has two threads per core (the C2D has only one thread per core), thus you have up to four virtual cores. If you transcode a lot on the 13", the i5 will be better. As TB is limited to the speed of the HDD or HDD, it might not be that much gain, unless you use RAID with TB ports.

 

[fishcough]

Thanks very much. I can't figure out why the price is so close. Would seem if the processor was much better, the 2011 would be more than $40 more, or the 2010 would be much cheaper by now.

 

[adnoh]

go for the 2011 model

 

[FOX160]

Dont know if this helps but i use the 13inch i5 base model and is fine with
my Contour 1080HD head cam and using Aperture 3.

I was advised by Apple that the 2010 13inch version would not be good enough and would have had to buy the 15 inch base MBP at the time before the 2011 updated laptops.