2009 Mac Pro to 2011 Macbook Pro?

[thriii]

Been wondering if this is a good idea or not and I'm going to be moving soon which is why I'm thinking about this in the first place. My computer would be under the most strain for digital painting and photoshop crashes with some brushes even with 6GB.. so here are the specs:


Mac Pro(What I have now)
2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (1 Processor)
ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
6GB DDR3 1066MHz
80GB SSD Drive (Boot)
2X 1TB Drives in Raid 0 (Data)
2TB Time Machine

15" Macbook Pro (What I might switch to)
2.3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
Intel HD Graphics 3000/AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1GB DDR5 (is this right? it has both?)
8GB 1333MHz (Is it possible to get more ram somewhere else?)
128GB SSD Drive (Boot)
??? Maybe a Thunderbolt Drive for external?
??? Time Machine

A bit hesitant to do this since I went from a 2007 Macbook Pro C2D to my Desktop but of course that was a noticeable difference in power.. hopefully this isnt that much of a difference or maybe even an increase..

So how do these 2 systems compare? Will I notice the difference in processor power? is there an external that would allow the speed of what I had before from my internals?

 

[ViciousShadow21]

i believe photoshop can only utilize 3GB of Ram any way but the i7 should handle PS a lot better than the core duo. i say it looks like a great upgrade for what you are looking to do.

as for thunderbolt, the technology is coming along very well. pretty soon you will see lots of different peripherals i believe. the problem may be that one will only have one thunderbolt port

 

[asdf542]

CPU: Faster in the MacBook Pro (roughly twice as fast)
GPU: Faster in the Mac Pro (yes there are two GPU's in the MacBook Pro, one for battery life and another for power)
RAM: Faster and more in the MacBook Pro (yes you can upgrade this yourself and buy it elsewhere, you can get up to 16 GB but it's expensive as hell at the moment)
SSD: More storage in the MacBook Pro
HDD: External Firewire 800 drives would be your best and fastest bet right now until Thunderbolt peripherals hit the market.
Time Machine: See above

 

[Freyqq]

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CPU: Faster in the MacBook Pro (roughly twice as fast)
GPU: Faster in the Mac Pro (yes there are two GPU's in the MacBook Pro, one for battery life and another for power)
RAM: Faster and more in the MacBook Pro (yes you can upgrade this yourself and buy it elsewhere, you can get up to 16 GB but it's expensive as hell at the moment)
SSD: More storage in the MacBook Pro
HDD: External Firewire 800 drives would be your best and fastest bet right now until Thunderbolt peripherals hit the market.
Time Machine: See above

Agreed but note that the gpu is at least twice as fast in the Mac pro. Basically, if you game or like multiple big screens then the Mac pro is better. Otherwise, the MacBook pro wins.

 

[thriii]

i believe photoshop can only utilize 3GB of Ram any way but the i7 should handle PS a lot better than the core duo. i say it looks like a great upgrade for what you are looking to do.

as for thunderbolt, the technology is coming along very well. pretty soon you will see lots of different peripherals i believe. the problem may be that one will only have one thunderbolt port

im not sure how this works.. but i did notice my computer crashing less when i added more RAM.. usually crashing occurs when the direction setting is turned on and the brush moves around/rotates.. so I'm not sure how t he 3GB limit works. is there anywhere I can read more about this?

And with thunderbolt is there no peripherals available at the moment? I have the 2 Caviar blacks in my Mac Pro I was thinking about using as externals.. dont think they would be set up in Raid 0 though.. I use a partition from both as a scratch disk for photoshop (I think 50GB)

CPU: Faster in the MacBook Pro (roughly twice as fast)
GPU: Faster in the Mac Pro (yes there are two GPU's in the MacBook Pro, one for battery life and another for power)
RAM: Faster and more in the MacBook Pro (yes you can upgrade this yourself and buy it elsewhere, you can get up to 16 GB but it's expensive as hell at the moment)
SSD: More storage in the MacBook Pro
HDD: External Firewire 800 drives would be your best and fastest bet right now until Thunderbolt peripherals hit the market.
Time Machine: See above

Thx! only thing I'm really worried about is the GPU.. I tried looking at macmall to see what options they had for more RAM but couldnt find any

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Agreed but note that the gpu is at least twice as fast in the Mac pro. Basically, if you game or like multiple big screens then the Mac pro is better. Otherwise, the MacBook pro wins.

I'm not going to be gaming so thats fine.. but willthis affect me when i use photoshop?