Advice on hooking up 13" MBP to 27" display

[stevearm]

Hi all, I'd like to make the final transition to Apple and ditch my Dell desktop. I was thinking of buying a 27" cinema display and hooking up my 13" Core 2 Duo, 2.26 GHz, 4MB MBP (Snow Leopard) from a couple of years ago.

Obviously the increase in screen resolution is enormous, and I was wondering, would the graphics card in the MBP be able to handle it?

I'm a photographer, so it's basically Lightroom and Photoshop as my most graphic intensive apps. Don't play many, if any, games. Ideally I'd like the computer to feel snappy and not lag much, like my MBP currently is, is this likely with the suggested set-up above?

If there's a better suggestion, I'm all ears! Upgrading some components in my MBP for instance? I'm already thinking 500GB isn't much so hard disk will need an increase.

Thanks in advance

 

[mape2k]

Hi all, I'd like to make the final transition to Apple and ditch my Dell desktop. I was thinking of buying a 27" cinema display and hooking up my 13" Core 2 Duo, 2.26 GHz, 4MB MBP (Snow Leopard) from a couple of years ago.
Thanks in advance

4MB, man...how are you able to run Leopard at all??

Seriously, the 13" will do 2560 x 1600 resolution, the cinema has 2560 x 1440, you will be fine! If you don't do gaming on that display, everything will run smooth.

 

[djhyro]

yeah you should be fine running the 27" display.... it wouldn't really be a "pro" if it couldn't

 

[Eddyisgreat]

Ideally I'd like the computer to feel snappy and not lag much, like my MBP currently is, is this likely with the suggested set-up above?

The 13" is a nice box for sure (I have one, and a 17") but the C2D with 4 GB of ram won't crunch through hi res RAWs and apply filters at wire speed like the i7s or the beefy Mac Pros. You'll be able to do many things with no slow down at that reso, but depending on how technical you are in PS & LR, you might be twittling your thumbs on some operations.

 

[stevearm]

Oops 4GB!

Thanks for the replies so far all.

The 13" is a nice box for sure (I have one, and a 17") but the C2D with 4 GB of ram won't crunch through hi res RAWs and apply filters at wire speed like the i7s or the beefy Mac Pros. You'll be able to do many things with no slow down at that reso, but depending on how technical you are in PS & LR, you might be twittling your thumbs on some operations.

In my line of work I don't shoot in RAW or apply complex filters at all, just the basics really so it should be ok? I can't justify spending money on another MBP and certainly not a Mac Pro AND a 27" display. I'm happy with the performance on the MBP though, so are you saying it wouldn't be as fast at an increased res?

I assume slow down would be down to the processor and not any component I could upgrade?

 

[Eddyisgreat]

I assume slow down would be down to the processor and not any component I could upgrade?

Well you could always get an SSD or RAID for scratch disk purposes. More ram always helps.

But like I said it depends on what you're doing. If you're just puttering around in PS/LR (such as myself, usually), just messing around with curves, file management in LR, patch/healing etc then it'll handle it fine even at the higher res.

You start getting into issues is of course RAW processing, having multiple compositions open @ once, having extremely complex/multilayer compositions (PS), filters, running batch jobs in LR while trying to show a client some edits in PS or just multitasking in general.

So if you do none of the above then you should be all right.

 

[ohla313]

I run a 13" MBP to a 27" ACD and it runs fine. But then again I am using 8GB of RAM..But I think you will be fine.