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Another should I buy now, or wait MBP 17" - violin effects on stage.

M

madfiddler

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 8, 2009
8
0
Warwickshire, UK
Hey,

I've finally decided to make the move to using a laptop on stage, running effect software for my electric violin.

I also have a pretty powerful MIDI system at home which is why I'm contemplating the 17" MBP, 3.06ghz, 4gig, 500g 7200rpm to replace my WinXP PC.

However, having read here, am wondering if it's worth waiting until around Feb next year.

Thoughts on this please, specifically on the 17". Surely quad core is just around the corner?

Thank alot,

m
 
Mmmm ok thanks :)

My buying philosophy when building PC's has been to spend up to £200 (ukp) on the processor, and I can't believe I'm thinking of spending £240 upgrading from a 2.8 to a 3.06 processor. However, as you can't upgrade the processors, what else can you do.

I'm more thinking of waiting now. I really want to make this move, and I believe when I have started, I'll end up replacing everything else in the house.... patience is a virtue ;)

Cheers,

m
 
A bit of an update - I ended up getting a MBP 15 on Ebay to keep me going. 2.4 dual core, 4 gig ram, 160g driver and Tiger for £650. I've bought Snow Leopard, and am going to replace the drive pretty soon.

Really happy with it. It'll do what I need it to do on stage with the violin, but am still desiring a full spec 17" as the main music computer.... lets see :)
 
l.a.rossmann said:
You will never be in a situation where the 266 MHz is the difference between productivity and fail.
Click to expand...

Unless it's the difference between the first and third gen iPhones/iPod Touches. I haven't used the newer ones, but the original iPod Touch sure is slow.

For the MBP, the 3.06 is about 9% faster than the 2.8 for single threaded tasks and up to 18% faster for multithreaded tasks. You won't notice a difference unless you are encoding video all day. It would be better to get a SSD instead.
 
Although I too would suggest holding off since updates are supposedly right around the corner, the MBP you listed will do just fine.

The one in my sig runs all kinds of stuff flawlessly such as:

Maya
ZBrush
Logic
Corel Painter
Photoshop
Unity 3D
Cinema 4D
XCode

and many others.
 
m85476585 said:
For the MBP, the 3.06 is about 9% faster than the 2.8 for single threaded tasks and up to 18% faster for multithreaded tasks.
Click to expand...

Maybe I am looking at this wrong as it is late at night but I am pretty sure it is 9% faster for multithreaded tasks too, you can't just add 9% plus 9% you have to divide it by the 2 cores and then you get 9%.
Think of it this way if somehow one cores was 3.06 and the other was 2.8, you would have one core that is 9% faster but the other core would be 0% faster. The task overall is not 9% faster because only 50% of the task is 9% faster, really it would only be 4.5% faster.

I hope that made sense.
 
reallynotnick said:
Maybe I am looking at this wrong as it is late at night but I am pretty sure it is 9% faster for multithreaded tasks too, you can't just add 9% plus 9% you have to divide it by the 2 cores and then you get 9%.
Think of it this way if somehow one cores was 3.06 and the other was 2.8, you would have one core that is 9% faster but the other core would be 0% faster. The task overall is not 9% faster because only 50% of the task is 9% faster, really it would only be 4.5% faster.

I hope that made sense.
Click to expand...

I think you are right.

Benchmarks seem to back this up, assuming at least some of the applications in the Tom's Hardware 2009 desktop CPU chart are multithreaded. I looked at a 2.93 vs 3.06 quad core i7, and all the application times were less than 4% different between the two.

The only case where the percent speed difference isn't directly determined by clock speed is going to the 2.8GHz CPU on the 15", where the L2 cache increases from 3 to 6mb. That won't make a huge difference, though.
 
You'll get negligible latency with a processor that fast anyway so I'd say if you're happy with the current model then go for it.

If you want a hand with any audio related topics then you can send me a pm, just finishing a degree on the subject.

Personally, I'd wait so you get the most for your money, but I wouldn't say you'd regret the current model.
 
I presume you are using an interface.

Congrats on injecting new life into the "should I wait?" thread!
 
Yeah - I was going to be using the Native Instruments Rig Kontrol 3 pedals as the audio interface, but at 48khz the latency is around 8ms which is still very playable, but switching in High Quality mode then starts to cause the processor issues.

The Core Audio drivers seem to give MUCH better results, so am going to have a play around and see which is best.

DSP power on the audio card really isn't much use to me unfortunately.

In the long run, I can see myself running Mainstage with Guitar Rig amd Ableton (if it will run in Mainstage) as a looper - that would be an interesting concept, but how many midi controller pedals would I need, lol,

m
 
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