Aperture, CS3 and Games on a 13" MBP

[alwaysg5]

I'm in the market to purchase a new portable Mac as I'm still using my 13" White Core Duo 2GHz MacBook with 2GB of RAM and the original integrated Intel graphics that Apple chose from three years ago. An average user may not have trouble with these specs. I am attending university in the fall, however, as a Fine Arts major with a concentration in Photography. I've got my eyes on the 13" MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM (which I'd upgrade to 8GB after about a year or so) and a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo processor. I only have a few concerns about the machine and I'm hoping that either a current unibody MacBook or a new 13" MacBook Pro user can help me out here...

Will the 13" MBP be able to handle Photoshop CS3 and Aperture? I'll be needing these applications to edit my photos for college so this is important to me. I know the CPU is strong, but is the GPU strong enough for these apps? On Apple.com's Aperture page, the Nvidia 9400M GPU doesn't seem to be listed as a compatible chip.

Also, this is not a life or death concern, but I'm just curious. Will Spore or The Sims 3 play on the 13" MacBook Pro's Nvidia 9400M GPU as well? I didn't see the chip listed under those compatibility specs either.

Thanks to anyone with any input It's much appreciated!

 

[MADMAXX]

Your existing machine will gadly run both let alone the new ones. I have a blackbook the same age as yours dual core 2.0 and 2gig o Ram and a C2D 2.2 with 4gig o ram. Both run aperture and CS for my photography business with ease. Only thing I did was run a usb drive for storage and the on board HDD for cache.

 

[alwaysg5]

Does Aperture or Photoshop CS3 depend on the GPU much for performance?

 

[Cave Man]

Aperture, yes; PSCS3, no. PSCS4 does to some extent and you can expect it to do so more in the future. The biggest issues for you are (1) camera image size and bit depth and (2) do you shoot RAW. Those will have the biggest impact - and hopefully future updates of Aperture and PS will use OpenCL to increase performance.

 

[alwaysg5]

Cave Man, I do shoot in RAW. But not constantly. And image size varies. Overall, do you feel I'd get away with the 9400M as my GPU?

 

[Cave Man]

Cave Man, I do shoot in RAW. But not constantly. And image size varies. Overall, do you feel I'd get away with the 9400M as my GPU?

Unless you're using one of those 30mb Hassy cameras, you should be good. Just remember, that until OpenCL in 10.6 is available we won't know how much of the gpu will get leveraged. Your computer has a two-core processor, but the 9400m's gpu has 16 cores. That's a lot of horsepower that could be used provided Aperture and PS are written to do so.

 

[MADMAXX]

Im so waiting for the OpenCL launch. My new Mac pro has 3GFX cards in it! :O

 

[alwaysg5]

Thanks for all the input guys. As of right now, my main DSLR is a Canon 40D. My film cameras' shots don't require much editing.