Buying Advice on mid-2009 Unibody 15" MBP

[Cottonsworth]

My friend has a late-2006 MBP, 2.33ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, 256mb ATi X1600 video card. She is looking to purchase a mid-2009 Unibody 2.53ghz 15" MBP but I noticed it has a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory, the same graphics card as both the regular Macbook and MacBook Air. I was a bit surprised by that since I thought one of the stronger selling points of the Pro line was a much better dedicated video card.

She does a lot of Final Cut work, will the mid-2009 offer a significant performance difference over her late-2006 MBP? There is only a minor bump in CPU speed and the video ram is the same. I would appreciate it if someone could educate me on this matter. Thanks!

 

[fcortese]

If you are looking at what it should cost if you decide to buy . go here:

http://www.mac2sell.net/

 

[Cottonsworth]

If you are looking at what it should cost if you decide to buy . go here:

http://www.mac2sell.net/

Thanks for the link but I'm asking about performance difference between the two machines.

 

[alust2013]

The 15 and 17 both have the 9600m as well, which is a dedicated card, you just have to manually change. The processor really won't make much of a difference, as it's only a 200MHz bump, but I believe the unibody will take considerably more RAM, so that could be helpful (8GB vs 3GB)

 

[dan5.5]

the 2.53 only has the 9400.
The 2.66 and higher has two cards (9400 Integrated & 9600 Dedicated)

 

[Cottonsworth]

Thanks for all the advice. I actually created a new thread because I did more research and actually have a more specific question that I think would be better addressed with a different title.

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=11013097#post11013097