Graphic Design, video, photography macbook retina set up

[kisakisa]

Hi Guys,

Wondering if you could help me with the best office set up for design, video / photography editing with my macbook (retina 15 inch 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB 500 gig storage).

I have looked into buying an imac but most of them are not even as fast as my buffed up laptop... running adobe programs + final cut pro and my scratch disk is full. What is the best set up?

Do I run programs off thunderbolt memory / other memory with an external monitor ?

Am I better off with another iMac?

Do I transfer all my adobe programs to an external SSD drive and if so which one?

On what do you run your adobe programs? I do need a bigger monitor and more storage... obviously 500 gig doesnt cut it for everything I want to do. But I dont want to waste money if I dont need to. Please help!

 

[robgendreau]

You'd probably have to go to forums and ask people specifically about each program and task to figure out how to optimize hardware. A generally faster Mac won't necessarily speed up each task; depends on the details.

You're probably right that you'd have to go up to more cores (i.e. Mac Pro) to get substantially more speed. A SSD really helps in lots of general tasks, though. And fast external storage as well, probably RAID options. I'd check in FCP or Adobe forums to find out more.