Help Decide Which MBP to Get

[Roy Hobbs]

Currently my friend has a white 20inch 2.16 ghz iMac with the Radeon X1600 upgraded 256 MB model.

She wants to get a MBP and the 24 inch LED display, but she is torn between the 2 models. She plans on upgrading to 4 gig and the 320 7200 RPM drive if she gets the lower end which leave $300 for 256 more MB in the graphics card and a slight processor bump.

I assume either card is a ton better than the graphics card in her iMac. She runs Aperture, Final Cut Express and CS4 regularly but nothing too heavy.

Do you guys think she'll be fine with the low end MBP?

Thanks

 

[neiltc13]

Does she actually need 4GB RAM? A lot of people buy it because they can, not because they need it.

 

[Roy Hobbs]

Does she actually need 4GB RAM? A lot of people buy it because they can, not because they need it.

Yes she runs a few programs in Parallels and the more RAM the better.
RAM isn't the question here, the graphics card is the big sticking point

 

[neiltc13]

Yes she runs a few programs in Parallels and the more RAM the better.
RAM isn't the question here, the graphics card is the big sticking point

The 256MB vs 512MB argument normally only interests gamers. I don't think she will see any benefit at all to buying the more expensive computer, and even if she did, it would not be nearly noticeable enough to justify the price difference.

 

[Roy Hobbs]

The 256MB vs 512MB argument normally only interests gamers. I don't think she will see any benefit at all to buying the more expensive computer, and even if she did, it would not be nearly noticeable enough to justify the price difference.

....and that's what I normally would have told her. But with Snow Leopard on the horizon and all the Open CL talk I wasn't sure if she should go for the better mBP just because of the video card

 

[neiltc13]

....and that's what I normally would have told her. But with Snow Leopard on the horizon and all the Open CL talk I wasn't sure if she should go for the better mBP just because of the video card

I don't think Open CL is going to give any sort of massive performance boost. It might make a little difference, but I think Apple is planning more for the future with this rather than the current stock of computers.

 

[Roy Hobbs]

I don't think Open CL is going to give any sort of massive performance boost. It might make a little difference, but I think Apple is planning more for the future with this rather than the current stock of computers.

The problem is no one really knows, part of me says buy the high end it should be viable longer

How does the graphics card in the low end MBP compare to the Radeon 1600 in her iMac?? I assume the new nvidia is much better, anyone??

 

[Abstract]

Does she actually need 4GB RAM? A lot of people buy it because they can, not because they need it.

I assume either card is a ton better than the graphics card in her iMac. She runs Aperture, Final Cut Express and CS4 regularly but nothing too heavy.

Get the low end machine. There's no reason to worry about Snow Leopard and all the GPU stuff. Even the MacBook will see some improvements with Snow Leopard.

Snow Leopard is about setting a base for the future. Apple has built and built and built, but the city was a bit messy, so they're doing a bit of a cleanup so that future growth isn't on top of a really unstable base. They needed a way to better utilise multi-core processors to their full advantage. I don't think you're going to suddenly see 2x speed improvements just because you have a MBP with a sliiiightly better video card.

Again, get the low end version and increase the RAM.

 

[Roy Hobbs]

Get the low end machine. There's no reason to worry about Snow Leopard and all the GPU stuff. Even the MacBook will see some improvements with Snow Leopard.

Snow Leopard is about setting a base for the future. Apple has built and built and built, but the city was a bit messy, so they're doing a bit of a cleanup so that future growth isn't on top of a really unstable base. They needed a way to better utilise multi-core processors to their full advantage. I don't think you're going to suddenly see 2x speed improvements just because you have a MBP with a sliiiightly better video card.

Again, get the low end version and increase the RAM.

Thanks for the reply, she is def. leaning toward the low end model now.
But can anyone comment on this....... How does the graphics card in the low end MBP compare to the Radeon 1600 in her iMac?? I assume the new nvidia is much better, anyone??