new MBP or MP for video editing

[Luis Ortega]

With the new Santa Rosa MBP with the faster fsb and 4 gb memory, how do they compare to a Mac Pro in terms of performance for running FCP studio 2 and Adobe CS3 production suite? I would use fast external hard drives with the MBP.
Can a MBP handle the software mentioned without exceeding its performance limits?
Thanks a lot for any advice.

 

[Igantius]

The MBP would handle that software very nicely, but a Mac Pro is considerably faster.

Barefeats have some good tests (e.g. http://www.barefeats.com/rosa02.html).

 

[JFreak]

MBP is plenty fast for SD editing. Don't know about HD though...

 

[247phil]

J Freak has the right idea...

If you plan on touching HD, it's a MP - hands down. Fibre Channel is a lot easier on the Mac if you have access to dropping in a Apple-branded fibre-channel card, and using their equipment (aka Xserve RAID) [well, I should probably say: It's easier to get support if you need it - Apple likes it that way. ;-)]

That notwithstanding however, I haven't seen a lot of options for doing anything above 2 tracks of SD on a MBP - you would need the AJA I/O or something similar.

A MBP can do more than the 2 tracks of SD that I mentioned, but it takes a fat wallet (so does a MP). I work as an editor, and 90% of the projects that I touch are SD or DV... so it was a MBP all the way. If you are in a similar situation, don't rule out the 24-inch iMac either - that's a killer machine, it's got FW800, big display, and it's pretty quick.

Oh there is ONE MORE THING.. ;-)

Make sure you take note of Final Cut Studio's ENTIRE package when you install it - if you install all the apps and content, it's right around 70GB! For that, the extra drives in a MP would be great...