Recommendations for Architecture Grad-school student

[leevizz6]

I am graduating in May and going to grad school in the fall. I am looking for suggestions and recommendations on what setup I should go for. Currently i have a 08 MB white 2.4ghzduo with 4gb RAM and it is not a great speed machine.

As a student I run lots of graphic programs. Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, In-Design, AutoDesk Revit, 3DS Max, Rhinoceros and others. I am constantly running one if not many of these programs at a time. With these programs I also use BootCamp and need lots of room for both OSX and Windows.

I have been looking thoroughly at my options and this is the best customization I have come up with.

The Macbook Pro NON-Retina
2.6GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB GDDR5 memory
4GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
Hi-Res Glossy Widescreen Display

After I receive the MBP I plan on purchasing the following 512gb SSD and 16GB of RAM along with a optical drive tray from a third party like amazon.

Crucial m4 512GB 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s
Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800)

I plan on replacing the 500gb HDD with the 512gb SSD and upgrading the RAM myself. Then I want to remove the optical bay and replace it with the stock 500gb HDD. I plan on running OSX on the SSD and Windows on the HDD through BootCamp.

Price wise, this setup is $200 cheaper than a rMBP with comparable specs.
Performance wise it has twice the storage. I can wait to see what the new lineup has to offer and am willing to, this just is what i have customized from the current options.

Please let me know your opinions. Thanks.

 

[Orlandoech]

I was going to do the same... until I actually saw the screen on the rMBP and was 100x easier on my eyes.

Now, Ill never go back to a cMBP. The SSD on the rMBP can be upgraded and replaced while the memory cannot but its still worth the extra money for such a superior screen.

 

[JeffiJers]

they dont offer the high end cMBP anymore with 1gbvram

my mistake... they do, carry on. Very powerful solid set up you listed

 

[onthecouchagain]

I am graduating in May and going to grad school in the fall. I am looking for suggestions and recommendations on what setup I should go for. Currently i have a 08 MB white 2.4ghzduo with 4gb RAM and it is not a great speed machine.

As a student I run lots of graphic programs. Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, In-Design, AutoDesk Revit, 3DS Max, Rhinoceros and others. I am constantly running one if not many of these programs at a time. With these programs I also use BootCamp and need lots of room for both OSX and Windows.

I have been looking thoroughly at my options and this is the best customization I have come up with.

The Macbook Pro NON-Retina
2.6GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB GDDR5 memory
4GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
Hi-Res Glossy Widescreen Display

After I receive the MBP I plan on purchasing the following 512gb SSD and 16GB of RAM along with a optical drive tray from a third party like amazon.

Crucial m4 512GB 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s
Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800)

I plan on replacing the 500gb HDD with the 512gb SSD and upgrading the RAM myself. Then I want to remove the optical bay and replace it with the stock 500gb HDD. I plan on running OSX on the SSD and Windows on the HDD through BootCamp.

Price wise, this setup is $200 cheaper than a rMBP with comparable specs.
Performance wise it has twice the storage. I can wait to see what the new lineup has to offer and am willing to, this just is what i have customized from the current options.

Please let me know your opinions. Thanks.

My advice? Get a windows pc. Most architecture programs run better on Windows. A lot of students I notice run parallel on their Macs to run their programs on the windows side. I hear autocad especially.

I've seen Macbook pros freeze and reboot due to being overloaded. Students have lost work this way.

 

[Stetrain]

My advice? Get a windows pc. Most architecture programs run better on Windows. A lot of students I notice run parallel on their Macs to run their programs on the windows side. I hear autocad especially.

I've seen Macbook pros freeze and reboot due to being overloaded. Students have lost work this way.

Bootcamp would be a better option than Parallels for these kinds of apps. A Macbook Pro running Windows via Bootcamp should perform basically identically to a similarly spec'd Windows PC.

One thing to consider though is that the automatic graphics switching doesn't work under Windows on the Macbook Pros, so you will always be using the dedicated (NVidia) graphics card. It should perform just fine but you will probably notice lower battery life.

 

[onthecouchagain]

Bootcamp would be a better option than Parallels for these kinds of apps. A Macbook Pro running Windows via Bootcamp should perform basically identically to a similarly spec'd Windows PC.

One thing to consider though is that the automatic graphics switching doesn't work under Windows on the Macbook Pros, so you will always be using the dedicated (NVidia) graphics card. It should perform just fine but you will probably notice lower battery life.

I'm sorry I did mean BootCamp. I forget which one the students always use.