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Specific purposes; buy now or wait?

R

robinwjonsson

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 15, 2011
22
0
Hi!

I currently have a macbook from 2009.
I will buy a new macbook pro soon. I'll use it mostly for mixing music/sound design etc. on Pro Tools, and for gaming.

The question is, should I buy a new macbook pro now? or wait for the Ivy Bridge?

I have read around, in this forum, on macrumors, Intels chip-road-map, google-ing it etc. but I need some more advice. I've understood that IB will supposedly do miracles for integrated GPU's, but since a MBP will run on a dedicated GPU, that won't do much, will it? So what's really the big difference for sound-work and gaming with or without the IB?

And I now that the counter-question is often, how soon do you need it?
I will need it absolutely the latest in August 2012, earlier would be better.
If the IB would be such a huge leap in performance overall, (will it be?) thus "surviving" longer as a top-performing computer for my needs, it means I can wait until August 2012, if not, then maybe I should buy a new one now.

Thanks for any advice and thoughts.
 
Go ahead and upgrade. The refresh may or may not be here by August. You could wait all that time and still be buying the current machine you could have been enjoying for almost a year. Worst case scenario is its worth the upgrade so you sell your old one and upgrade to IB for $500-$600. Not bad either.
 
Hi!

OK, that's right! I could always sell it and buy IB if I need to.
I didn't think of that.
Thanks!

Any other thoughts on this from anyone else?
 
Sounds like you'd be fine buying now. The latest MBPs are very nice and this years in general are a big step up from 2010.

As always, if you NEED a new computer now, buy it. If you can wait, wait.
 
I can't see where the rumoured massive performance increase is coming from. Under Intels Tick-Tock releases Sandy Bridge is the new architecture, Ivy Bridge is the die shrink. We'll get slightly faster CPUs for the same power consumption, ditto for the Intel Graphics. Same as happened with the late 2007 - early 2008 MBP update.

If you can use the performance now then buy now. I wouldn't wait 9 months with a machine that's not up to the purpose just because of a rumour.
 
True, maybe i'll buy it now.
Anyone knows if its easy to upgrade your own ram on the current macbook pros?
 
robinwjonsson said:
True, maybe i'll buy it now.
Anyone knows if its easy to upgrade your own ram on the current macbook pros?
Click to expand...

Very, very easy. It's a matter of unscrewing a few screws and popping the old stuff out and the new stuff in. It requires practically no technical knowledge and it's really hard to screw up.
 
some idiot said:
Very, very easy. It's a matter of unscrewing a few screws and popping the old stuff out and the new stuff in. It requires practically no technical knowledge and it's really hard to screw up.
Click to expand...

Excellent!

can you recommend a site that sells them?
 
IB won't be a huge performance leap. It will be a small performance gain while at the same time reducing energy consumption.

I would buy now. Waiting half a year for what might be a 10%-20% performance gain is probably not worth it. And if for some reason the new one turns out to be a must have, you can still sell the one you buy now.
 
robinwjonsson said:
Excellent!

can you recommend a site that sells them?
Click to expand...

macsales.com sells a lot of stuff, including memory. Their prices are marked up, but is a good site if you're just looking for a no fuss place to order and know it will work with what it says it will.
 
robinwjonsson said:
I've understood that IB will supposedly do miracles for integrated GPU's,
Click to expand...
No it won't. According to Intel 60% faster than the current and twice as efficient which means for every Watt it consumes it does twice the work. Great for battery life. For gaming even 60% faster than the current gen is still to slow for any serious gaming. Also Intel seems to take some shortcuts for the sake of efficiency and on anything but low detail setting the Intel GPUs don't do so well.
You still need a dedicated GPU if you care about gaming.
robinwjonsson said:
but since a MBP will run on a dedicated GPU, that won't do much, will it? So what's really the big difference for sound-work and gaming with or without the IB?
Click to expand...
IB will come with 28nm GPUs from Nvidia/AMD and this means probably also a up to 60% increase in performance again.
robinwjonsson said:
If the IB would be such a huge leap in performance overall, (will it be?) thus "surviving" longer as a top-performing computer for my needs, it means I can wait until August 2012, if not, then maybe I should buy a new one now.
Click to expand...
It will be some 30% faster probably. Noticable but no game changer (like Quad vs. Dual Core, Nehalem vs. C2D architecture) and for the CPU performance not really worth the wait. The power savings are worth a wait. If you mean to work a lot on the road. If battery life matters a lot or even more than speed. Waiting will probably pay off.
The new process is like jumping to nodes according to Intel. Like from 90 to 45nm that used to be a quite big difference. Especially on medium workload I expect much better efficiency.
 
dusk007 said:
It will be some 30% faster probably. Noticable but no game changer (like Quad vs. Dual Core, Nehalem vs. C2D architecture) and for the CPU performance not really worth the wait. The power savings are worth a wait. If you mean to work a lot on the road. If battery life matters a lot or even more than speed. Waiting will probably pay off.
Click to expand...

30% faster overall, probably, but that's just Moore's law in effect. The efficiency per clock will likely be virtually the same. Sandy Bridge was the architecture change and was approx 17% quicker for the same clock speed.
 
dusk007 said:
No it won't. According to Intel 60% faster than the current and twice as efficient which means for every Watt it consumes it does twice the work. Great for battery life. For gaming even 60% faster than the current gen is still to slow for any serious gaming. Also Intel seems to take some shortcuts for the sake of efficiency and on anything but low detail setting the Intel GPUs don't do so well.
You still need a dedicated GPU if you care about gaming.
IB will come with 28nm GPUs from Nvidia/AMD and this means probably also a up to 60% increase in performance again.

It will be some 30% faster probably. Noticable but no game changer (like Quad vs. Dual Core, Nehalem vs. C2D architecture) and for the CPU performance not really worth the wait. The power savings are worth a wait. If you mean to work a lot on the road. If battery life matters a lot or even more than speed. Waiting will probably pay off.
The new process is like jumping to nodes according to Intel. Like from 90 to 45nm that used to be a quite big difference. Especially on medium workload I expect much better efficiency.
Click to expand...

Yeez, thank you. Some things to think of. I think i'll go for it now, I can always sell it and buy the new one when it's time, seems like in my case it is not worth the wait.
Battery life is not that important for me, performance is.
 
MagicBoy said:
30% faster overall, probably, but that's just Moore's law in effect. The efficiency per clock will likely be virtually the same.
Click to expand...
It really doesn't matter where the speed increase comes from. But 30% faster clocks is 30% more performance all over the board.
22nm 3D transistor node will mean quite a bit higher clock speeds. I take 30% higher clock speeds at lower power consumption everytime over some 17% IPC increase of Sandy Bridge. Which isn't even true as 17% only accumulated because you didn't compare it to the real predecessor, compared to clarkfield it wasn't that much faster. Sandy Bridge was so great for the most part because it came with almost 40% higher clock speeds on average compared to clarksfield along with an IPC increase of some 5-10%. And this was only the move from 45 nm to 32nm. Considering intel calls 22nm almost equivalent to a jump straight to 16nm 30% higher clocks is rather conservative estimate and probably only true because they care more about reducing the average heat output and less about increasing performance.
Also clock speeds, speed everything up, IPC only this and that and usually more the unimportant specialised stuff.

You cannot overclock a MBP CPU like a Desktop PC and thus you stuck with whatever you get. A cool somewhat faster notebook or a quite fast notebook now as Intel has no plans for a much faster equally hot notebook.
 
... then comes the Tick after Ivy Bridge. I'm going to call it Bob for lack of a better name. Cue the rash of "Why buy Ivy Bridge when Bob is just around the corner" threads.

My point is that you've got to jump onboard at some point and actually buy something. There's no need to be a slave to the Intel roadmap. They have a product cycle, just like the manufactures they supply.
 
so whats wrong with ur 2009 model? are u going to be doing anything diffrent on the current one? doubt it
 
I would suggest you stick with your current 2009 model unless you're having trouble with something or you're desperate for an upgrade to what you have now. If what you have now is working fine then you might as well hold on to it for a while.
 
randomrazr said:
so whats wrong with ur 2009 model? are u going to be doing anything diffrent on the current one? doubt it
Click to expand...


This one is struggling if I use too many tracks/plug-ins for Logic, which sucks, I would get pro tools for my macbook pro though.
Also gaming is sort of non-existent on my current macbook.
 
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