Transitioning from Desktop to rMBP

[JustinBW]

For a while now I have been hoping to transition to from my desktop Mac to a laptop, but I wanted to wait until the technology could support what I want to do. I think that point has come so I am hoping to get a little bit of insight from power users here.

My current desktop is a mid 2010 Mac Pro, 2.8 Ghz (Nehalem I think) with 8gb of ram and an ATi Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB. I use this computer (almost) exclusively for work professional audio work. I am a sound designer and it has served me very well thus far.

I also use it for gaming. I boot camp to win7 for this and again, it has served me incredibly well doing this.

I also have a mid 2010 MBP that I use for web developing and general computing. Usually this comp follows me around everywhere while home. I always wished I could just do all my work from this laptop and hopefully I can with a new rMBP.

So here are my questions:

1. How will a 2.3 GHz i7 compare to my old 2.8 GHz Quad from the Mid 2010 Mac Pro? (I am expecting it to be better considering how new the processors are, is that naive of me?)
2. How will the nVIDIA GeForce GT 750M with 2GB of GDDR5 memory compare to my old ATi? (I hope to be able to play newer games at decent setting)
3. The one thing that I will be missing is the internal HD storage space, so I am hoping to get a Thunderbolt drive, which I hear perform quite well. Does anyone have any real world experience with these drives? Do they perform equally or better than a platter 7200 rpm drive?(answered below)

If anyone can offer any tips and anecdotes, I would greatly appreciate it!

 

[troop231]

So here are my questions:

1. The one thing that I will be missing is the internal HD storage space, so I am hoping to get a Thunderbolt drive, which I hear perform quite well. Does anyone have any real world experience with these drives? Do they perform equally or better than a platter 7200 rpm drive?

If anyone can offer any tips and anecdotes, I would greatly appreciate it!

I can answer your third question. Thunderbolt is just the interface, and there are many different kinds of external drives that have the Thunderbolt port. An external Thunderbolt SSD drive will always be the best choice for speed, but a 7200 rpm on Thunderbolt isn't that bad really depending on your use case. If all your doing is backups and aren't in any rush so to say, a 7200 rpm will do just fine (also cheaper).

Hope that answers your third question

 

[JustinBW]

Thanks mate! I am actually not just doing backups.

I want to use the external drive to replace my internal 'samples' drive. Basically I have a drive (internally) on my Mac Pro where I keep my audio samples. A portion gets loaded into ram and another portions gets streamed off of the drive. So I'm wondering if the performance would be similar to a 7200 rpm internal (I guess I wondering if thunderbolt offers the same speeds as a SATA internal drive).

I am not great with technical computer stuff, other than my speciality, so I apologize for the newby phrasings

So you think a thunderbolt 7200 rpm external would fair well against an internal Sata?

 

[simon48]

Thanks mate! I am actually not just doing backups.

I want to use the external drive to replace my internal 'samples' drive. Basically I have a drive (internally) on my Mac Pro where I keep my audio samples. A portion gets loaded into ram and another portions gets streamed off of the drive. So I'm wondering if the performance would be similar to a 7200 rpm internal (I guess I wondering if thunderbolt offers the same speeds as a SATA internal drive).

I am not great with technical computer stuff, other than my speciality, so I apologize for the newby phrasings

So you think a thunderbolt 7200 rpm external would fair well against an internal Sata?

Both SATA and and Thunderbolt have way higher throughput then any 7200 rpm drive.

 

[troop231]

Thanks mate! I am actually not just doing backups.

So you think a thunderbolt 7200 rpm external would fair well against an internal Sata?

I do. Thunderbolt is a faster interface than Sata 6Gbps, but the bottle neck will always be the 7200 rpm drive.

I actually use a Buffalo Thunderbolt MiniStation external drive, which works plenty well for me (it also has a USB 3.0 interface which is quite nice): http://amzn.com/B008D4X9UI

You can even upgrade the drive inside it to SSD if you ever want to some day as well. I believe there is some threads here or elsewhere on the internet where people have done this.

 

[JustinBW]

I do. Thunderbolt is a faster interface than Sata 6Gbps, but the bottle neck will always be the 7200 rpm drive.

I actually use a Buffalo Thunderbolt MiniStation external drive, which works plenty well for me (it also has a USB 3.0 interface which is quite nice): http://amzn.com/B008D4X9UI

You can even upgrade the drive inside it to SSD if you ever want to some day as well. I believe there is some threads here or elsewhere on the internet where people have done this.

Great info, that's one thing on the check list I can cross off. Many thanks!