Those who wish to skim - read the bold text.
This is a MacBook topic - I hope this is orginal enough to warrant a new topic. If not, I apologize. I didn't see any topics which addressed my angle to the "should I buy a macbook-question".
My current mac, which I bought brand spanking new back in 2001, is a Power Mac G4 867Mhz (quicksilver), with 1GB ram and a 128MB Radeon 9800pro, which runs 2 screens @ 1600x1200. I use it mainly for the following tasks:
* Photoshop (painting 50Mpixel images with lots of layers)
* Software development (fifth year at college)
* Watching div-X encoded porn
+ other everyday tasks not woth mentioning
And it has served me well indeed for 5 years now. However lately, I'm starting to see more and more video on the net that I download starting to feature much larger sizes (HD as they call it) and new encoding shemes such as x264, and my mac is starting to have difficulties playing these videos full screen so I have to fall-back on my pc (!) to play them.
I assembled my pc last summer as a "cheap-ass computer to hold down the fort until the new intel macs arrive next year". (and because I needed a WinXP environment for my school work)
PC main specs:
AMD Sempron3000+ running at 1.8Ghz
1GB DDR RAM
128MB Radeon 9800pro
400Mhz FSB
So now I'm finally looking at getting a new mac - and this time I want a portable. I want it to perform at least equally well at the 3 main tasks I use my desktops today and I want it to be able to playback HD-resolution video repectably aswell.
And so I'm looking at my options: the MacBook - my only option - since I think the MacBookPros are too expensive and too big to be portable. So my question is:
Assuming maxed out ram. Is the MacBook able to playback HD-video (720p or 1080p or simply 1600x1200) in full screen mode on an external monitor (such as a tv or LCD) respectably (ie - no lag) when decoding something like x264? Or in other words: how does it compare to my pc in terms of raw video-decoding power?
Also: if you answer the question, I want to know how you know, ie - have you seen a macbook in action doing what I ask for or have you seen an older mac with poorer specs do it or are you just speculating based on the specs of the machine? As my mac is 5 years old I'm very out-of-date as to how much macs these days can perform.
Sorry that I got a little lenghty. Thanx in advance for your help!
This is a MacBook topic - I hope this is orginal enough to warrant a new topic. If not, I apologize. I didn't see any topics which addressed my angle to the "should I buy a macbook-question".
My current mac, which I bought brand spanking new back in 2001, is a Power Mac G4 867Mhz (quicksilver), with 1GB ram and a 128MB Radeon 9800pro, which runs 2 screens @ 1600x1200. I use it mainly for the following tasks:
* Photoshop (painting 50Mpixel images with lots of layers)
* Software development (fifth year at college)
* Watching div-X encoded porn
+ other everyday tasks not woth mentioning
And it has served me well indeed for 5 years now. However lately, I'm starting to see more and more video on the net that I download starting to feature much larger sizes (HD as they call it) and new encoding shemes such as x264, and my mac is starting to have difficulties playing these videos full screen so I have to fall-back on my pc (!) to play them.
I assembled my pc last summer as a "cheap-ass computer to hold down the fort until the new intel macs arrive next year". (and because I needed a WinXP environment for my school work)
PC main specs:
AMD Sempron3000+ running at 1.8Ghz
1GB DDR RAM
128MB Radeon 9800pro
400Mhz FSB
So now I'm finally looking at getting a new mac - and this time I want a portable. I want it to perform at least equally well at the 3 main tasks I use my desktops today and I want it to be able to playback HD-resolution video repectably aswell.
And so I'm looking at my options: the MacBook - my only option - since I think the MacBookPros are too expensive and too big to be portable. So my question is:
Assuming maxed out ram. Is the MacBook able to playback HD-video (720p or 1080p or simply 1600x1200) in full screen mode on an external monitor (such as a tv or LCD) respectably (ie - no lag) when decoding something like x264? Or in other words: how does it compare to my pc in terms of raw video-decoding power?
Also: if you answer the question, I want to know how you know, ie - have you seen a macbook in action doing what I ask for or have you seen an older mac with poorer specs do it or are you just speculating based on the specs of the machine? As my mac is 5 years old I'm very out-of-date as to how much macs these days can perform.
Sorry that I got a little lenghty. Thanx in advance for your help!
