Need portable for imovie editing
How much does the MBP give me over the MB?
How much will they perform better than my current MB (original core duo 1.83 - first intel mac)
Does the video card matter that much?
Assume 2gb ram in any machine.
I'm not going to get into the whole MBP versus MB debate, but I'll just stick to what you asked....
Okay, first up - did you mean what improvement a new MBP would give over your old CD MB? If so, it will be plenty - in fact, a C2D MB would give you a big speed bump. The CD processors run a fair bit slower than C2D ones - it varies from process, but you would always notice it. Additionally, your MB has a a L2 2MB cache - all current MBs and MBPs have 4MB; it does make a difference.
The video card doesn't enter into it; editing video is a CPU rather than GPU intensive app. If you compare the performance, in say Final Cut Pro, before the SR MBPs were introduced, then MBs and MBPs were, to all intensive purposes, equal. I could link to benchmarks, but it's not relevant here and they're easy to google.
The new MBPs as well as faster processors, also have a faster FSB (800MHz as opposed to 667MHz) - you would notice a clear improvement.
Obviously, you've also got a bigger screen with the MBP and I would argue that this would give you a performance improvement too as you can work more efficiently on a larger screen workplace... personally, I would use an external monitor, but that's by the by.
So, in short the MBP would be a better machine to edit video. However, I would have a think how much you're editing video and how much the CD MB is holding you back in terms of effiency/perfomance.
