Which Macbook Pro should I buy? And Ram upgrade?

[oscartroop1]

First one would be,

2.9 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core I7, Turbo Boost up to 3.6 GHz 4 Gb Ram 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM Price $1,134.00

Second one would be,

2.5 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core I5, Turbo Boost up to 3.1 GHz 4 Gb Ram 1600MHz DDR3 Price $999.00

Also I will run stuff like Final Cut Pro X, Some games BioShock Infinite and Borderland (game for on the go)

Which one would you buy? Realize its the Macbook with the disk drive on the side and not the retina display. Also is it true I can upgrade the ram up to 16Gb and that 8Gb is not the max I can go?

Also I'll be rendering videos in Final Cut Pro X ALOT.

Buying this one

http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/

 

[C. Robert]

Get the better one. You can upgrade ram to 16 if you want.

 

[oscartroop1]

Get the better one. You can upgrade ram to 16 if you want.

Which one would you consider the right one?

 

[TheIguana]

Also I'll be rendering videos in Final Cut Pro X ALOT.

First off, what kind of footage are you going to be working with? SD, HD, 4K?

If your working with SD the 13" would probably be okay, but if you are going to be doing a considerable amount of work in Final Cut your workflow would bluntly probably be better served on a 15" MacBook Pro.

There are two main reasons for this:

1) The discrete 13" MBP is rather underpowered for video work. The builtin Intel graphics have very limited hardware acceleration capabilities for video work in FCP and/or Premiere. This means more waiting and longer rendering times.

2) Screen resolution of 1280x800 gives you very limited work space for doing video work. Meaning more cramped working environment.

 

[oscartroop1]

First off, what kind of footage are you going to be working with? SD, HD, 4K?

If your working with SD the 13" would probably be okay, but if you are going to be doing a considerable amount of work in Final Cut your workflow would bluntly probably be better served on a 15" MacBook Pro.

There are two main reasons for this:

1) The discrete 13" MBP is rather underpowered for video work. The builtin Intel graphics have very limited hardware acceleration capabilities for video work in FCP and/or Premiere. This means more waiting and longer rendering times.

2) Screen resolution of 1280x800 gives you very limited work space for doing video work. Meaning more cramped working environment.

I will be doing HD, but they don't offer 15 inch Macbook with the Disk drive on the side and I need the disk drive. I don't want to mess with all that cable trouble.

 

[TheIguana]

I will be doing HD, but they don't offer 15 inch Macbook with the Disk drive on the side and I need the disk drive. I don't want to mess with all that cable trouble.

Dunno if your in the US, but the Apple refurb store currently has a 15" pre-retina MBP. That could meet your needs: http://store.apple.com/us/product/F...154-inch-macBook-Pro-23ghz-Quad-core-Intel-i7

If you do go that route 2 main upgrades to consider: 1) 8GB RAM - will help with lots of video - FCP loves its RAM. 2) SSD - it dramatically speeds up how quickly FCP can access your video content, making using FCP speedier. With the pre-retina MBPs you can install the SSD in the main drive bay and replace the DVD drive with the hard drive.

 

[C. Robert]

Which one would you consider the right one?

The higher spec model is only $130 more so I would how with that one.