Which Macbook pro to get for 3D Studio Max and other 3D work

[MrPeanut]

I'm about to start my second year of Games Design in October and I'm wanting to get a laptop for my main work at Uni where i will be using Autodesk's 3D studio max 2010. The first year we were using 1.6ghz laptops with 512mb of ram which obviously for rendering and designing things in 3D is no where near enough power. I'm a bit stumped however on what is too much power/money for a laptop. I'm wanting to buy a Macbook Pro and I was wondering if the 9600 option is worth it? plus i have a quad core pc at home so i can do the rendering on that, and also the 3.0ghz option on the 15 inch is tempting, but do i really need it?

Would I be fine with the low end 15 inch macbook pro or do i need to invest in a more powerful one?

 

[ri0ku]

I will be starting my 2nd year of video games design/art in october too, and I too use max.

I had a quad core machine until 1 week ago when i traded it too my dad and he payed for half of my new macbook pro 15"!

this macbook pro is awesome and I actualy have more improvements in performance in windows than I did on my quad core...!

So I got the macbook pro 15" 2.66ghz, 4gb ddr3 1066, 9400 + 9600 (had to get the 9600 model obviously for gaming and max) and kept the stock 320gb hdd too.

its a dream machine! it works great and I also did the student discount and ipod touch and £60 printer rebate (so I chose the HP C4480 printer which with the rebate = free )

honestly I could have got the 2.8 if I wanted... but you wont see the difference in real time. Maybe rendering will be a second or 2 faster...

Games and max run perfecto mondo on this machine get it now while you cannnnnn!

 

[MrPeanut]

Thanks for the advice

 

[ri0ku]

no problemo, I mean you could get the base model at 2.53 i think it is? without the 9600. The 9400 will be fine for max and some light gaming (source games etc) but if you really want to game the 9600 is a requirment. When I was in the middle of this decision i thought... I might aswell pay the extra £200 and get it with the 9600 that way im safe and besides id get uni discount plus the ipod which I will sell to pay off part of the macbook pro.