Which video card, 9600m vs. 9400m

[Gen]

And since the OP said he'll be using those applications, this is all completely relevant! For the OP's uses, the better graphics card will make no difference. The only place he might make use of it is in Keynote, but $300 to make Keynote animations render a tiny bit quicker seems like poor financial planning to me.

The 9400M is a very capable chip, and more than sufficient for 99% of what most users will be doing. Your money is better spent on RAM and storage upgrades.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but why purchase a MBP if you're not going for the discrete graphics? If the OP wants to save money and only get the weaker 9400 then he should opt for the 13" variant.

 

[picklesmand]

The speed increase due to 9600M will possibly be noticeable for 3D rendering. For your purposes, the 9400M is more than enough. But hey, if you feel like giving Apple more cash, it's up to you. More RAM will be much more noticeable, and for recording, a good firewire interface (Apogee Duet is hard to beat) and a 7200 hard drive will make MUCH better improvements. Listen to a guy who does recording, not a bunch of people who don't understand what a 3D graphics card it. I say put the extra cash into these things.


As for the guy who says scrolling websites is smoother, hey I've got some cables that'll make your music sound MUCH better.... get in touch with me

 

[Traeger2591]

And since the OP said he'll be using those applications, this is all completely relevant! For the OP's uses, the better graphics card will make no difference. The only place he might make use of it is in Keynote, but $300 to make Keynote animations render a tiny bit quicker seems like poor financial planning to me.

The 9400M is a very capable chip, and more than sufficient for 99% of what most users will be doing. Your money is better spent on RAM and storage upgrades.

Thank you for giving me advice based on what I said I'll be doing.

The speed increase due to 9600M will possibly be noticeable for 3D rendering. For your purposes, the 9400M is more than enough. But hey, if you feel like giving Apple more cash, it's up to you. More RAM will be much more noticeable, and for recording, a good firewire interface (Apogee Duet is hard to beat) and a 7200 hard drive will make MUCH better improvements. Listen to a guy who does recording, not a bunch of people who don't understand what a 3D graphics card it. I say put the extra cash into these things.


As for the guy who says scrolling websites is smoother, hey I've got some cables that'll make your music sound MUCH better.... get in touch with me

Its nice to hear from a person who uses their gear the same way I'm going to. Thanks for all the advice.

This is kinda off topic but will the 7200 hard drive really help that much? I've been comparing the WD Scorpio Blue 500GB (5400) and the Seagate 7200.4 500GB all night and it seems that the scorpio blue comes out on top from what I've gathered.

 

[Pommy]

A 7200 rpm drive will make an actual noticeable difference (unlike the 9600M GT unless, again, you're doing 3D stuff).

That being said, Seagate recently had a drive failure debacle so you might wanna consider going w/ a 7200rpm WD