Switching to Macbook pro from PC

[Terry Lee]

I know there are alot of threads covering this topic but I would rather be able to ask my own questions and get answers pertaining to my specific situation.

So as the title suggests, I am switching to a macbook pro for pretty much one reason and that reason is that I will be traveling alot. Soon I will be a student at Bristol University in Southern England. I currently have a desk top PC that I was trying to upgrade to CS5.5..but of course I cannot lug this big thing over to England when I go, so putting the money into CS5.5 for PC would be pointless.

I am wanting to switch over to the 15" Macbook pro with the 500GB hard drive and i7..but of course I wanted to run this idea by some of you guys to see what you thought about it.

[Bart Walczak]

You won't have GPU acceleration on MacBook Pro, since it uses AMD/ATI GPUs.

[Harm Millaard]

You will be better off with a Windows based notebook with at least two hard disks and a CUDA capable video card, because you can continue using your current Adobe license, since you are allowed two installations. Going to a MAC requires a new license and a lot more money for inferior performance.

[Randall Leong]

I also wouldn't recommend a MacBook Pro for CS5.5 because of the fact that you'd be paying too much money for inferior overall performance (as Bart stated, none of the MacBook Pros offer an Nvidia GPU at all, and also the fact that most laptops with a 15" screen have too low of a resolution to run CS5.5 properly as CS5.5 requires a minimum vertical monitor resolution of 900 pixels but most 15" laptop screens have only a 720- or 768-pixel vertical resolution). On top of all that, all versions of Mac OSX are inferior at multithreading compared to Windows 7 (OSX does not make use of the multiple CPU cores as effectively as Windows does).

[R Geoff Baker]

Just so this thread doesn't spin wildly out of control:
Macbook Pro 15s have had 1440x900 screen res for quite some time;
Macbook Pro 15s used nvidia GPUs until the most recent iteration -- lingering anger over nvidia hardware issues drove Apple away in 2011 -- you can still buy the nvidia models from Apple refurb;
An MBP is an expensive piece of kit -- it is overpriced? Debatable. My own experience is that you buy a device that is short of the leading edge in performance, but is reliable and relatively rugged. YMMV

[Bart Walczak]

I don't think nVidia 320M will allow for CUDA acceleration in Premiere, since it has only 256 MBs of shared RAM, and PPro requires 768+, but I might be wrong.

[R Geoff Baker]

I'm not a PPro user, so the acceleration from an nVidia card is not something I've looked into -- but maybe no laptop has enough RAM to make this possible?

Cheers,
GB

[Ric Marrty]

The New intel intergrated memory runs great even 3d it comes with 1gb memory.
Thats what the mobile macks are using though they have an extra independant card just in case it need extra power.

You can buy a great editing laptop for far less than you would spend on a mac.

Ric

[Bart Walczak]

560M, 570M and 580M models should do fine.

[Terry Lee]

Thank you everyone for the responses.

So the bassic concern is the GPU and screen resolution?

What would the ideal laptop be equip with so that I can run CS5.5 properly?


Thank you for your time.