[travisgw]

Ive used a PC all my life and I will be buying a MacPro within the month. I'm a college student planning on going into filmmaking/graphic design so the move the Mac made sense. Obviously as a college kid I dont have all the much to spend so I have been looking at a refurbished Mac wanting to keep my expense under 1700ish bucks. I have seen the 15" MacPro's Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 gig ram, 2.16 ghz, etc for 1600. My question is will this be enough to run my programs?

Im planning on running finial cut along with adobe programs (photoshop, indesign)...altho it will be light work at this point. Will it be worth it to wait and save up a little more for the 2.33 and 2gig ram. I also thought of maybe just updating the ram in the future when i needed to.

I could wait but sometimes when it comes to electronics you can end up waiting forever. If I wait til next fall to get the bigger machine something else 2x better will come out that ill 'wait' to save up for ...you know the deal. So again...will i have problems just going with the smaller machine?

[praterkeith]

You won't have any problems going with the smaller machine for your current smaller jobs. You can always upgrade. Maybe you could get something to do you over for the time being? Maybe a Macbook Pro? That will help you save for the future versions of the Macpro, and you will also have a portable.

[goMac]

I think you're talking about the Macbook Pro (you referred to the 15" model). I'm not trying to be mean about it, but there is a separate Macbook Pro forum, they might be able to give you a better sense of performance there.

I haven't had any trouble with my Macbook Pro 2.16. You'll want to wait and buy Adobe CS3. CS2 does not run Intel native, and as a result it's slow.

Also Apple offers educational discounts. Be sure you take a look at those.

[Dzokayi]

I'd say the difference between 2 & 2.33 is not going to be a big deal. Take the money saved and buy more RAM.

[travisgw]

k thanks...if someone wants to move this to macbook pro they can..or i can make another thread. just thought macpro was an abbreviation for it...all good tho

thanks for the responses so far

[idyll]

to me ram is more important than processor speed, and that's doing design work

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by travisgw 

...15" MacPro's Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 gig ram, 2.16 ghz, etc for 1600. My question is will this be enough to run my programs?

The C2D MacBook Pro ("MBP") you describe will run the apps you list fine, but you will want 2 (perhaps ultimately 3) GB total RAM. You do want a C2D MBP not a Core Duo, and not a Macbook ("MB").

Be aware that we graphics users (I too use a C2D MBP for Adobe's Creative Suite and for Aperture) trade off performance for portability when we choose laptops. Laptops are performance limiting as compared to Mac Pro towers; in particular we will feel the limits of the 3 GB RAM maximum in the future.

The 2.33 GHz MBP has more VRAM and the necessary 2 GB RAM in addition to the faster CPU. All are of value to graphics users especially Final Cut Pro but the cost goes up $500...

I chose the 17" because IMO the extra pixels and extra screen real estate make the 17" much superior for graphics usage and the extra weight of about a pound is not a big deal to me.

-Allen Wicks