MB/MPB Intel chipset comparable to G5?
This is my first post to this forum but I've been browsing around for a few months. I'm putting some serious thought into getting a macbook or a macbook pro, but haven't really made a decision yet. My current computer is a dual 2.5 G5 with 4.5gb RAM. I'm going to school for graphic art/media design which will requires me to have Photoshop/Flash/Illustrator and eventually After Effects and Final Cut Pro. I don't think I'll need a laptop to do all of the heavy lifting for these types of projects, but I don't want it to freeze up on me either.
I guess my question is do you think a MacBook or a MBP with the new Intel chipset is comparable to the G5 I have now?
I guess my question is do you think a MacBook or a MBP with the new Intel chipset is comparable to the G5 I have now?
Comments
I guess my question is do you think a MacBook or a MBP with the new Intel chipset is comparable to the G5 I have now?
Not really. The MacBook and MBP are faster.
The MacBook and MBP are faster.
The fastest MBP is dual 2.33 GHz. Since the G5 chips are pretty close in terms of performance to the Intels at similar clock speeds, it's more likely the MB and MBP will be slower. I benchmarked a dual 2.16 iMac against a quad 2.5 G5 and the iMac came in at less than half the speed.
Also bear in mind that the MB and MBP only have 667MHz front side buses whereas the G5 has a 1.25GHz fsb, which dramatically improves the data throughput and is important for heavy video apps.
Also, the hard drives in the laptops will be slower, which is important for video read from a scratch disk.
Also, Flash, illustrator and After Effects are not Intel native yet and they have a serious performance hit. You could run them under Windows though.
Still, they are very capable machines and would certainly come close to the performance of a dual G5 for most projects in native apps like Final Cut. Some Intel specific optimization can make some apps even faster as benchmarks have shown.
If you need the portability and won't need to do any heavy work in the next few months then it should be ok to get a MB or MBP. However, given that some hardware updates are overdue (Santa Rosa with 800MHz fsbs coming and possibly quad cores), Leopard is coming, and CS3 is coming, I'd probably hang off a bit before buying.
The fastest MBP is dual 2.33 GHz. Since the G5 chips are pretty close in terms of performance to the Intels at similar clock speeds, it's more likely the MB and MBP will be slower. I benchmarked a dual 2.16 iMac against a quad 2.5 G5 and the iMac came in at less than half the speed.
Also bear in mind that the MB and MBP only have 667MHz front side buses whereas the G5 has a 1.25GHz fsb, which dramatically improves the data throughput and is important for heavy video apps.
Also, the hard drives in the laptops will be slower, which is important for video read from a scratch disk.
Also, Flash, illustrator and After Effects are not Intel native yet and they have a serious performance hit. You could run them under Windows though.
Still, they are very capable machines and would certainly come close to the performance of a dual G5 for most projects in native apps like Final Cut. Some Intel specific optimization can make some apps even faster as benchmarks have shown.
If you need the portability and won't need to do any heavy work in the next few months then it should be ok to get a MB or MBP. However, given that some hardware updates are overdue (Santa Rosa with 800MHz fsbs coming and possibly quad cores), Leopard is coming, and CS3 is coming, I'd probably hang off a bit before buying.
Thanks for the info! I'll probably end up holding off on it for the time being. I've been looking at the refurbished models alot, but I think I need to get a few software titles before I do anything.
The fastest MBP is dual 2.33 GHz. Since the G5 chips are pretty close in terms of performance to the Intels at similar clock speeds, it's more likely the MB and MBP will be slower.
I don't know about that...
I benchmarked a dual 2.16 iMac against a quad 2.5 G5 and the iMac came in at less than half the speed.
Which benchmark did you choose?
Also bear in mind that the MB and MBP only have 667MHz front side buses whereas the G5 has a 1.25GHz fsb, which dramatically improves the data throughput and is important for heavy video apps.
Is the CPU FSB really a bottleneck for video editing?
Also, the hard drives in the laptops will be slower, which is important for video read from a scratch disk.
No one is their mind will be using a laptop drive for video editing. You'll need an external drive for that.
Also, Flash, illustrator and After Effects are not Intel native yet and they have a serious performance hit. You could run them under Windows though.
That is true and is, perhaps, the biggest consideration. However, it's not related to the chip/ chipset limitation.
Some Intel specific optimization can make some apps even faster as benchmarks have shown.
Absolutely and that is why I'm saying that the Intel machines are faster.
If you need the portability and won't need to do any heavy work in the next few months then it should be ok to get a MB or MBP. However, given that some hardware updates are overdue (Santa Rosa with 800MHz fsbs coming and possibly quad cores), Leopard is coming, and CS3 is coming, I'd probably hang off a bit before buying.
I totally agree. If you can wait, in this business, you should ALWAYS wait. Things become faster and cheaper.
Why are you going from a PM G5 to a MacBook Pro or MacBook?
Portability.
The G5 I have now gives me plenty of speed for what I need to do. I figure if I max out the ram and get a better video card, it will still give me quite a few years of quality service. Hell, I have a 1.8ghz Gateway PC that's at least 5 or 6 years old that works great and runs Photoshop and After Effects efficietly. We even recorded some music on it using ProTools LE. The G3s at school run pretty well too. (Although the Mac Pros there are pretty sweet!) As long as you take good care of your computer, it'll last you a lifetime.
I'd love to upgrade to a Mac Pro in the future, but right now it's not practical. I need something that I can take anywhere and that gives me comparable performance to what I get out of my desktop. I'm also trying to be financially conservative about it. My hope was that the MB or MBP could do that.
I think what I might end up doing is just waiting for the UB versions of CS3 before getting a laptop though.
No one is their mind will be using a laptop drive for video editing. You'll need an external drive for that.
Why couldn't you use an internal HDD? Couldn't you just as easily get a higher speed, lower capacity hard drive to run your video projects?