| Thanks for the shout out! But good golly I need to get back on my blog. I ran into issues involving some corruption and perhaps a bot in my Wordpress install, that bogged me down.
I have since built that new machine (October) and answered a lot of the questions I had when I wrote that. I need to get that follow up written. Good news is I had a crazy busy fall that kept me from it. But now I really have no excuse.
carey
Hi again,
Carey made this wonderful post in his blog that I found useful when mulling over my decisions. I'm still trying to decide which machine to plump for. I'm not quite as tech-savvy as Carey so I'll probably go for an out of the box option like Michelle.
Unless of course anyone knows of a good shop in the Uk that will help me build a machine? :-)
Thanks again to all;
Angie
On 4 Feb 2013, at 18:52, Carey Dissmore wrote: I guess I already tipped my hand on this but just to reiterate: 1. There are no laptops at any price that can match the performance of what is available on the desktop 2. Furthermore, your performance per dollar invested on the desktop is way off-the-charts higher. 3. There is such a thing as "good enough" performance in a laptop for many users out there, where they may as well go with portability as well....but... 4. Sadly, the After Effects and 3D video artist is probably in one of the highest performance-demand categories of all users, therefore the threshold level for "good enough" is significantly higher....making: 5. The choice to go with a portable as primary machine involve significant compromise on overall price/performance. As an independent who also has to watch the $$ I find myself awarding scarce resouces to where they'll buy me the most performance...the desktop.
Carey Honestly if you're worried at all about budget, AND you don't do much video editing (which is the only reason I use Macs at all, these days) I say definitely go for the windows desktop. If you do any 3D work you are going to get far more use out of that machine than an upgraded laptop. You can spend $1,000 or even less, and get a serious buttload of rendering power, (not to mention much better and faster graphics card options for CUDA and modeling). Spend around $1500-2000 on that machine and you'll have a monster PC workstation that benchmarks 3-4x faster than the fastest tricked out MBP or iMac.
On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 1:26 PM, Angie-Taylor <angie-taylor@ntlworld.com> wrote:
Hi all,
I'm going through similar dilemmas. My main work machine has become my MBP (500GB SSD + 8GB) which has a non-CUDa card. (Early 2011 model). It's sluggishness is driving me potty!
I'm in the process of deciding between keeping my MBP for on the road and investing in a Windows desktop machine for production work (mainly 3D and compositing/ Animation) Not much video editing.
Or . . . Buy a new MBP, sell the old one
Or . . . Buy a Windows laptop, sell the old one
I'm a freelancer so don't have a company to pay for this so I have to be careful with budget. Can only really afford to update one machine. Any recommendations?
Cheers,
Angie
On 4 Feb 2013, at 18:09, Michele L Yamazaki wrote:
Thanks so much Carey and Teddy.
My old laptop is already promised to our new employee and he's very excited about getting it so upgrading my old machine for me isn't an option any more. I sure hope the apple store has what I want in stock. I don't want to have to wait for shipping :-)
Thank you again for your help, guys.
Michele On Feb 4, 2013, at 12:32 PM, Carey Dissmore wrote:
I recently went with the entry level 2.3 ghz Ivy bridge Quad-core i7 15" Retina to bump my aging 2010 13" core 2 duo 2.4 MBP which was pretty much useless for production (even though I had an SSD boot drive plus a 1TB internal HD--having yanked out the DVD drive).
While I'm still a "big iron" guy doing most production on a workstation machine that has *real* power, I have to say I'm fairly impressed with the punch this MBP packs for AE and PPro with mobility in mind. Definitely getting a good CUDA boost on this one (compared to prior laptops). Downsides for me are merely 8GB RAM and no way to get more without replacing the machine (I use 64GB on the desktop) and 256GB internal SSD with no reasonable/affordable way to add more inside. If this were intended to be my primary machine I would need more RAM and internal storage which really bumps the $$$ at today's pricing.
Retina: It's very nice but don't think it's quite a make-or-break feature in terms of getting work done. Having said that I will reiterate it is very nice. I actually have seen the tearing/refresh issue when scrolling web pages a few times but no issues (yet--it's early days--haven't done too much in them yet) that I've observed in PPro or AE.
I've decided to run with it as is and have the FW800 adapter for some large spinning disk drives but also set up an SSD in an external USB 3.0 enclosure to get me more data portability with high speed. Overall nice package. FWIW.
Carey
The 2.9 ghz 13" MBP will be only marginally faster (like 10-20%) than your current machine (which is the exact model I currently have and work on) - not only that but the graphics performance will actually be worse considering it only has integrated graphics card. Certain plugins will actually run slower on it. You would be much better off getting a 15" core i7 quad MBP, with 16 GB RAM. It is more than 2x faster than your current laptop according to most benchmarks, and like brian said, is the only version with an Nvidia CUDA card for speeding up AE raytracing and plugins.
As for retina, I am holding off for one more generation, as a lot of reviews say the retina pushes so many pixels there can be a significant "chugginess" when performing certain tasks, because of the screen drawing demands. Especially, oddly enough, when browsing the web.
Here is my recommendation - Either get the best laptop you can afford so it's not obsolete in two years, or save yourself a few thousand and put an SSD and 4GB more RAM in your current laptop, for less than $500, and it will seem like a new computer. I did this a year ago and it's really like having a new laptop. Consider yourself lucky the mid 2010's are so easily upgraded (unlike all new model MBPs). And even if you are not comfortable doing it yourself there should be a place that can do it for you. Look on www.macsales.com they have all kinds of upgrade kits with video instructions and the proper tools. It's really not difficult at all.
On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 10:53 AM, Michele L Yamazaki <michele@toolfarm.com> wrote:
Hi Everyone
I am going to buy a new MacBook Pro today. I need something that can run CS6 speedily and CS7 when its out. I usually keep a laptop 2-3 years. I will mainly be using this to demo plug-ins at user groups and events and when I'm on the road. I have a 2010 model, 15" core i7 w/ 4GB RAM and it just chugs with AE CS6, and with all the plug-ins that I need to keep installed, it's just not cutting it.
So, today I'm going to buy a new one. I'm considering getting a 13" 2.9 GHz dual core i7 with 8GB memory. I wonder if stepping down from a 15" to a 13" will be a big deal? I used to run a 17"! I didn't notice the screen size difference much but the weight difference was huge.
I'm wondering if any of you are running AE CS6 on one of these or can recommend a what I should get with it? Does it run pretty smoothly, not chugging along? Any issues with plugging it into projection systems? Retina display or no? The retina displays are only 2.5Ghz core i5 on the 13". A friend of mine says not to get the retina display but I don't remember why he said not to.
Thanks in advance for your help. I am not really a hardware person and I just don't know what to choose!
--
Animator & Editor
www.teddygage.com
Brooklyn
--
Animator & Editor
www.teddygage.com
Brooklyn
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