New MacBook Pros coming out Thursday

[sarasin]

I could buy it here, but I am sure it will cost me more than what its advertised for in the US or UK.

Question....

Where do you think it would have the best price? US right?

How much diff would it be to the UK price?

Guess I will have to wait to find out.....

[loop]

I think it's a fair debate though and i myself not being too Mac savvy or knowing the "real world" benefits of the new features. What is the better buy - Last years model for 929.00 or the new on 13in for 1199?

Also what about the new 13in for 1499 or last years 15in for 1599?

(just guessing at that 15in 1599 price).

It's all up to how much your willing to spend. You will be limited on each of them, but the more you pay, the less limited you'll be

It's too early to say what is the exact performance boost in %, but I would expect 30-50% from C2D -> i5 boost in terms of pure CPU computing for multi threaded apps on the 13". Dual Core -> Quad Core for the 15" & 17" will probably give some 20 - 30% inclrease .Practically, for musician's use the following considerations are valid:
1) Traktor does not utilize Multiple CPU Cores yet. Expected to come "soon".
2) Maschine does not utilize Multiple CPU Cores yet. Expected to come "soon".
3) Ableton & Logic know how to use Multiple CPU Cores.

If I could put it like this, if you want to use more programs together, the faster CPUs will help you. If you are using just one of the programs at a time, the old will do fine. Also, if you want to use your mac for the next 4 years and don't want to feel out-of-date, it's worth to get the bigger CPU model.

The new have 1333Mhz memory bus vs 1066 on the old - more data can travel between the CPU and the memory banks per second. The new port - it has potential, but nothing handy in practice so far.

You said the 15" - The base 15" is $1799/1749EUR. Expensive as hell ... as always. It's a damn well specced machine though, so that'd be the musicians dream system. If I can afford it, it will be my model of choice, everything else is a compromise for me. Having this as a middle ground, the less compromises, the better.

I think it's not good to be debating or discussing this thing, as it's sensitive and bit touchy. I'm sure everyone would want to get the more expensive model, but it's really a lot of money. The fact is that even the old-gen C2Ds will work great for at least 2 more years. This $929 is a pretty good deal if you are really limited on the budget side. The extra 270$ for the new 13" are worth and will give some extra headroom for the future software versions.

[haze324]

^

That's a great explanation. Yeah I keep thinking I could just save a few bucks and get the 929 deal, but they also have the 2010 i5 15in Model for 1439 refurbed. I think I would prefer the larger screen over the new high end 13 inch.

tough decisions because I'd like the latest, but at the same save some bucks if I can.

[loop]

I have the 13" and I often wish it's a 15.

as you say it's tough. The one you want always appears to be damn expensive ... but the worst is that there's a reason for this and it could be justified. Let me put even more mud in the swamp

The new Sandy Bridge generation has a "Turbo Boost" feature - if only one Core gets loaded, the system will automatically boost the frequency of that Core to a higher one. For example, the 2.0Ghz i7 in the 15" will be capable to work at 2.9G in this mode. Think of Traktor and Maschine as single core capable apps. Here is the spec sheet of this particular model:
http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=52219

Other benefit of the new i7 is Hyper Threading (missing on i5). That means that the 4 Core CPU will look like if it is an 8 Core CPU - that's two threads per each core. In practice this is not double performance, but is better for sure.

Price wise, the difference between the old base 15"/i5 DualCore and new base 15"/i7 Quad is about 25%. I think it's safe to say that the pure performance difference will be at minimum the same 25%, and maybe even more.

At the end, you really have to know what would you like to put on this system. If you want to be able to play multiple Audio processing apps together, better get the new 15.

Maschine is getting VST support - adding Komplete instruments and/or other VST instruments and effect - people already report how this kills their CPUs.
Traktor + Maschine with VSTs in a live set - damn, even more CPU
SSL/Itch + Ableton + VSTs - again a CPU monster

That said, if you don't need/want to do such complex setups in live environment, you don't need to pay the extra 25%. Get the refurbished 15 for screen estate and enjoy.

Once you get, there's a great after market option to install an OptiBay for SSD + HDD setup. Memory upgrade to 8GB is also worth. dammmn $$$$$$$$$

Sorry, but you asked for it

Cheers!

EDIT: LOL, I just realized that for the price of the 15", you can get two refurbished 13" with C2D@2.4G .

[DJZILCH]

the new mid-level macbook pro 13 inch is a BEAST!

2.7ghz i7, 4GB DDR3 Ram, 500GB hard drive - that is one killer piece of machine indeed, makes me kinda regret buying a brand new Macbook pro just 3 months ago!
This easily killed last year's top-of-the-line 15 inch i7 which was priced almost double!

[loop]

Benchmarks are here- the new ones kick ass

http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/2011/...ks-early-2011/



... and my percentile guess is far from true. In fact it's double performance for the new ones

amazing!

[DigitalDevil]

Placed my order for the baseline 13" yesterday after playing with it at best buy (unfortunately needed the apple store for the education pricing and the nearest one local is quite a ways away), and I plan to swap out the hard drive once intel releases the G3 X25 (next month, presumably). Its been quite a long wait but next week I'll be a new member of the MBP club.

[haze324]

Oh man student pricing. i didn't know Apple had this....yep, for sure getting a new one now.

Sweet!

[space monkey]

Without knowing how those bm's are written and what routines are used it's speculative how real world performance would translate. Does Traktor utilize multiple cores anyway? Does Ableton take advantage of hyper-threading?

[sarasin]

Same!



I think the 13" will suit me fine!

maybe the 15....