Mac people

Evening all.

I'm finally making the move from pc laptop to MacBook and my knowledge is fairly limited in terms of equivalence.

Right now I have a 2GHz i7 with 8GB RAM and when running Ableton it pretty much handles everything I can chuck at it when dealing with 3rd party plug ins.

How would an i5 MacBook compare? If I dropped down to an i5 but kept the 8GB RAM would it be that noticeable I.e. be a struggle to run stuff? How would that compare to say an i7 Mac w/4GB RAM.

I've always followed the rules of never compromising on RAM.

Thoughts etc? Anything else I should pay attention to when considering my purchase. OS etc?

Cheers

I have a mid 2011 Core i5 iMac with 12gb RAM which pretty much handles anything I have thrown at it so far (although for some reason the LuSH-101 seems to tax it more than I would have thought normal, sometimes up to 40% CPU) but I think RAM is more important generally than processor speed for running large amounts of plugins (obviously you still need a half decent processor also) so yeah, I would say an i5 with 8gb would perform better than an i7 with 4gb...

also, do not buy your RAM from Apple, it's a monstrous rip off. I bought mine from a place down Tottenham Court Road, 8gb Samsung RAM for about £40 and Apple will charge you like £200 for exactly the same thing. You have to fit it yourself of course*, but it's not hard unless you're a complete technophobe.

*which is apparently impossible these days...hmmmm, that's a bit shit.

  On 11/23/2013 at 7:46 PM, b born droid said:

2GHz i7 with 8GB RAM

also also, a 2ghz i7 must be a pretty old one to have such a low clock speed (my i5 is a 2.7ghz Sandy Bridge) - do you know what speed your current PC RAM is? if you're running a 1st/2nd gen i7 with 866mhz RAM or something you will notice a huge leap in performace with a Haswell i5 and 8gb of 1600mhz RAM.

maybe is a 2GHz quadcore ...also also RAM matters more for samples load not plugins (effects and instruments) where a CPU power is more important.

also also also:

mine is a quad core 2.7ghz i5... as I said, 2ghz is likely an older model if an i7...and whilst I agree processor power is certainly important for plugins, in my experience (I have had macs for last 10 years), for running multiple plugins at once, RAM is probably the thing to prioritise if you're taking about whether to go for an i5 with 8gb or an i7 with 4gb.

I've got 24 gb installed in a 3.4 GHz quad i7 iMac and I can't even make a dent in the performance. Which might also be because I suck at musics. Way overkill but I love it.

The i7 is completely unnecessary but the RAM is great. Ordered the min RAM in the config and bought the rest from Crucial.

looks like the RAM is soldered straight onto the motherboard in new MacBook Pros unfortunately so you can't fit any more yourself and have to buy it from Apple :( you can definitely fit more yourself in the new 27" iMacs though... does it have to be a MacBook b born?

  On 11/23/2013 at 9:08 PM, 2WV said:

 

  On 11/23/2013 at 7:46 PM, b born droid said:

2GHz i7 with 8GB RAM

 

also also, a 2ghz i7 must be a pretty old one to have such a low clock speed (my i5 is a 2.7ghz Sandy Bridge) - do you know what speed your current PC RAM is? if you're running a 1st/2nd gen i7 with 866mhz RAM or something you will notice a huge leap in performace with a Haswell i5 and 8gb of 1600mhz RAM.

 

It's a 2011 Sandy Bridge i7. 2630QM to be exact.

RAM is... I think it's only 667mhz. (DDR3 PC-10700S)

  On 11/24/2013 at 12:37 PM, 2WV said:

looks like the RAM is soldered straight onto the motherboard in new MacBook Pros unfortunately so you can't fit any more yourself and have to buy it from Apple :( you can definitely fit more yourself in the new 27" iMacs though... does it have to be a MacBook b born?

At what release point did they start soldering the RAM straight onto the motherboard? I'm thinking about buying a second hand one simply because it's cheaper. If you can still upgrade it in 2012 models for example then that'd be a massive plus point. Though I guess I wouldn't be able to take advantage of a newer processor and fast RAM. Is 1600mhz a 2013 thing?

Has to be a MacBook as I'm gonna be using it for a lot of live performance.

Thanks for that benchmarks link, that's very helpful.

Why the fuck doesn't Apple's website let you see the actual processor model in its macbook? Is the non-retina MacBook 64bit? Apple's website is disconcertingly vague. I have the possibility of using a mate's Educational discount for something like a 13 inch 2.5GHz i5 dual-core (Turbo Boost 3.1GHz) w/8GB 1600mhz RAM. I'm assuming that would be 64bit? Would the increase in RAM speed and slightly faster CPU make up for the drop in quad-core to dual-core? I'm concerned about the drop from quad to dual.

all macs for the last few years have been 64 bit so no worries there. i wouldn't drop from quad to dual core if can at all help it. you can still change the RAM in 2012 macbooks as far as I am aware, so seems like that might be your best bet.

OK cool. I was thinking about only going for a 13 inch, but it seems they are dual-core only so I'll bump upto a 15 inch to get quadcore. Wikipedia specs has been a great help on this. Cheers man, I think I got a better handle on this now.

for music production, if we talking about macbooks, the best buy is the low-end quad core 15 inch mbp. $2000

if i'd add anything else it would be a more powerful cpu +100 or 300$

250GB of storage is good enough considering all the external storage possibilities we have today

that's what i'm gonna buy next. now i have the 2011 13 inch mbp and i'm still at 32 bit (cause i'm not using samples much) and the comp is powerful enough 95% of time

also i have a pc desktop, pretty mad configuration but regarding the powers of todays laptops i will never buy a desktop anymore, nor a pc ...quadcore(or what ever it'll be) mbp is all i need in the future

you mean you are choosing to run things at 32bit? coz your 2011 mbp will certainly be a 64bit machine - i think all macs past 2007 have been 64bit if i recall...everything with a Core2 Duo or better is 64bit.

  On 11/24/2013 at 3:50 PM, 2WV said:

you mean you are choosing to run things at 32bit? coz your 2011 mbp will certainly be a 64bit machine - i think all macs past 2007 have been 64bit if i recall...everything with a Core2 Duo or better is 64bit.

i know but not all of plugins i'm using are ported to 64bit yet and AFAIK u only have the real advantage of being complete 64bit (the operative system, daw and all plugins) if you want to use more than 4GB of RAM for more samples. i usually rarely use more than 2gb of RAM in >>total<< let alone for samples load

i could stay at 32bit the next 10 yrs easily

ah I see, yeah a lot of the plugins I use in reaper 64 have to use the 32 bit wrapper as not ported yet...

dont' get a mac, it's not worth it at all

  On 11/28/2013 at 10:30 PM, tokn said:

dont' get a mac, it's not worth it at all

  On 11/29/2013 at 12:45 AM, Djeroek said:

 

  On 11/28/2013 at 10:30 PM, tokn said:

dont' get a mac, it's not worth it at all

 

*throws 2011 baseline 11" macbook air which-has-been-pretty-good-for-most-things-even-with-only-2GB-RAM-and-still-going-strong outta the fucking window*

yeah, totally not worth having a laptop that has almost zero latency using onboard sound without any configuration required

(gotta admit the MBA had a battery issue ca. 10 months after purchase and so it was away for service for TWO ENTIRE DAYS, can you imagine the pain and suffering?)

once you've had mac, you never go back...

  On 11/29/2013 at 12:16 PM, 2WV said:

once you've had mac, bad credit's a fact...

you saying owning a mac somehow affects your credit score? I bought mine with cash money, but I could see it might if you got one on finance then didn't pay the installments...that's hardly apple's fault though.