I want a Macbook Pro as fast as my G5

I'm going to be buying a MacBook Pro soon but I'm worried I will be disappointed with the speed of the laptop.

I have:

Processor: 4 x 2.5 GHz PowerPC G5

Memory: 1.5 GB DDR2 SDRAM

I'm a graphic designer and I use Photoshop everyday and my G5 has never disappointed me with excessively slow redraw on really large files. I don't really know enough about the technical stuff with regards to processor speed or bus speed or if the Macbook Pro laptops are just going to be slower than my tower.

What I would like advice on is which of the Pros is going to perform as fast as my G5 or would perform better?

I am looking to buy a refurbished one from Apple since I read somewhere on this forum that with the refurbished ones Apple has worked out the kinks and bugs in the system.

Thanks a bunch for any advice

Misty

I would almost 100% guarantee that the MacBook Pro will be faster. It is simply a much newer computer, uses an Intel processor, has a more up to date video card and ships with more RAM then you have in your desktop. Since photoshop relies heavily on processor speed, the speed bump from the Intel processor will be noticeable.

Thanks for the info!

well he does have a quad processor though, but yeah, the intel is better and if you are using CS4 then you will also take advantage of the GPU (often underestimated by nongamers, the gigaflops are amazing) ... not to mention the MBP has 2gigs of DDR3 memory which is a whole 200Hz faster

you probably won't get any slower

just a quick comment, from my experience photoshop also relies on fast hard drives, it may sound silly, but have you seen the file sizes of those psds

As scathe has stated, when speccing your MBP make sure you fit a 7,200 rpm drive to it or at the very least have a FW800 external 7,200rpm drive.

I'm surprised you say Ps can handle large files easily with just 1.5Gb of RAM. My computer at work has 4Gb and it really struggles sometimes, even at simple tasks like rotating/scaling etc. That was a 1.2Gb .PSD though.

Hi scathe: I thought Ps could only take advantage of the GPU if it was the 'Extended' version?

I have CS3 standard at work as I use it solely for 2D design/photo manipulation, but the GPU checkbox is grayed out?!

Or do you mean CS4 has extended this feature to the 'standard' edition too?

Thanks for the heads up on the faster drive Marty.

I have looked at my hardware in system profiler but I don't see where it shows my G5's RPM? Am I looking in the wrong place or does apple keep it a secret )

As far as handling large files (2-3Gb) I guess it's all relative - I feel if I don't have to go out for a snack while its working on it I'm doing pretty good. Not instantaneous but pretty fast.

I will be getting new CS programs when I get the laptop, I have PS CS and CS2 InDesign, Illustrator. That GPU sounds great.

Thanks,
Misty

martyp said:

As scathe has stated, when speccing your MBP make sure you fit a 7,200 rpm drive to it or at the very least have a FW800 external 7,200rpm drive.

I'm surprised you say Ps can handle large files easily with just 1.5Gb of RAM. My computer at work has 4Gb and it really struggles sometimes, even at simple tasks like rotating/scaling etc. That was a 1.2Gb .PSD though.

Hi scathe: I thought Ps could only take advantage of the GPU if it was the 'Extended' version?

I have CS3 standard at work as I use it solely for 2D design/photo manipulation, but the GPU checkbox is grayed out?!

Or do you mean CS4 has extended this feature to the 'standard' edition too?

Click to expand...

I had it grayed out when I didn't have a good enough graphics card, so I just though that was it, I think PS uses OpenGL 4.0, so if you don't have support for that, then you're out of luck, unfortunately

but they say the cs4 uses the gpu even when not working with 3D which comes in the extended version, at least from what I read somewhere ... as I understand it, they just transfer some of the processing from the CPU to GPU unit ... I'll try to look it up or somehting

Edit, I may have been mistaken indeed, but I was sure I read something about the gpu, too bad I can't find it