Buying a new(er) Macbook Pro

So I have a 2.16 ghz Macbook Pro Core Duo. It only supports a max of 2gb of ram... I use it primarily for recording and mixing music on Logic Pro, as well as your general internet browsing, movie watching, a game here and there, and running virtual machines (XP using vmware). It's just simply too slow to handle what I need it to handle in Logic Pro now (Logic timeouts every time I play a song with a lot going on, and a few songs that have so much going on Logic crashes completely and says machine too slow when it tries to play them), so I'm looking to purchase a newer model. My primary concern is Logic running as smoothly as it possibly can, while running other memory hog applications in the background (optimally, I'd like to run Logic Pro while also running VmWare).

It's basically between a 2.8ghz Core 2 Duo and a 2.4ghz i5. I will put 8gb (1066Mhz in the first, 1333Mhz in the later) ram in whichever one I buy, and upgrade the HD to a 750gb 7200 rpm hard drive. The cost difference will be about $200. My question is, how much of a performance boost will that $200 get me? Will it be significant enough to cough it up?


First post here btw, although I've browsed here for a while.

get the i5. the main reason your Logic sessions will be crashing is because there is not enough CPU grunt for it to process all the DSP plugins and therefore kills the session. with an i5 this is more than enough "grunt."

the 8gb RAM will help if you use a lot of sampler instruments or loops.

robduckyworth said:

get the i5. the main reason your Logic sessions will be crashing is because there is not enough CPU grunt for it to process all the DSP plugins and therefore kills the session. with an i5 this is more than enough "grunt."

the 8gb RAM will help if you use a lot of sampler instruments or loops.

Click to expand...

Thanks, that's kinda what I was thinking.

I usually don't have a ton of software instruments, but a TON of audio tracks and buses with a ton of plugins. I guess the plugins go in the same category as an instrument though.

yep same thing, lots of DSP involved. really helps to have a good bit of RAM and a good CPU.

if you really need some CPU power freeing up, use less plug ins, or route them through a bus and use it for multiple tracks. on another note, the Logic plug ins use a lot less CPU than some of the more fancy ones (Fabfilter, NI Guitar Rig etc)