Newbie Mac Question

Hi, I hope I am posting this in on the correct board. I am very new to Macs,

So i was given a MacBook Pro with the OS Lion six weeks ago. While i was using it a friend told me that the Pro was good with applications such as Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. I downloaded the trials for both of these applications and tested them out. After a few hours I began to run into trouble. Just applying masks in AE was making the app crash, and rendering was poor. Is there a way to improve the performance or amp up the "inner-workings" of the Mac?

-Thanks

Which MacBook Pro do you have? Year and model? How much memory and what size is the hard drive?

chscag said:

Which MacBook Pro do you have? Year and model? How much memory and what size is the hard drive?

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Thank you for your response;


Year and Model: MacBook Pro, 13-inch, Late 2011

Memory: 4 GB 1333 Mhz DDR3

HardDrive: Not entirely sure, but it is a late 2011 model (if there is a way to find a definite answer, i will find it)

Thanks for posting back specs.

The problem you're having is probably due to the integrated graphics chipset, the Intel HD 3000. This particular GPU "borrows" memory from the main system. When the main system has 4 GB of memory installed it will borrow up to 256MB which is likely not enough to do complex rendering. When the system has 8 GB of memory installed the chipset will borrow up to 512MB.

The kind of work you were doing really requires a discrete GPU, however many folks find that the HD 3000 is adequate. Installing another 4 GB of memory (total of 8 GB) will likely help. Also Photoshop needs plenty of hard drive space.

Ok, awesome.

Ill look into that, thanks.