Same question but with a twist

Hi

I know this question has been asked and answered before but mine has a little twist ;D
I am currently studying graphic design and will graduate in dec. Yesterday my computer got stolen, or my girlfriend forgot it at the bus stop, so now I need to get a new one and will go against my own believes and by a MAC.

There is a huge price difference ($700) here in Sydney between the macbook pro 2.2 and 2.4. As I said I know this question been asked before but all the forum posts I could find had to do with gaming and so on. I need the computer to be able to work smoothly with the CS3 suite, I prefer it to be able to run Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign at the same time without crashing.
For me as a graphic designer and student with a pretty limited budget, is it worth spending the extra $700 for a 2.4 and eat noodles for the forthcoming year. Is the better graphic card worth that much money?

Regards

Jimmy

fridsen said:

For me as a graphic designer and student with a pretty limited budget, is it worth spending the extra $700 for a 2.4 and eat noodles for the forthcoming year. Is the better graphic card worth that much money?

Click to expand...

For your needs... no, it isn't worth it.

Video RAM has no effect whatsoever on 2D performance in the amounts that current cards have, when you're running "normal" resolutions (like, say, 2048x1536 or less). It doesn't matter if it's 64MB, 128MB, 256MB or even 512 or 1GB. For 2D performance it makes no difference at all. I mean, say that you're running 2048x1536 (which is a resolution I haven't seen in a while; high end 19" and 21" CRTs used to do it), and say you're running 32 bit color. 2048x1536 = 3MP. 3MP x 32 bits/pixel = 12MB of VRAM used. That's a drastic oversimplification as there may be other data (textures and stuff) stored as well, I'm not really certain. But the bottom line remains the same...

You'll be fine with the 128.

Don't starve yourself, but what you can afford.