About to buy a MacBook Pro and have a couple questions.

Hello all,

I'm getting ready to purchase a macbook pro for college and I had a couple of questions I was hoping you guys could answer before I made my purchase. Any help/information would be greatly appreciated.

My first question is about which model I should get. I'm going into Simulation and Digital Entertainment, basically, video game design and animation. So I'm going to be working with a lot of 3d graphics software such as Maya and 3Ds max, so I was wondering if you think it will be worth it to purchase the $2,300 (with my student discount) model which has the 8600M graphics card with 512MB of RAM, or if you think the $1,800 model with only 256MB of RAM would suffice?

I should also note that I plan to upgrade to 4GB or RAM and probably the 7200RPM HDD too.

That was my main question, but I also had another small question.

This question isn't of big concern considering it's not related to the main purpose of buying a macbook pro, but I was still a bit curious. I've been hearing a lot of talk about the Macbook Pro being able to run a lot of PC games such as Half-life 2, portal, Team Fortress and what-not through dual-boot. Some even going as far as to posting videos of themselves playing games on their macbook pro on youtube. I was just wondering if it's really all it's cracked up to be. Can you really play some of the higher-end pc games smoothly on a macbook pro with the 8600M w/ 256MB of RAM? Like I said before, it's not of big concern, however it may be nice to occasionally kick back and play some games while waiting for my next class to start.

Once again, thank you all for any help.

Do noy buy the Apple Ram. Spend less than 3 minutes and do it yourself, and save a hundred dollars or so

Now were I using Maya and 3dsmax, I'd have popped for the 512MB of video ram. BTW, once you boot into windows, using bootcamp, it's a windows box. If the game will play on a windows box with an 8600m, it'll play on a mbp with an 8600m.

Oh yeah, I had already planned to do that. I already found the RAM I want at Newegg.com.

So you really think the 512MB of RAM will make a big enough impact on performance to justify the extra $500?

TheDotEater,

Normally a 512 memory in the graphics card will give you much better video performance than 256. For your work in simulation and video game design I would think you could really use that 512, so yes, for your field spend the extra $500. You'll be happy later on that you did.

You'll have better gaming experience as well...

Noel

Good luck upgrading the Hard Drive. That is not easy like it is on the MB. If you aren't skillful with a screwdriver, get it done by Apple.

TheDotEater,

Just a note of warning on the Macbook Pro hard drive - Apple doesn't want users to change them and if you do you can void your warranty. Please don't try to do it yourself...Read about it here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7458153&#7458153

Apple lets the users change the hard drive in the Macbook, just not in the Macbook Pro.

Noel

Hrm, this bit makes me chuckle.

According to Apple's warranty if you perform work on your computer that causes any consequential damage then the repair of that damage is not covered under the warranty.

I can perform work on my laptop that certainly meets apples standards in the past (at least when I was repairing them). Then again, I have a labs worth of equipment, including anti-static provisioning. I wouldn't mind replacing my drive. When I do, perhaps I'll take pics Then again, it'd be awful hard to pull the 'you replaced the hard drive and the logic board fried' argument with me too.

But to each their own.