which macbook to buy?!

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spot-ed

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I need help! i'm currently working on a mac pro quad core running final cut studio and combustion and it works perfectly. now i need to know which macbook would be best to run final cut studio 2 on.
it's a toss-up between the 13" macbook 2.4GHz, and the 15" and 17" macbook pro 2.5GHz.
i'm not sure which of these would be the most capable of running all the apps that come with final cut studio 2 without any trouble?

and another question; what does this mean?:
"An AGP or PCI Express Quartz Extreme graphics card (Final Cut Studio is
not compatible with integrated Intel graphics processors)"

i hope it all makes sense!
thanks!
 
spot-ed said:
I need help! i'm currently working on a mac pro quad core running final cut studio and combustion and it works perfectly. now i need to know which macbook would be best to run final cut studio 2 on.
it's a toss-up between the 13" macbook 2.4GHz, and the 15" and 17" macbook pro 2.5GHz.
i'm not sure which of these would be the most capable of running all the apps that come with final cut studio 2 without any trouble?

and another question; what does this mean?:
"An AGP or PCI Express Quartz Extreme graphics card (Final Cut Studio is
not compatible with integrated Intel graphics processors)"

i hope it all makes sense!
thanks!
Click to expand...

That means don't choose a Macbook... A Macbook Pro uses the Nvidia Chipset for graphics and the ordinary macbook uses cheap intel graphics so go with the Pro.
 
If you want to run Final Cut Studio 2, you need to have a dedicated 3D graphics chipset (Nvidia or preferrably ATI Radeon).
Ideally that should be an ATI Radeon (for some reason ATI outperforms even the newest Nvidia's and even the professional Nvidia cards in Motion 2 and GPU rendered effects).

So yes, you need a Mac Book Pro. However if you run Final Cut Studio (one), it may still let you run FCP without Motion. Still it's better to keep all your software same version
and buy a MBP. I guess Apple could have written drivers to use the Integrated Intel Graphics which actually has a decent performance in the newest version but they wanted to keep a Pro laptop for their 'Pro' apps.
 
cool, thanks guys!

silly question: if i get the macbook pro which has the Nvidia graphics card, would it be a nightmare to change it to the ATI Radeon card at a later stage?
 
spot-ed said:
cool, thanks guys!

silly question: if i get the macbook pro which has the Nvidia graphics card, would it be a nightmare to change it to the ATI Radeon card at a later stage?
Click to expand...

Yes because you can't change the graphics chipset of a laptop :D

The ATI card is for the desktop PC ;)
 
The low end 15" Macbook pro would work as its got the dedicated 512MB or Video ram.

Device details
2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Video card details
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 512MB
 
spot-ed said:
cool, thanks guys!

silly question: if i get the macbook pro which has the Nvidia graphics card, would it be a nightmare to change it to the ATI Radeon card at a later stage?
Click to expand...

Sorry, I confused you. The MBPs as stated by someone else, come with Nvidia cards, these are just as good, as ATI's. For some reason the ATI's perform (a little)better in Motion 2 than Nvidia's, even the desktop Nvidia's, but we
prolly wouldn't be able to see the difference anyway.

The Nvidia is good enough, for all intents and purposes. Get a MBP.

The MBP's faster CPU will also speed up your renders so that a MBP will save you some time even if you
don't use any of the GPU effects in FCP or Motion 2.
 
Last edited:
great. thanks for all the info!
looks like it's a macbook pro for me!

i have another question. does anyone know if i can outsource my video (from fcp) to view on a tv monitor with the dvi-video connection? or would i need another transcoding device for that?
 
Last edited:
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