Hardware question

By waterborne at Sun, Dec 27 2009 6:50pm |

As I have posted earlier, I am a grad student in applied math. I want your advice in computer hardware. I currently own a 15" MacBook Pro with 4Gb of RAM. I am very happy with it and use it all the time. However, I sometimes consider getting a iMac or MacPro to use in conjunction with my laptop. Is this excessive? Would it be a worthwhile investment or would my laptop suit all my needs? I know the GeForce 9400M isn't that great for doing OpenCL work.

By nature of the program I spend a lot of time at a computer programming. I have also been getting very interested in OpenCL and general Apple developing. I also do some website work with Dreamweaver and will probably start getting a little more into it.

Thanks in advance.

Jeff

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Wed, 2009-12-30 11:57 — buterbkl

The answer, of course, is it depends...

Hi Jeff,

But then again you already knew that, right? Seriously, is your MBP starved for either CPU or memory with what you're doing? If not, then you're probably OK. If it is, or if there are things you can't do with it that you wish you could, then maybe it's time to consider a desktop machine.

If you're going to get a desktop, I would definitely recommend against the Core 2 Duo based iMacs. Go with either a Core i5 or Core i7 (i.e. "Nehalem") based iMac or a MacPro (all of which use the Nehalem processor). Nehalem is so much faster than anything else out there that it's worth the extra money ... at least if you can compile your applications to take advantage of it. HTHAL...

Kevin

Wed, 2009-12-30 13:38 — lbland

RE: Hardware question

hi-

I program on all the macs and this is what I think (it is subjective):

A MacBook Pro, Mac Mini and iMac are pretty much the same. The big oomph comes like this:

- Mac Pro : Wow! That is a beefy machine ... but if you value electricity and don't need it then don't do it. And, while the new ones are much quieter than the G5s, they are still too noisy for me (I'm picky).

- MacBook Pro w/ SSD : Nice performance increase, same electricity and you don't hear that 7200rpm disk spin with its constant whoooo sound.

If you decide to smoke a Mac Pro then I would wait for the next version. And if you need the power then the wow factor is impressive! But, for usual programming the MacBook Pro is nice on the juice and pleasing to carry around.

thanks!-

-lance

Wed, 2009-12-30 18:07 — waterborne

Thanks for the replies guys.

Thanks for the replies guys. I guess you were telling me what I already knew. I think the MBP will serve me fine for the time being. My Dad just got a Mac Pro for xmas and it is pretty cool so I guess that got me thinking. Oh well, back to reality..