Need a new MBP

[dix]

[D'oh! I accidentally posted this in the Windows section so I'm moving it here along with responses. Sorry for the double post and the confusion]

I know it's not the best time to buy one, because I think the line is about to refresh, but I may need a new MacBook Pro.

There's a few flavors of the 2015 MBP with and without discrete, dedicated GPU. Does anyone if a better GPU would help DP. My understanding is that some apps offload processing power to the GPU for improved performance does anyone know if DP is such an app? I'm currently running DP on a MBP with dedicated Nvidia GPU for a project and it flies. I'm wondering if the GPU is helping.

Thanks!

[dix]

A dedicated GPU certainly can't hurt but I don't know how much it helps unless you are doing AV or film—then, yes.

You want an i7 Quad CPU. That does affect display in DP. I have A/B'd i7 vs i5 and Quad vs Duo more than once and the differences are dramatic.

If you can hold off till the MBP line refreshes, do so. There may be a feature you want in the new version or not. The current line will hit the Refurb Store the day after the new MBP is released—you lose the ability to build to order but there may be a stock model you like at a better price.

Rumors abound about the MBP including Skylake processors (very good and longer battery life), faster GPU (good) but one disturbs me: it might lose the i7 Quad like the Mini did in 2014 (not good). Anyway, it is likely that it will be announced during the WWDC on June 13 — if it is really coming at all.

I bought my daughter a new MBP last Christmas and am quite impressed with it.

[dix]

Thanks!

Unfortunately I may need a new MBP before the next gen is available, but I will get the latest i7 version.

Your daughter's MBP has an integrated GPU?

I will need to use a 19inch, or bigger, monitor. Other factors are that I work to picture often and can foresee a situation when two external thunderbolt monitors would be needed. The internet is not clear on whether a dGPU would help with multiple monitors and/or running quicktime movies. I'm kind of guessing that it would.

[mikehalloran]

...Your daughter's MBP has an integrated GPU?

I will need to use a 19inch, or bigger, monitor. Other factors are that I work to picture often and can foresee a situation when two external thunderbolt monitors would be needed. The internet is not clear on whether a dGPU would help with multiple monitors and/or running quicktime movies. I'm kind of guessing that it would.

Hers has the basic Intel Iris Pro Graphics. The extra AMD chip set allows a single 4K display. Both support two HDMI / TB external displays.

Scroll down and you will see it
http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/

The extra GPU might help. I don't know but it certainly can't hurt.

[Prime Mover]

Can't imagine what a GPU would do for audio. Hell, it doesn't even really do anything for video or motion graphics outside of 3D. As far as I'm concerned, GPU stands for "Gaming Processing Unit". A FEW companies have come up with hacks to use the GPU for other things (Adobe Cuda Processing comes to mind), but that's pretty rare.

What I'm more concerned about is RAM. I've maxed my 16GB RAM on many projects (mostly MainStage), and Apple doesn't offer anything above 16GB at this point, so my 2011 MBP is as good as it gets now! If I didn't rely so exclusively on Apple MainStage, I'd go Windows.

[mikehalloran]

Can't imagine what a GPU would do for audio. Hell, it doesn't even really do anything for video or motion graphics outside of 3D.

In this case, it supports a single 4K monitor. Other than that, I'm with you.

When I bought my daughter's 5 months ago, I looked at the $500 upcharge. No thanks. She doesn't do any AV and her only audio use is GarageBand to put together mashups. This is my daughter, the grad student.

My other daughter is hanging onto her 2010 MBP because it has a SuperDrive. She won't let her husband, the Apple engineer buy her a later model. She uses Logic and gets by with an i5 Dual. I installed a 1T SSD last week which gave it some much needed speed.

I don't know if Logic benefits much with an i7 over an i5 the way that DP does. I could test it on a pairs of iMacs and MBPs but I would have to be interested in the outcome. Like that is ever going to happen, right?

[dix]

Well, I read that there are non-graphics apps out there that offload tasks to the GPU for better efficiency. Since DP was so efficient on the MBP with the Nvidia dGPU I thought it might be one of them. A quick reply from MOTU sales told me DP is not.

Thanks for the input!

[bayswater]

Can't imagine what a GPU would do for audio. Hell, it doesn't even really do anything for video or motion graphics outside of 3D.

In this case, it supports a single 4K monitor. Other than that, I'm with you.

I don't know if Logic benefits much with an i7 over an i5 the way that DP does. I could test it on a pairs of iMacs and MBPs but I would have to be interested in the outcome. Like that is ever going to happen, right?

It doesn't seem to me that Logic does benefit as much. Maybe something to do with pre-rendering.

As for a GPU, I was under the impression that it is necessary for the program code to make specific use of it, and it doesn't just happen automatically at the OS level. For audio, it would in theory be able to process complex plugin computations faster, if the plugin coders made use of it.