MOTUnation.com

Hello!

My late 2008 MBP is getting older and older as I add more plugins and VI's to the mix.

I was thinking about replacing it with a new Macbook Pro or one of the new Mac Pro's.

I'm worried that the new MBP's will not be enough to handle DP with a lot of plugins running. I'm also not sure I can afford a new Mac Pro.

Has anyone else replaced an older Macbook Pro? If so, would you have any advice?

I'm doing more and more music these days, selling royalty free stock music online. So my use has gone from hobby to semi-pro. I just can't seem to decide what is best for me to do.

Thanks if you have any suggestions.

At this point, if you're on a budget I'd recommend finding some 2012 Mac Pros for sale. You can probably get some good deals. There have been some threads suggesting exactly that, though they were from a few months ago. If you do, go for the 12-core. It's a fantastic machine. (that's what I'm using as we speak)

I think the new Mac Pros will become THE machine of choice in the future, but not for a couple of years. I personally would not buy one right now, but I hope that plenty of people DO buy them so that they'll continue to develop them and evolve them into what they need to be. In two to three years they'll be astounding.

But you have plenty of time to get some great use out of a 2012 Mac Pro or later. The 12 cores make a lot of difference with Digital Performer in 64 bits. It's already an astounding machine. I do look forward to the day that the new Mac Pros are really worth their price, but I'm not thinking we've really reached that day, yet, unless you just really need Thunderbolt right now. (2012 Mac Pros do not have Thunderbolt. The new MP is the first to have it.)

Just my opinion. I'm sure there are other opinions!

Shooshie

Thanks Shooshie! You've had great advice since I found these boards in 2005!

I'll take a look at some of the 2012 Mac Pro's.

If you are budget-constrained and not overly intimidated by hardware mods, the 2009s (4,1, especially the single-CPU variants) can be upgraded to 2012 (5,1) very easily. Look here for one man's (very detailed) perspective:

http://pindelski.org/Photography/2013/0 ... 009-part-i

and search this board for a lot of discussion.

My hex "5,1" is actually a 4,1 in which the EFI was flashed to 5,1 and the quad core CPU replaced with a W3680. I also upgraded the GPU to a 5770.

Exclusive of RAM and storage, my machine cost about $1850 to build 1.5 years ago. Today, the 4.1 Mac I used as my starting point can be bought used for $500 less than I paid, but the W3680s have become hard to find new because production has ceased.

I recently replaced my 2008 MBP with one of the new iMacs (maxed out the ram and with an SSD) and have been extremely happy. Thought about a used MP as the new ones weren't out yet, but so far able to do everything I need - running multiple instances of Mach5, Kontakt, BFD, and such with no problems.


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I'd like to get into the i7 vs Xeon debate, concerning benchmarks and how well DP runs on either CPU. However that discussion is not worth having if you're buying a Mac because what trumps that conversation at this time is the amount of RAM you can install.

My opinion is that with the kind of stuff it sounds like you're doing, you'll want more than 16GBs of RAM.

Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I know, only two Macs can do that at this time. MacPros and the 27" iMac are the only Macs capable of going over 16GBs of RAM.

And if you already have a monitor, especially a nice one, then your best move is a 2009-2012 MacPro with as many cores as possible. Load it up with RAM and get some SSDs on sale and you're good to go. That could hold you out for a least a few years.

I agree with everything Shoosie said. The new MacPro will be an awesome machine for DP. But I too would wait a generation and get a good deal on a recent MacPro now.

I really hope that the next MacPro will be, component for component the best PC for DP. On the flip side I hope DP gets Uber optimized for the new MacPro (if there's anything to optimize).

The new Mac Pro: Until MOTU and other DAW coders put GPUs to use, the nMP will be only marginally faster than the older MPs for DAW use.

i7 vs XEON: Not much difference per core, but you can get more cores per CPU in the XEON line. And ECC, but do we care?

RAM: it all depends on how many large sample set VIs the user wants to have available at once.

SSD: Yes. For everything except backups and long-term storage. And following this thought...

SATA2 v SATA3: When used with SSD, nominal difference (if any) for boot/app drives. When used for project/audio/VI streaming, difference may be noticeable in quicker load times.

HCMarkus wrote:The new Mac Pro: Until MOTU and other DAW coders put GPUs to use, the nMP will be only marginally faster than the older MPs for DAW use.

You got that right. What part of DP would benefit from GPUs the most? Just overflow? Or could the AU format be coded to run on the GPUs somehow? I don't know much about GPUs and how they compare to the DSPs and other types used on UAD cards, etc.. Getting VIs and plugins out of the CPU would help DP a lot when pushing high memory loads. Could also help out with latency. That would be great. Otherwise we don't need much from a video card, other than working with some movie files. And I would down size those anyway.

And ECC, but do we care?

Right. But the entire bussing system on the new MP is so much better and that has to make a huge difference. Although I've never used TB, so I can't speak on that.

RAM: it all depends on how many large sample set VIs the user wants to have available at once.

Better safe than sorry, right? These days in 64bit world, 16GBs of RAM is really right. DP itself uses 16GBs on my system and I wouldn't even say I have much loaded. Then again I'm too lazy to freeze tracks.

SSD: Yes. For everything except backups and long-term storage. And following this thought...

SATA2 v SATA3: When used with SSD, nominal difference (if any) for boot/app drives. When used for project/audio/VI streaming, difference may be noticeable in quicker load times.

I've got my SSDs on an PCIe eSATA 3 card and they're in a RAID. It helps for sure. I get speeds up to 800MB/s or so.
Yes quicker load times for sure, but also DP run better under heavy loads by streaming files faster. I put current projects on the SSD RAID and DP can go a lot further before it starts bogging down. LASS and Ivory American D really benefit from being able to stream files from SSDs while some are loaded into RAM.

One can sink a lot of money into a MacPro but they are robust and flexible.