Is it time to upgrade my 15" Macbook Pro (Early 2011)??

jayhawk30

Member
Back in 2012 when I started edited heavily I purchased a refurbished early 2011 15" Macbook Pro. I've done a few upgrades so here are my specs.

16GB RAM
500gb SSD
Edit from Thurnderbolt Raid 0
2.2ghz Intel Core i7
AMD Radeon HD 6750m 1024 MB

For the last few years I've shot primarily with Canon DSLR's and I've never seemed to have an issue with Premiere. I would playback at 1/2 res and rarely encountered dropped frames.

Earlier this year I moved to a Sony A7s and it seems that my system is have a much more difficult time with it. Even a 1/4 res I drop a ton of frames during playback. I do shoot a lot of 60p in a 24p timeline and I know that's not helping either. Recently I downloaded some 4k footage from the Samsung NX1 and Quicktime is unable to play these files without constantly stuttering and dropping frames.

I'm starting to think it's time to looking into a new system. I really want to add a Shogun or NX1 to start capturing 4k and I'd like to be able to edit those files with ease.

When I look at the specs for new Macbooks it seems that most of them have very similar specs, 2.2 i7, SSD, and 16gb RAM with the only differences being graphics and retina display. Am I going to see a big performance upgrade here?

I wonder if the best route isn't to keep my current laptop and then build a PC?

Do you all think the issue with my current system is the graphics card?

Sorry to ramble but thanks in advance for the advice!
 
Back in 2012 when I started edited heavily I purchased a refurbished early 2011 15" Macbook Pro. I've done a few upgrades so here are my specs.

16GB RAM
500gb SSD
Edit from Thurnderbolt Raid 0
2.2ghz Intel Core i7
AMD Radeon HD 6750m 1024 MB

For the last few years I've shot primarily with Canon DSLR's and I've never seemed to have an issue with Premiere. I would playback at 1/2 res and rarely encountered dropped frames.

Earlier this year I moved to a Sony A7s and it seems that my system is have a much more difficult time with it. Even a 1/4 res I drop a ton of frames during playback. I do shoot a lot of 60p in a 24p timeline and I know that's not helping either. Recently I downloaded some 4k footage from the Samsung NX1 and Quicktime is unable to play these files without constantly stuttering and dropping frames.

I'm starting to think it's time to looking into a new system. I really want to add a Shogun or NX1 to start capturing 4k and I'd like to be able to edit those files with ease.

When I look at the specs for new Macbooks it seems that most of them have very similar specs, 2.2 i7, SSD, and 16gb RAM with the only differences being graphics and retina display. Am I going to see a big performance upgrade here?

I wonder if the best route isn't to keep my current laptop and then build a PC?

Do you all think the issue with my current system is the graphics card?

Sorry to ramble but thanks in advance for the advice!

Hi There,

I'm in the same boat with the same Macbook Pro. It was fine when I was editing 1080 footage but now that I have a Panasonic GH4 and shoot UHD, I'm frame skipping like a broken record. The right graphics card is probably the key to smooth playback and rendering. Adobe has a system requirement page that may help in your next computer puchase. I'm thinking about buying a second thunderbolt hard drive just to playback the preview files to see if that helps. The final solution for me would be to buy a used fully loaded 27" imac with an nvidia geforce gtx 775m.

Good Luck in your choice,
Salvatore
 
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