Timing Apple Releases - Buy or Wait

T

thisisjohnny

Member
My current plan is to wait for Apple to release the Macbook Pro refresh within the next 1-3 weeks and use that to hold me off until the new Mac Pro comes out. The problem is that I really want a Mac Pro.

I've always wanted a Mac Pro Tower just because its practically a work of art in terms of form, fit, function, and finish. That being said, this thing is overdue for a refresh and the price hasn't changed to reflect that. The last thing I'd want is to buy an 8-core Mac Pro just to have a super uber mega awesome Mac Pro tower come out in a few months at the same price.

Looking for users of both MBP and MP to weigh in with your advice on whether to buy or wait. Which to buy now? I really just wish Apple would update the price on the Mac Pro to reflect that the price was fair a year ago, but not now.

For comparison purposes: I would configure a 17 inch MBP w/ 200 GB 7200 RPM Drive, 4 GB of RAM, and High Res Screen. The Mac Pro would be 8x2.8 ghz, 14 GB of Ram, 2x300GB Raptors Raid-0 and 2x1TB 7200RPM Raid-0 Internally, and an external 2x1.5TB Firewire 800 Raid-1 with NVidia 8800GT. I will be using FCS2 (with a lot of Motion) and MB Looks to work with mostly 720p24 Video on P2.

I am stepping up from a Macbook 13.3 w/ 2.1 ghz C2D, 250 GB Drive and 4 GB of RAM with FCExpress.

How much more performance do I get out of an 8-core Mac Pro vs a Core2Duo MBP? What would you do in my situation?
 
Heard rumors of an aluminum Macbook refresh but no MBP. With that said I think an 8 core MP would beat the pants off a dual MBP but then again im no expert on performance testing but I would have to say it would speed up renders and encoding by a lot.

You will always be chasing technology. If you need it now buy it and put it to work,If not then wait it out. My dualcore G5 is still working hard these days and its 3 years old. I think you would be set for a while with the current MP that are available today.
 
If you have clients, get a MacPro and use it to produce revenue.

I just don't see any huge advantages if you wait until the latest, greatest widget.
 
If you need it, buy it. If you can live without for a bit, wait for at least the next upgrade. Like others have said, new technology will keep on coming and you have to accept that whatever you get now will be old in less than a year.

Having said that, the current towers are very powerful and will last you for years. How much more performance do you get with a Mac Pro compared to a MacBook Pro? Huge difference. My render times are now super short and compressing content is insanely fast compared to what I had on my MacBook Pro (Core Duo). Editing on the MacBook Pro is like working in the stone ages compared to the Mac Pro.

Btw, you can save money by buying 3rd party ram instead of getting all them 14 gigs from Apple.
 
Cools said:
Btw, you can save money by buying 3rd party ram instead of getting all them 14 gigs from Apple.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was planning to get the RAM from macsales.com

I agree about the need and increased productivity as justification, but to be honest, this is just a very expensive hobby for me and "need" is relative.

Because there is no true need here, I think I might be better off waiting to buy a new MBP when it first comes out. It just kills me that while still a tremendous "value", the Mac Pro cost the same as it did several months ago when the dual quad cores first came out.

In the meantime, I'll just sell my mac book and put that bit of money aside until the new Mac Pro comes out at MWSF.
 
With your mac pro configuration you want, i read somewhere they did benchmarking on the video cards and the ati cards are better for the pro apps, where as the nividia card was better at playing games i foget who did it, but a quick google search would turn it up im sure, and always check out the refurbished models on the apple website, cuts down the cost by alot then upgrade ram from macsales like you said
 
I'd wait for the Mac Pros to switch over to the new Intel Nehalem chip sometime in the coming months. if you can wait, wait - it will be a significant bump up.
 
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