Just bought a refurb..

Funkstard · 13-09-2010 4:06pm #1

A 13" Macbook pro. Got a great price for it, but upon comparing specs to a 15" (what I was going to buy), I've noticed that the graphics card is different. Giving that I'll be using it for design work I'm a bit worried - are the graphics cards in the 13" pros integrated? My machine is shipping a NVIDIA GeForce 320M, as opposed to the 15" which carries a NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M with 256 MB. Anyone know is there much of a difference in the two? And will my card be up to the work I need it to?

Cheers

Creamy Goodness · 13-09-2010 4:07pm

what work will you be doing exactly?

Funkstard · 13-09-2010 4:09pm

Photoshop, Illustrator, 3d rendering are the heavy work it will be doing

Jev/N · 13-09-2010 4:13pm

How much RAM have you got?

Creamy Goodness · 13-09-2010 4:45pm

Funkstard wrote: »

Photoshop, Illustrator, 3d rendering are the heavy work it will be doing

The card is fine for Photoshop and illustrator. Those two are more ram and prcessor hungry and not graphics heavy.

You'd want a bare minimum of 2gigs for running them. With 4gigs being more comfortable.

Not too sure what you mean by 3d rendering? What kind of programs?

Funkstard · 13-09-2010 5:06pm

It's a 2.66ghz processor, 4gb ram with 320gb harddrive. So the benefit is that where I would have been going with 2.43, now I have 2.66. Will those specs keep me safe?

Creamy Goodness · 13-09-2010 5:10pm

Those specs should be fine. Only thing that would put me off is the screen size but that's just cause I'm used to 2x22" monitors or my newer 27" monitor but that's just me.

Your machine will devour PS and IL.

Funkstard · 13-09-2010 5:25pm

3d rendering as in 3d modelling with sketchup and rendering with 3dSmax or Vray or whatever.

I've researched the screen size to death - in the end I love the portability, size and battery life of the 13" as I will be lugging it around a good bit, and I'm going to get a 21.5" monitor for working on.

Creamy Goodness · 13-09-2010 6:07pm

yeh i guess i was just being picnicky.

i've forgotten how portability is a must when in college, a 13" macbook got me through college just fine, with fairly heavy PS usage. think i should have remember that portability is the key i'm only out of college a year :pac:.

my brother runs max10 on a 5 year old dell with 1gig of ram, 60gig hard drive, integrated graphics card and no doubt a terrible processor so i'm assuming your machine will well be capable of it.

does autodesk have versions of max available for mac os x? you'll probably going to have to install windows to run max.

Funkstard · 13-09-2010 6:41pm

Ah crap...just realised it's a core 2 duo and not an i5 too. Oh well...only as important as how the machine runs. I plan on running windows 7 on it also.

Creamy Goodness · 13-09-2010 6:44pm

try and only use windows when you need to.

PS and IL run much better on OS X than windows.

barryj · 15-09-2010 8:02am

Funkstard wrote: »

Ah crap...just realised it's a core 2 duo and not an i5 too. Oh well...only as important as how the machine runs. I plan on running windows 7 on it also.

There's no option for an i5 on the 13" machines - only the larger ones.

- barry

Just bought a refurb..

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