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Apple Mac Pro vs. MacBook Pro Test Drive, Part 1

Sep 14, 2009 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer

Meet the new beasts

The MacBook Pro came with a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 8GB of 1067MHz DDR3 RAM, and the aforementioned 465GB Serial ATA drive. I tested using Mac OS X 10.5.8 on both systems, missing Snow Leopard by a matter of days, if not hours. Graphics were supplied by the Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT, with 512MB of VRAM, driving a 17in. LCD panel that I ran in 1920x1200 resolution.

The Mac Pro has two 2.93GHz quad-core Nehalem Xeon CPUs with 18GB of 1067MHz DDR3 RAM and close to 4TB of Serial ATA, non-RAID storage. Driving the 24in. 1920x1200 LED display is an ATI Radeon HD 4870 card with 512MB of VRAM.

About the tests

Everyone approaches the desktop-versus-notebook decision differently. On some message boards that I reviewed, it was, "Which computer do I buy?" On others, it was, "Which computer do I take?" I adopted the latter approach.

My thinking was this: Like many producers, I work on a range of projects, from audio-only podcasts to 2-hour event productions. On both extremes of this continuum, it's relatively easy to choose a computer—the notebook is fine for podcast work, while I really want my 24in./30in. screens and eight-core systems if I'll be editing for 20 hours to 30 hours.

So I tried to focus in the middle: shorter projects that would easily fit on a notebook drive but might also benefit from the muscle of an eight-core system. Where the internal debate goes like this: "Man, I'd love to edit on the Mac Pro, but is it really worth the time, effort, and hassle to pack and lug that around, or (gulp) ship it?"

Those are the types of project that I picked, three in Apple Final Cut Pro and three in CS4. Read all about them in two weeks.

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