Will a Macbook pro perform better than my 2.5ghz quadcore PC

[flowdesigner]

I have a 2.53ghz quadcore PC laptop with 4gb ram and 7200 rpm 320gb HD and Nvidia 9600m GT 512mb 17" screen.

By itself, I guess its outperform any mac laptop, but when connected to my fireface 800, which in turn is connected to a UA2192 converter running at 96khz, I think maybe a mac is a better choice, as I get crackles when the CPU reaches around 50%, and I often set it to 1024 samples latency to avoid crackles.

[Maco]

I dont think the mac run faster, but try to get another driver for you FW connection probably the problem is the standard windows driver.

[glitchrock-buddha]

No, a macbook pro will not perform better. Although 50% is a little low to start getting crackles. On my mbp, it crackles over about 70%, but I've often heard many PC poeple say they can run it near 100%.

Also the quad core will definitely give you much more power than the dual core macbook pros.

[leedsquietman]

The one thing the macbook pro will likely outperform the PC laptop is in firewire performance, having both a 6 pin FW port allowing buss powering and having a better supported chipset, the LSI/Agere as opposed to generic junk thrown into PC laptops.

Then again, you will trade off for a lower track/plugin count on the fact that the Macbook Pro is still only dual core as opposed to quad core.

So if you don't need lots of I/O, sell your Fireface 800 and buy the Fireface UC (a USB2 version of the FF400, but with an improved software routing program). The Fireface UC has really good performance, typically a tad better than then FF400, in terms of latency. Although it is still variable and some people are not enjoying great drivers under Snow Leopard yet. (the win 7 drivers are also not quite as refined as the XP drivers but still pretty good).

If on the other hand, you DO need lots of I/O, then consider the 27" Imac i7 quadcore, or if that's too big, either compromise and go with the MBP dualcore i7, or wait until they put a quad in a MBP, but that could be a long wait.

[davepermen]

your quadcore is not an i7 based one right? it's core2quad days? if so, the macs, even i5 (i7 on the mac is just an i5 with a nice name) can perform better thanks to the fact that live isn't great at distributing to multiple cores (audio per se isn't great for that), and the i5/i7 can overclock to get more performance out of a single core as needed.

which is why i replaced my desktop core2quad with a corei5. it might be slower in tasks that fully loaded the quadcore, but for live, the i5 is (sometimes much) faster. and more forgiving once the cpu gets to it's max at balancing it's performance to not have crackles/dropouts.

so yes the macbook might be faster. as any core i5 or core i7 based laptop around.

[filterstein]

xp or w7?
might make a difference in the firewire performance as there were issues with that in xp.
some firewire chipsets in pc's are indeed crap, but there are cheap pci cards around that have a good TI chipset on them. See the rme website.

my lowly amd phenom quadcore can reach 100% cpu without crackles with 24 i/o's running
on a audiofire 12 at 128 samples latency, at least with the test option in live.
If a track uses a core to the max it's a different story, then 80% is more likely.

If performance is your only reason I'd, investigate a little further before dumping all that cash.

[flippo]

your quadcore is not an i7 based one right? it's core2quad days? if so, the macs, even i5 (i7 on the mac is just an i5 with a nice name) can perform better thanks to the fact that live isn't great at distributing to multiple cores (audio per se isn't great for that), and the i5/i7 can overclock to get more performance out of a single core as needed.

which is why i replaced my desktop core2quad with a corei5. it might be slower in tasks that fully loaded the quadcore, but for live, the i5 is (sometimes much) faster. and more forgiving once the cpu gets to it's max at balancing it's performance to not have crackles/dropouts.

so yes the macbook might be faster. as any core i5 or core i7 based laptop around.

interesting. I've noticed the new i7 mac significantly under performing my Q6600 in the standardized live performance test. I was thinking about getting a new putter, possibly the new macbook, but after seeing tests results I felt I didn't really feel like spending $3k to downgrade from a machine that cost me half that much 2 or 3 years ago.

[davepermen]

well, instead of buying that fake i7, get an i5 macbook. there the name fits at least the cpu

other than that, in my case, it mostly outperforms the q6600 i had. maybe not in some standard test, but in my daily usage, for sure. then again, talking desktop here. the q6600 is a desktop cpu, just as my i5 661. the macbooks have notebook cpu's, which are slower clocked (mine is 3.3ghz or something? macbooks 2.5ghz or something?).

anyways, best case is exporting audio (fully single threaded). i'm at around 2x the speed when exporting a track (which, as i'm not working with samples, can be very slow in my case ).

but for spending 3k, indeed, not worth it i spend 0.5k on my deskop (and got the added benefit of having a completely silent system now, great for music production). i was able to sell my old system for 0.5k, too.. so.. you get the idea

[deejayconte]

I got my i7-950 platform and switched to w7.. From my experience, my older processor q9550 quad @ 2.83 ghz works better with ableton than this one! :/
I had same problems with glitches and crashes and latency... TRY PUT SAMPLE RATE OF SOUND CARD @ 96KHZ --> IT HELPED HERE!

[4.33]

i spend 0.5k on my deskop (and got the added benefit of having a completely silent system now,

can you share your specs, especially your case choice?