Buying a new MBP after the new year need help!

[Alexgator]

I'm currently using a late 2007 15' Macbook pro with a 2.4GHz core 2 duo processor maxed out with 4gb of RAM. Is a 15' 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 with 16gb of ram over overkill for running a moderate amount of plug-ins in Ableton and general basic computing? Is the 13' 2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 maxed out with 16gb ram more than enough for what I do? As far as plug-ins go other than Waldorf Largo and the NI stuff minus Kontakt, Battery, and Maschine I stick mostly to Ableton stock plug-ins as I feel it gets what I need done in a pretty integrated environment. I generally work with about 20-25 tracks half audio and half plug-in. Just trying to be as through as possible here. Thanks in advanced!

[Tarekith]

Either of those laptops will be more than enough for what you want to do IMO.

[vitalispopoff]

I've seen vaio i7 w/ 4G RAM +Windows 7, working with 70 track project like it was no big deal. Compare to the MacOSX and 4 times more RAM - if You're able - go for SSD as well. Your new baby will rock.

[Tarekith]

Ditto on the SSD if you can swing it. I got my first SSD drive with my new MBP too, and I was very impressed at how it speeds things up.

[Sage]

I'm also looking to buy a new MBP in a couple of weeks and can't decide between the 2.9GHz 13" and the 2.3GHz 15". The problem is whether there's a big enough jump in performance is enough to justify the extra expense which I could spend on other things. Not so worried about the 15" having less RAM and HD space so I'd upgrade those on either model anyway.

[Machinesworking]

Geekbench is your friend. Specifically with Apple hardware as it's a small enough pool to really seen the differences.
http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

7,772 score for the 13" 2.9 VS 10,807 Roughly the 2.9 is 70% the machine of the 15" 2.3

[Bagatell]

Ditto on the SSD if you can swing it. I got my first SSD drive with my new MBP too, and I was very impressed at how it speeds things up.

Not only faster, silent as well.

[Eventful]

Is a 15' 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 with 16gb of ram over overkill for ...

Nothing is overkill. If it's an option, buy it. I almost always use 70~80% of my cpu power, regardless of what machine I'm running. On a '98 book, I max what I can do. On a 2013 half tower dual quad core (hyperthreaded. That's 16 virtual cores.) 3.8 with 32 gigs of ram, I max what it can do. I see not reason to accept a weaker alternative, as it will only create boundaries for true, organic artistic expression.

[Sage]

Geekbench is your friend. Specifically with Apple hardware as it's a small enough pool to really seen the differences.
http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

7,772 score for the 13" 2.9 VS 10,807 Roughly the 2.9 is 70% the machine of the 15" 2.3

Cheers! Thats really helpful and just what I was looking for.

[Machinesworking]

Geekbench is your friend. Specifically with Apple hardware as it's a small enough pool to really seen the differences.
http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

7,772 score for the 13" 2.9 VS 10,807 Roughly the 2.9 is 70% the machine of the 15" 2.3

Cheers! Thats really helpful and just what I was looking for.

Check out the score for the 2012 2ghz Macboo Air! It's the first Air I've seen that really holds it's own against the regular line up.
6,831, or roughy 63% of the 15" 2.3!

My current laptop clocks in at 3310 and is roughly 48% the machine of the 11"!
Looking at it this way it's 30% the machine of the 15" 2.3.
Roughly 42% the machine of the 2.9 13"...

Roughly:
The 15" is 3 times the machine,
-the 13" is 2 1/2 times,
-the 11" is twice the machine.

I'm geeking, but I'm defintily thinking about not going for maximum speed in the portable this time, but I moved to an 8 core Mac Pro which clocks in at
14,342 so it's almost 4 1/2 times faster than the current laptop.

[Tarekith]

If you have a beast of a computer at home, I'd definitely go more for portability than power too.

[Machinesworking]

If you have a beast of a computer at home, I'd definitely go more for portability than power too.

yeah that's the idea. I'm fairly good with the power I have now in my old laptop, so I'm hoping to buy the next top of the line Macbook Air that comes out next year.
Hoping for three times the power, that should allow me to use pig plug ins like Collision and Diva in a live situation.

I have yet to break 10% CPU on the Pro during composing!

Plus one nice benefit of 64 bit will be a bit more power.
The Pro gets a boost of roughly 12% from 64 bit operations.

[pencilrocket]

avoid retina. it still sucks for music production environment. even apple's logic doesn't support lol

[KrisM]

I have the 13" 2.9 i7. It's beastly enough for my needs, and 16GB of RAM (not bought from Apple) with an SSD makes it a very nice and portable powerhouse. check this out, I run Parallels 8 with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit, here's the WEI scores:

CPU: 7.2
RAM: 7.9 (max possible)
Desktop: 5.4 (curse you Intel 4000 HD!)
3D Gaming: 5.2 (ditto)
Hard Drive: 7.x (I forget exactly, but it's on the stock 750GB 5400 drive I tucked into the optical bay o.O)

This is while OS X is running, btw. I let Windows have all 4 cores and 4GB of RAM. Obviously the 15" and it's quad core will prove superior, but I'm happy with my 13. Size was more important to me than raw performance, though it performs beyond what I really need atm. If I was going to keep it for 4-5 years like my last MacBook I'd rather have a quad core, but I know I'm replacing it in about two years this time. In the end it's all about needs vs price

avoid retina. it still sucks for music production environment. even apple's logic doesn't support lol

That is so much fail

[Tarekith]

avoid retina. it still sucks for music production environment. even apple's logic doesn't support lol

Retina display has been a game changer for music production here. With something like QuickRes I can quickly change the display resolution via a key command to (for instance) see all the channels in a large mixdown I'm doing for someone. Sure it can be pretty tiny, but for a birds eye view of things and being able to quick adjust track volumes in large projects, it's a huge time saver not having to scroll all the time.

While not many apps are shipping in retina resolutions, a lot of times I rarely notice the difference. In most cases anything text is rendered in retina, only some of the graphics are not. In Logic for instance, only some of the buttons are a little bit fuzzy, everything else is razor sharp like you'd expect from the retina display.

I was worried that the fact not all apps are retina compatible was going to be annoying or distracting, but it's almost never noticeable.

That said, of all the apps I use Live is the one that it IS the most noticeable because they do their text different than other DAWs it seems like. Still not a huge deal unless I look closely.