Ableton Forum

What are there to say about the talk and tests concerning the new Macbook 13" having a bad graphic card? Does that affect LIVE at all?
In other words are there any good reason not to buy it in comparison to the Macbook-Pro - other than the missing chance to get firewire 800.'
/August

Look up this benchmark, it seems the only reason to buy a pro 15" is if you plan on playing games where the vidcard makes a difference.

http://www.geekpatrol.ca/blog/118/

August wrote:What are there to say about the talk and tests concerning the new Macbook 13" having a bad graphic card? Does that affect LIVE at all?
In other words are there any good reason not to buy it in comparison to the Macbook-Pro - other than the missing chance to get firewire 800.'
/August

I tried the Macbook out at the local computer store and ran Live on it and I can tell you that I had no problems running it at all. Smooth as silk. If I'm going to buy a mac it's gonna be the Macbook (as it looks right now) with 2 Gb ram and the applecare option.

Thats interesting reading. But still they did no GPU test. My concerning is, when having a heavy session, having a lot of files, like a full live set in one session, my older powerbook can get pretty slow on drawing. If I go to the finder and back again it can take a long time for the machine to get all back ready to run. I have a feeling it's the graphic drawings of all the files that makes it slow. I don't run a lot of tracks or a lot of plug ins. just a lot of files ready to be played as the live set goes on.
Can this be an issue on the Macbook as well?
/August

It's not going to be an issue. Part of the graphics is offloaded to the second CPU core, and Intel's Core Duo has a 667MHz bus. That's a faster bus AND an extra processor core. The only thing that's slow about the whole system is 3d rendering. Live is not 3d, so there's not a problem.

Anyway, Live offloads GUI stuff onto the second CPU on a dual core machine, so it should be smooth as silk, even when you REALLY push it CPU wise.

It's not a bad graphics card anyways, you just need to get more RAM. I'm quite sure it compares nicely to the ones in the last PowerBooks, actually...

Allright thanks for the advices. Know there is only left to wait for a less noisy model of the macbook. It seems like they are a bit noisy. Eventhough I hardly can't wait, my powerbook at a crash to the floor last week, glued together now, looks like an African homemade computer.

August wrote:What are there to say about the talk and tests concerning the new Macbook 13" having a bad graphic card? Does that affect LIVE at all?
In other words are there any good reason not to buy it in comparison to the Macbook-Pro - other than the missing chance to get firewire 800.'
/August

what a lot of crap.... a bad video card! it is better than the ibook card ..
this whole thing is not true.. I am always amazed at all the crap spread about.. this card has been used in pc's a friend has one and loves it.. he could add a dedicated card to his pc but said he doesnt need to.. he even plays 3d games regularly..

got a MacBook 1.83Ghz

chucked in 1GB of RAM recently and left 1 256MB chip in there.
total 1.25GB, letting the video chip to chew on the 256MB extra RAM

video problems? WHAT video problems?? We're in 2006, ANY video chip can run an interface as simple as Ableton!!!!

there's nothing wrong with onboard video chips. it just doesn't come with all the hoohah allowing for Doom 34 or AutoCAD 87.

cuh!

Krugger wrote:got a MacBook 1.83Ghz

chucked in 1GB of RAM recently and left 1 256MB chip in there.
total 1.25GB, letting the video chip to chew on the 256MB extra RAM

video problems? WHAT video problems?? We're in 2006, ANY video chip can run an interface as simple as Ableton!!!!

there's nothing wrong with onboard video chips. it just doesn't come with all the hoohah allowing for Doom 34 or AutoCAD 87.

cuh!

The bottom line I think, if you are worrying about this is just to go out and buy a Xbox 360 to play your games on.

yeah, you will have no graphic problems running live. i've loaded it up on cpu and disk access (running upwards of 40 stereo tracks at once), and the graphics never choke (including with an attached external monitor). on my powerbook 12" live would have graphic slowdowns once the cpu got up to about 60%. i installed 1 gig of ram to go along with the other 256, and a 7200 rpm drive. and the pricetag fully pimped (minus spinners and ground effects) was about $1400.
and don't worry about the noise... the hum of other equipment in my studio is louder than any noise my computer makes and its way quieter than my old powerbook. also, the cpu difference between the 1.83 and 2.0 models is nominal. you're much better off spending the money on ram and a fast drive.