New MBP Processor Vs. Dual Core Xeon?

[macaroni steve]

I am an audio professional and have both a Mac Pro and an MBP. The Mac Pro is my main audio production rig and my MBP is for all the "officey" stuff (emails, accounting etc.). I often do audio editing on the MBP as well. I would love to have everything on one portable machine.

I'm wondering if a new MBP will have the same performance or better than my desktop (which is performing just fine for me).

Are the new MBPs faster/perform better than a dual 2.8 xeon?

Will I find a noticeable performance improvement with a new MBP from my current MBP?

My current Mac Pro:
2 x 2.8 GHZ Quad Core Xeon
Memory 4GB

My Current MBP
2.53 GHZ Core 2 Duo
Memory 4GB

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Maybe this can help:
http://www.primatelabs.ca/geekbench/mac-benchmarks/

 

[electrolux76]

Processor wise, the new MBP should be faster than the MP. The video card will be a little slower (probably won't matter for audio). Unless you get an SSD or 7200rpm hard drive, the disk speed will be a little slower. The disk speed could matter if the work you do involves recording multiple tracks simultaneously.

For the most part I think performance wise you should be fine with the MBP. The real concern is expandability. Keep in mind that going with the MBP only, you're giving up extra drive bays, open PCI slots & extra FireWire ports. Depending on what kind of work flow you have and what kind, if any, break out boxes you use this could be your biggest hurdle. The wild card is of course is the Thunder Bolt port. If 3rd party manufacturers embrace it quickly enough, this can solve most of the above problems.

Good luck with your decision.

 

[gullySn0wCat]

The base 13" i5 has four cores like the original Mac Pros, and they are faster.

However if you do a task(s) that uses all four cores, the MBP processor will only be able to use 50% of each core towards the task. The Mac Pro will be able to use 100%. This is because two of the cores on the MBP are virtual, while on the Mac Pro they are all "real".

The 15" models and up absolutely smoke the Mac Pro however, they have four real cores (eight virtual) along with much faster RAM. BOOM

 

[philipma1957]

DO yourself a favor. Wait until the T-bolt external cases come out. If they are as good as they have been talked about. A 2011 MBP with an external T-bolt raid1 case would really work better then your current mac pro. Since the mac pro you have works fine it doe not make a lot of sense to buy today. Waiting for a month after the t-bolt case come out would be your best move. Here is a link to the new t-bolt cases due this summer. They would attach to a 2011 macbookpro


http://www.sonnettech.com/news/nab2011/


both the fusion f2tbr ( the speed + mobile) and the fusion e400tbr5 (leave at home for backup).

would be good fits for a 2011 macbook pro. since no one has them yet waiting to see if people like them would be wise.

 

[Transporteur]

BOOM

Yes, "BOOM" wrong machine for comparison! The OP mentioned the 2008 8 core, not a 1,1.

The Sandy Bridge processors the MBP uses are indeed faster in single threaded applications than the 2.8GHz Harpertown XEON. However, if the application can utilise all available cores, the Mac Pro will be faster than any MBP currently on the market.

 

[gullySn0wCat]

Yes, "BOOM" wrong machine for comparison! The OP mentioned the 2008 8 core, not a 1,1.

The Sandy Bridge processors the MBP uses are indeed faster in single threaded applications than the 2.8GHz Harpertown XEON. However, if the application can utilise all available cores, the Mac Pro will be faster than any MBP currently on the market.

My point still stands, except it's for up to 4-threaded applications ;-)

 

[phpmaven]

The base 13" i5 has four cores like the original Mac Pros, and they are faster.

However if you do a task(s) that uses all four cores, the MBP processor will only be able to use 50% of each core towards the task. The Mac Pro will be able to use 100%. This is because two of the cores on the MBP are virtual, while on the Mac Pro they are all "real".

The 15" models and up absolutely smoke the Mac Pro however, they have four real cores (eight virtual) along with much faster RAM. BOOM

I have a 2008 dual 2.8 Mac Pro and a 2011 17" MacBook Pro and the MacBook is a little faster at some things, but when it comes to doing some things that take serious processing power, like ripping DVDs with Hand Break for example, the Mac Pro smokes the MacBook. So I would imagine that when doing heavy duty audio editing like the OP is, his Mac Pro may outperform a new MacBook.

Now grated, I don't have have hands on experience with the apps he's using, but I'm basing this on my experience. I have both of my Macs on my desk hooked up to a KVM switch, and I still find myself using my Mac Pro for most things. I might also mention that i'm running SSDs on both.