How is performance on Macbook Pro 15" 2ghz 128mb video ram?

Question

Is anyone running aperture with the 128mb video ram?
Trying to decide if the approx $500 difference between models is really worth it for the ram. I know there's a little more hd space and a tick faster cpu speed but I'm mainly concerned with the ram question.
Thanks to all,
Larry

Answer 1

You get 25% more hard drive, 8% faster CPU, double the VRAM for $500 if you are comparing stock systems only. However if you are building to order the price difference will be much less than $500 the way the BTO options price out. And, you should want 2 GB of RAM. To achieve that with the cheaper MBP you either need to throw away the 512 and buy two DIMMs instead of just one or pay Apple $500 instead of the $300 if you had bought the better MBP.
For a MBP with 120 GB hard drive, 2 GB RAM BTO cost is:
2.0 GHz MBP with 128 MB VRAM, $2699
2.16 GHz MBP with 256 MB VRAM, $2899
$200 difference, not $500. Of course buying third party RAM will change it some. Either way I think max HD size and max RAM is important and at less than $300 actual difference I consider the faster box a smarter purchase. Best value of all is the 17" MBP with its 8x DVD and FW800.
Note that Apple and graphics apps clearly are sharing more processing with the GPU as time goes on. IMO it behooves us to get fastest available (at reasonable price) GPUs for the future, not because of any perceived performance difference today.
This thread mirrors comments I made a year+ ago. Look what happened to folks who bought G5s and saved a few bucks because at the time better GPUs BTO mostly affected only video/3D. Then Surprise! Aperture came along and knocked multiprocessor G5s without upgraded cards to their knees. Further surprise, Apple - IMO incredibly and unethically - refused to facilitate card upgrade purchases to folks who had purchased Apple's best Macs, now lamed by an Apple app.
Personally when I buy it is always with fastest available (at reasonable price) GPUs; just trying to get max graphics performance which historically has always been challenging to hardware setups.
IMO it is essential to buy for the future, not for today. Today will be over before a new box is even delivered...
There are many earlier threads that discussed this that you can find by backtracking through the thread list. One is <http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=478038&tstart=100>.
-Allen Wicks