I am going to purchase a macbook pro and am trying to decide between the model just release with 2.2 core duo with 800 side bus and the slightly older model with 2.33 core duo and 667 side bus. Both with 2 Gb ram.

Is the 2.33 going to be alot faster? I will be using this for music production, maybe the faster bus will be more useful and raw clock speed.

with less bus, it can be actually slower.

Yeah I was going to say the same thing I think that especially for music production the faster bus speed is going to make alot of what you do faster. If you were just surfing and the like the 2.33 would be a little bit faster. Basically for any memory intensive tasks the 2.2 will be faster. The bus speed is how fast all the parts can communicate and the clock speed (the 2.2 or 2.33) is how fast you can do calculations. If the CPU doesn't have the data though it can't do the calculations.

the 2.33 667 has 3gb ram the 2.2 800 has 2 gb ram...

Does this change any of your thinking?

the 2.33 667 has 3gb ram the 2.2 800 has 2 gb ram...

Does this change any of your thinking?

From what I remember, the 2gb (2 paired sticks) are more efficient when compared to the single stick of 2gb and a stick of 1gb.

From what I remember, the 2gb (2 paired sticks) are more efficient when compared to the single stick of 2gb and a stick of 1gb.

This isn't necessarily true anymore, I will post a link to the article that I read concerning exactly this.

Is 3GB better than 2GB of RAM? Yes and no. (http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/05/18/is-3gb-better-than-2gb-of-ram-in-a-macbook-yes-and-no)

and also

New MacBook Pros: the full 4GB, LED backlighting, 2.2/2.4GHz (http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/06/05/new-macbook-pros-the-full-4gb-led-backlighting-2-22-4-ghz)

As a newer MacBook owner, I totally appreciate you posting that link: I'd heard about the article, but didn't get a chance to read it. I've got the pair of 1gb chips in mine, deciding against the single 1gb and single 2gb. Of course, the graphics in the MacBook are not as beefy as the MB Pro. I haven't been using mine for PTLE, but have been doing a lot of video editing and processing, and it's worked out very well.

I always refer back to my older PTLE setup: 6.1.2 on Windows xp home, 1gb ram, 1.8GHz AMD, and I believe 333 bus, and I never ran out of track availability. I have a hard time believing that the MacBook Pro would bog down with 2gb ram and a bigger bus. I could totally understand more ram if you were running simultaneous programs with a virtual sampler or something (stuff that's just beyond me now, so I'm typing from a naive point of view), or maxed out track counts with maxed out plugins.

The second article makes me drool a bit :D . To me, those specs make the whole discussion moot...go with the newer Mac Book Pro and max out at 4gb of memory. With that much memory, the bigger bus, and that processor, I can't imagine that it wouldn't perform. Just make sure the audio processing program(s) are compatible.


This isn't necessarily true anymore, I will post a link to the article that I read concerning exactly this.

Is 3GB better than 2GB of RAM? Yes and no. (http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/05/18/is-3gb-better-than-2gb-of-ram-in-a-macbook-yes-and-no)

and also

New MacBook Pros: the full 4GB, LED backlighting, 2.2/2.4GHz (http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/06/05/new-macbook-pros-the-full-4gb-led-backlighting-2-22-4-ghz)

Heh - I bought my new 17" MBP on June 1, and June 5 the new models came out.

2GB, 2.33

Just started laying down drums - did some tests and got 16 tracks @ 24/96 to external firewire 800 disk, no problems/dropouts with the setup. Have more ins, but didn't have any more mics/pres to test further - but I don't foresee issues.

Get the older tech and put the cash saved into a "me-time" fund ;-)