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Posted by: luts Fri 30 Jan 2015, 04:16

Hi there,

I'm tossing up between buying a MBPro 15" late 2011 SandyBridge or a more modern Ivy Bridge or Haswell Machine.

I can save $1K by going for the older machine.

The 2011 model I'm looking at is pre retina.. i7 2.5kHz. I can max the RAM out to 16Gb. It already has a 500gb SSD.

I want to run 2 ext displays and will be using Pro Tools 11 with Kontakt and sample libraries for midi composition to picture.

I like the idea of replacing the optical DVD drive for another SSD.

The main concerns about the 2011 machine are..

1. Will I run into trouble with the second external display? I will need to use USB converter and I'm concerned lag will be a problem.

2. Is a Sandy Bridge i7 2.5kHz going to be sufficient power for the things I need it for? ie.. running quite a few sample libraries and plugs,etc..

3. What bottlenecks am I likely to face vs a newer machine?

Any advice/experience is much appreciated.

Adam