New hotness
Is it bad to be compulsively checking the UPS tracking page for my new laptop? Or to be a little nervous because it’s currently in Kazakhstan, and all those Call of Duty games made me a little nervous about ex-Soviet republics? Is that over-protective? It’s not even here yet, and I’m clucking over it like a mother hen.
Whatever, as long as it gets here in one piece and is suitably shiny. We’re kicking off with our new client this week, and it was immediately apparent that my current 32-bit dual core laptop (now five and a half years old) really wouldn’t cut the mustard. It was okay, just, for building for 360, because the console does all the heavy lifting. But it won’t run a PC build of anything substantial, and compilation takes an age. Not to mention the graphics flashing and sporadic unexplained hard freezes. So the new Macbook Pro kills two birds with one stone – it’s modern and chunky enough that it should build and run the client’s title, and it means Tim and I no longer have to pass the older Macbook Pro whenever there’s iOS work needing done.
To put it in some context, Tim’s machine needed a new graphics card as well to bring it up to spec. His new graphics card scored ~1600 on the benchmarks. The new Macbook Pro’s graphics score ~1300. Tim’s old graphics scored ~500, and the old MBP ~270. My current laptop (and bear in mind I got the Dell Precision M65 with the graphics ‘upgrade’) scores 71. Yes, 71. I had to go three pages down on the benchmark list before I could even find it.
Of course, even the new MBP isn’t up to the level of the monster Alienware M17X that MGS bought for me, but on the flip side, it also won’t weigh 7 kilos and sound like a jet turbine taking off. While I do still miss the glowy lights and brushed aluminium body of the M17X, the added benefit of crotch-based heat sterilisation from the MBP is surely enough to seal the deal.
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