# MBP i5, 2.5GHz, 8 GB of RAM: enough horsepower for Lightroom 4?



## Corbeau (Apr 25, 2008)

Since I got me a nice 7D -- and its 25 MB RAW files -- I have to upgrade my trusty, but old and slow, mid-2008, base MacBook (2.1 GHz, 1 lonely GB of memory) for something better.

I'm thinking, and so does the Minister of Finance that lives in my household, about the base MacBook Pro, with double the memory to make it 8 GB. Will it be enough to drive Lightroom 4 with the occasional foray into Photoshop CS6?

No need for the retina display, as I use a second monitor, an old but well calibrated 17" CRT.


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## Joker Eh (Jan 22, 2008)

Well I have a 2010 MBP 13" and upgraded it to 8GB and put a 1 TB drive in it but I use Aperture and all my plugins from NikSoftware and I have no issues. If that is any reference from you. I think you will be ok and happy for many years to come.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

OP you might have trouble driving the 17" CRT.
The i7 is much preferred over the i5 but drive speed is very important as well.
Also consider the aspect of what OS you are used to.
You could up your existing machine to a 1 TB internal and 4 gigs of RAM pretty cost effectively and still be able to run your existing OS and monitor.
Your slow speed is 90% due to drive fragmentation.


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## Glipt (Aug 7, 2003)

Go for as much RAM as possible. I would recommend no less than 16G. Lightroom 3 was OK with 8G RAM but 4 chews through my 8G pretty quickly, especially if you have to round trip to photoshop. Biggest impact for Lightroom performance is processor and RAM.


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