MacBook Pro and Adobe CS5 graphics card upgrade

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MacBook Pro and Adobe CS5 graphics card upgrade

I have a few questions that I can't seem to get answers to from Adobe. I have a MacBook Pro with OS X 10.5.8 with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB DDR2 SDRam, and GeForce 8600M GT graphics card. I currently have Adobe CS3 on it, but would like to upgrade to CS5. I know that I'll need to upgrade to Snow Leopard, but I believe I'll need to upgrade my graphics card also. According to Adobe's site, the compatible cards listed are the Nvidia quadro fx ones. the one they suggest is for a macbook pro, however, and costs about $1500. I'm trying to find out if I can even upgrade the graphics card on my MacBook, and if so is there anything that costs about a tenth of that price. CS5 specs can be found here http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/mastercollection/systemreqs/

My MacBook also has the dual boot (windows and Mac). I have never booted in Windows and have a windows laptop, so I'm wondering if it would be better to get rid of that, so that CS5 would run better when installed. any ideas/suggestions?

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on May 12, 2010 1:53 PM

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Answer 1

sig

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May 12, 2010 2:09 PM in response to aegeiger

"... I know that I'll need to upgrade to Snow Leopard, but I believe I'll need to upgrade my graphics card also."
Why do you have to upgrade to Snow Leopard?
The graphics card is not upgradeable.
I would query the forum for users of CS5 and Leopard with your hardware configuration and see if they have any problems.

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Answer 2

aegeiger Author

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May 13, 2010 3:47 PM in response to sig

i misread the system reqs. thought i needed snow leopard. the graphics card has to be able to support openGL 2.0 and shader model 3.0. when i called nvidia about my current card, they stated that card didn't support those. i was hoping i could upgrade the card. i'll search to see if it can be used.

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Answer 3

May 13, 2010 5:10 PM in response to aegeiger

I'm running CS5 Master Collection on a 2007 2.4GHz Santa Rosa based Macbook Pro with 4GB of RAM, and it works fine. Yours will too.

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Answer 4

lakawake

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Jul 5, 2010 4:12 PM in response to Templeton Peck

Hi:

Are you running this WITHOUT upgrading the graphics card?

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Answer 5

eww

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Jul 5, 2010 7:57 PM in response to lakawake

It's not possible to upgrade the graphics "card" in any Apple notebook (or most other notebooks). There is no card. The GPUs are soldered to the logic board in all MBP models. So yes, Templeton is running it without upgrading.

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