Seeking advice on MacBook Pro usability 2011 vs 2014

[luts]

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

[Brother Junk]

The new ones are the balls!

But you don't NEED it.

I'm successfully running PT 10,11, Logic X, TONS of plug-ins on

MacBook Pro (15", Early 2011)
2.2 Ghz Intel Core i7
8Gb 1333 Mhz DDR3
AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1024MB

& I don't have an SSD as my main drive. I have a TB as the main & I took the cd drive out & have a 500gb there instead.

I don't know if it's due to my ram but you will be limited to running too many tracks with too many plug-ins. It is a laptop after all, but I get away with it just fine.

At the studio we have Mac Pro's & we run into the same issue, but not until you are running 50+ tracks.