I’ve read through a number of threads here on hardware and specs, but can’t find much on where you’re better spending money to upgrade - CPU / GPU / RAM. Maybe it’s a naive question, as it depends on the exact spec more, but any help would be great!
We’re looking at replacing our hardware, likely with Macbook Pro 16’s. So the upgrades would be CPU (2.3GHz i9 to 2.4GHz i9) or Memory (16 vs 32 vs 64) or Graphics (AMD 5500M 4gb to 8gb). Obviously each upgrade adds cost, especially Memory, so we want to avoid maxing the spec for no reason, but equally don’t want to struggle in a year’s time!
Thanks Piotr, so we really need a mobile solution - my partner and I travel a lot for work, and can’t afford the downtime on trains / planes.
I’m surprised that you say that, as I thought the MB Pro was fairly stable and widely used for this? A lot of the high-end PC laptops I’ve looked at, seem to either have issues with thermal throttling or they’re less ‘portable’ than we’d like…
I will give you life example.
I have compared my 35 000 SEK (ca. 3000 GBP) MBP with equally priced IBM ThinkPad. Identicall modell, rendered scene.
IBM rotated model real time while mine was embarassing me with jagged rotation refreshing every few seconds.
By yourself decent PC. They are small, elegant and well made. There is no manufacturing gap between Macs and PCs anymore. On top of it you’ll have an acess to plenty of PC only Rhino and Grasshopper plugins.
If this doesn’t convince you: MBPs have failing keyboards. Mine was replaced after one year of use.
I still use my 16GB 2017 MacBook Pros for files up to half a GB and it works far more reliable than our DELL mobile workstations haveing the same benchmark scores. Those lock up from time to time running out of memory, though they have double the amount of the MacBook, due to poor windows memory managemant. Also especially for mobile use I realy recommend the Mac Version due to superior viewport navigation using the trackpad. (It’s acually better and more precise than on windows using a mouse.)
Strange how our experience vary.
I have used dell Covet 6400 workstation for more than 10 years doing massive projects, never experienced ANY problems and stability was top notch (Win 7).
I gave it to my father only bacuse it was to massive to travel with.
now he is traveling with it? being probably at least 20 years older than you, good boy…
also i noticed pretty often that you are kind of anti mac… sure there are tons of issues, but you seem a bit to actively voting against it in my experience.
It is true when it comes to me being against macs but I am trying to be fair. I’m not a gadget man, never going for a brand. Not having a single pice of wardrobe with any logo on it.
It is an observation working as PC man in Mac environment. I have a MBP and I have an iPhone and i keep wondering why people praise it so much.
i think mac fanboism is a bit overrated. there are always die hards out there but generally its just a computer as others. apple had a good reputation once having expensive but very good value not only due to the very good system but also due to the advanced and most of all harmonized components.
not having the same amount of plugins available for mac is a bummer i agree, but also that apple users experienced a cascading amount of hardware issues over the past several years. to stay out of trouble i bought myself an end 2013 macbook pro, which stays cool, silent and is still more or less powerful. but i would not recommend it over a pc or vice versa.
I have not. I don’t know of anyone at McNeel who has this machine (yet). I try to keep track - for testing purposes - but sometimes people get new toys and I don’t hear about it.
I just bought a asus k571gt-al138t for presentation only and it turned out that it works very very good even with big sized models (I tested 300mb). I can even work with it, not only rotate for the client. no thermal issue due to a fan under the screen and i can work about 5hours without charging. Specs can be found by asking google: k571gt-al138t
Me personally I never even thought of buying a Mac for 3d stuff.
talking about portability, 1984 the year this fella got introduced, wait for 1.54 when it gets packed.
i am not sure about the genius part, but apple always saw to it that the computers just run without the hassle of experimenting.
Thanks for all the comments. I appreciate apple products can bring divisive opinions!
My partner in the business is a long term mac user, where I’ve always worked in windows. Our hardware is getting tired, and we’re looking at committing to a new software package at the same time. Been watching the feedback on the new MBP 16 as real world tests are starting to come in, and it seems pretty positive. It just struck us as a great combination for performance, portability and long-term stability.
@Louis_Leblanc One of the reasons for considering the switch to Mac, is we’re moving to a BIM solution for our architectural work, and favouring ArchiCAD which has a solid mac build. We’d be working across Rhino, ArchiCAD, AutoCAD LT maybe, MS Office, and the Adobe suite (mostly InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop). I don’t mind moving to another render platform to suit a mac workflow - whether twinmotion or keyshot for instance, but I don’t really want to move to a Mac OS and still need to run bootcamp or parallels.
