Newer Macbook Pro with MM & shaders - Good enough?
  • jasonbeyers
    super8 member
    Posts: 125
    Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2018 7:16 am

    Newer Macbook Pro with MM & shaders - Good enough?

    by jasonbeyers » Mon Jan 14, 2019 3:13 am

    Hi,

    I've been using a 2016 Macbook Pro Retina for MM, and there are many shaders (ISF or MM materials) that perform sluggishly on this machine, when using one shader at a time on a single 1080p projector (and previews disabled). The laptop has a Intel HD Graphics 530 1536 MB GPU built-in, and CPU usage is always at a manageable level, so I suspect there is a graphics bottleneck. Does anyone else use a laptop like this for generative visuals, and if so, does it perform well enough for you?

    I'm wondering if I need to switch to PC in order to have options for upgrading the GPU, or if a Macbook Pro Retina should be good enough for this.

    Also, Macbooks now support external GPUs for a select number of AMD GPUs - has anyone tried this with MM? I read that an application must explicitly support external GPUs (on Mac) in order to take advantage of them. Does MM even support these?

    Thanks!
    -Jason
  • mad-matt
    garageCube team
    Posts: 1475
    Joined: Mon Sep 09, 2013 5:50 pm

    Re: Newer Macbook Pro with MM & shaders - Good enough?

    by mad-matt » Tue Jan 15, 2019 11:21 pm

    Intel HD is crappy for shaders. But only a few shaders should lag on a single Full HD (for instance clouds, some noises, particles stuffs)
    Some users reported good results with external gpus. I have not tested myself.
    A MacBook Pro with a good AMD will have good performances but more pricy. If you're used to windows and you feel comfortable doing your work on it, you get more performances for a much lower price. We can't be objective when it comes to macOS-Windows hehe

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