garageCube

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

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