garageCube

Hi,

I am planning to buy a mac for video mapping and I will be using mad mapper and module 8. I am looking at a macbook pro and a bit confused about the graphic requirements of mad mapper.

The current macbook pros have iris graphics and also iris graphics plus nvidia graphics. I am planning for the core i7 version and the RAM 8GB. please advice which I should buy to get a smooth performance in video mapping.

and also 2 thunderbolt ports will support 2 out puts plus the macbook pros monitor as the control?

thanks you and am sorry if this hasbeen asked before.

nvidia graphics. don't buy iris only, that's not good for visuals.
get a SSD + min 8gb Ram.

ideally, the most expensive mac is the most powerful.

All MacBook pros can handle 2 external display up to 2560x1440
All have PCI-SSDs
All come with at least 8gb or ram

I've run MM on a 09 MacBook Pro, which isn't even close to even the Iris graphics or the i series processors.
If you can afford the top of the line, it won't hurt, but it also won't hinder running on something a little slower.

Think long term, is it better to go all out now and create an investment computer or start a little lower and go bigger later, for instance a 2013 Mac Pro in a pelican case that has dual workstation cards and 24 thread processor... Just sayin'

Thanks a lot for the feedback. I am looking for something mobile. so it's going to be a macbook pro. and as I'm buying this for our Studio, i would go big now i guess. Thanks a lot!

Avengerxp wrote:Thanks a lot for the feedback. I am looking for something mobile. so it's going to be a macbook pro. and as I'm buying this for our Studio, i would go big now i guess. Thanks a lot!

Then the MacBook Pro is the way to go.

We have dual Mac Pro's in travel rollers so sometime I forget what's portable to some is not to other haha.
Our 2013 Mac Pro was to come in February but Apple kinda dropped the ball on that, but we are seeing if we can turn or 200lb. rollers into a pelican case.
Here's a great article to put into context how small such a powerful machine is. That we could stuff one of these and a 24" monitor into a case and walk on a plane.

12 things that show how small the Mac Pro really is

The new MacBook Pros can run 3 displays out the box. 2 x DP and 1 x HDMI with no problems.

tony_blend wrote:The new MacBook Pros can run 3 displays out the box. 2 x DP and 1 x HDMI with no problems.

Are you sure on 3, I'm getting mixed information online, but as far as apples own site says

apple.com/store wrote:Dual display and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 2560 by 1600 pixels on up to two external displays, both at millions of colors

my retina MBP has two thunderbolt outs and one HDMI = 3 outputs.

deepvisual wrote:my retina MBP has two thunderbolt outs and one HDMI = 3 outputs.

You could actually daisy-chain two thunderbolt displays on a single thunderbolt port, that doesn't mean it can run 5 displays now.
Just because you have three port's doesn't mean you can run three displays.
But if you can, running three 1080p signals and a 2880x1440 screen, might really tax the GPUs memory and other problems might allude themselves.

we got 4 x 720p using a datapath X4 from a retina MBP.

Thanks a lot for the informative conversation going on here. I too checked and have noted 2 thunderbolt outs. for the start I will be using just one out with a matrox trplehead2go unit for large outdoor projections. can you guys point me to a good resource to get the basics of edge blending with modul8.

thanks a lot for the link.