Shoulf I get a retina macbook pro?

#41

no, it won’t be better. rendering will be close to Bootcamp speeds since it uses all eight cores (four hyperthreaded) but the GPU speeds will be slower in Parallels for sure.

#42

I’ll need a desktop replacement by mid-april. I would like to go with a 15inch Retina but as I am not used to OS X (tried with a mac mini, went back to window) I am not sure I am doing a wise decision. A Lenovo with acceptable sRGB with similar specs (but 1920x1080) is 1100$.

#43

if you go with a Windows laptop, you’ll probably want to stick with one with a Quadro since it’s flakier in Windows with recent gaming cards and Maya.

#44

I went with the Macbook Pro Retina. The Lenovo was kinda better deal and specs with a 2gb GPU but the Macbook will be easier to change language and weight less.

Got it for 1569$ refurbished. I hope I’ll be able to extend the warranty in Canada.

#45

ya, that’s not a problem, I’m sure. It just needs your serial number for AppleCare. I don’t think it is regionally limited or anything since OS X just has one install that prompts you to pick a language on first boot.

#46

Got the macbook! It’s really nice. Love OS X so far. However… there was no options when I bought this refurbished… I’m stuck with 8gb of ram… forever!! Stupid of me to not think about it before. Mistake #2, I got a japanese physical keyboard. But I think it’s possible to change the keys no?

Only real annoyance until now is that when I connected to wifi, it said that there’s no IP address and refuse to open internet. But somehow, 30min after, pop, IP address appeared and I got internet. I hope next time it’s not going to do that again…

#47

hmm - 8GB is not enough for 3D. You will be paging way too much. You should probably send it back.

#48

8gb is enough for Cinema 4D and Lightwave. I’m worrying more about After Effects. Still I survived quite a long with 8gb on my workstation before upgrading to 16gb. I dont know if OS X deal with the ram better than Windows. Of course, I will have to be careful about running multiples apps at the same time.

I’m a motion designer, the 3D I do rarely involve very high density mesh and LOTR quality comps! As for After Effects, I work single threaded to save time while previewing and I will render on 2 cores to save RAM. I kinda hate Adobe way to deal with multi-cores anyway.

Of course I’ll have a mac pro 12 cores at job.

#49

You keep saying that, man, but it’s not so black and white.
It depends on what you do. I’ve been using 6GB for a long while now at home (since two dimms died on me on my 920’s 6 modules setup), and I’ve had 0 problems (I do have an additional 12GB ordered now admittedly, but that’s because I need to go back to running multiple virtual machines soon for a project).

Of course if you start pumping out fluid sims the size of manhattan, or you push a crapton of textures through a hungry rendering engine you can exceed that, but 8GB is plenty for a lot of single client work, often for multi client too, unless you are keeping hell cached up or running virtual machines.

I think the production I’m on now is the first I’ve had more than 8GB on a workstation on at work, and we don’t exactly do light weight work here.
It all depends on what you do and how with that box, not all disciplines and productions will require you have that much memory available.

We can all agree more memory is always good and never harmful, but this repeated blanket statement of “8 gigs is not enough for ze 3dee!” has gotta go, it’s too generic and often untrue.

#50

I’m keeping the mac as is. It’s already a compromise with only 256gb… It’s going to serve until I build something more solid when I’m back to Canada.

I have to admit that the Retina display is very nice. When I come back to my big 30inch monitor, it feel dim and slightly nasty! But it might be that the macbook is overbright. I would rely more on the Dell IPS to get the right colors.

#51

Most people, so long as theyre not running tons of background stuff, would actually be perfectly fine with 4gigs. More is always nicer, but the amount of RAM people claim they need is often down to bad working practices or simply being ignorant of what it does.

The next person who asks me how they can make their project use more RAM, im going to tell them to run the subdivide command until its full.

#52

I think the retina screen is 100% sRGB so it’s very good for colour accuracy, especially in non-ICC enabled apps like Mudbox or ZBrush.

As for the RAM, I use iStat menus and monitor my RAM usage quite heavily. 8GB is just too little to run something like After Effects (which is a memory hog), a 3D app and Photoshop. You can do it but you’ll be paging out a lot. If you see the spinning beachball frequently, that’s virtual memory paging.

#53

Virtual memory and paging are not the same thing at all.
Dropping memory pages in a page file for retrieval and emulating RAM through storage are two very different things, with wildly different performance consequences.
A modern operating system will almost constantly page anyway.

I don’t use AE, but running ZBrush, Softimage and Nuke in the same session with 6GB has never been an issue with the page file on an SSD drive unless you have both a 3D rendering and a comp rendering running at the same time, and even then, it’s a matter of something being nice VS needed.

You don’t -need- 16GB unless you are hitting 8+ hard with a single client to produce hollywood tent-pole level content, you sure don’t -need- 16GB to do 3D in general with the rare due exceptions of hungry sims or renderings.

#54

Actually CGBeige is right. If I were to run 3 apps, After effects+psd+3d app, I would run into trouble very fast. The trouble being a slow down of the machine, paging when I switch apps, and After Effects reaching preview limit very fast. However I am going to do the sensible thing and avoid running 3 apps at the same time as much as possible. Just After Effects will reach that limit fast enough. However I expect OS X + SSD to deal with the slow downs a bit better than windows but I might be wrong here… I remember from my time with a G5 the eternal rolling beachball. Dreadful!

I think 8gb is going to be manageable. Not ideal and well worth a 230$ upgrade if you are doing serious CG, but manageable none the less.

That soldering RAM is a pin in the ass though… Apple is not going to make any friend by doing this.

#55

I’ll not worry about my lowly 8gb… I just learn that the mac pro they ordered for me at my new job will have 96gb of RAM!

Yes sir!! 8gb per core. That’s what I’m talking about!

#56

Hi,

So what ive understood is to buy a macbook retina that allows the memory extension? Which category will do that ? 13 inch or 15 inch?

And what about the two thunderbolt switch? every display nowadays got built in thunderbolt conection? or is it just reserved to apple display?

Thx

#57

There’s no extension at all. The ram is not upgreadable. Soldered into the board.

As for thunderbolt, there`s few docks out there like this one;
http://9to5mac.com/2012/12/13/review-249-matrox-ds1-the-worlds-first-thunderbolt-docking-station/

That way you can use the monitor you want.

Sadly no support for Dual DVI.

#58

don’t buy that dock. I was sent it for review and it’s completely unusable. Monitor drops out and there’s a slight but noticeable latency added to screen/mouse.

#59

Neither, as pointed out.

And what about the two thunderbolt switch? every display nowadays got built in thunderbolt conection? or is it just reserved to apple display?

No, they are sort of rare and limited to what is normally the premium categories, but it’s not an Apple exclusive at all.

You can find relatively cheap ones from Asus, and Dell, HP etc make some of their 24-27 monitors with TB interfaces.

#60

don’t buy that dock.

Oh dear…

You can find relatively cheap ones from Asus, and Dell, HP etc make some of their 24-27 monitors with TB interfaces.

Really? I’m googling “dell monitor with thunderbolt” and cannot find any… however I believe a USB 3 interface is pretty similar no? For exemple;
http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/8/3227479/dell-u2713hm-ips-ahips-ultrasharp