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Apple mini M4pro vs laptop with rtx4080?

gnoop
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gnoop sublime tool
    I am using 15" laptop but never laptop screen really . It's too small for working comfortably .   Prefer Samsung  22'screens  because with detachable  leg they  fit a suitcase and survive airports   just fine when wrapped by a winter jacket.    Takes 5 min to assemble in any hotel or bnb place.    Laptop keyboards are super inconvenient either.
   Wonder  how MAc mini M4pro  doing currently  vs typical  i7, i9 GF4080  laptop     in typical content creation  soft:   Blender,Painter/Designer,Octane render etc?   
    2-3 years ago Win laptop looked like  a big champion notwithstanding a huge power unite.      Anything have changed since?      Anyone can compare  from a personal experience of a digital nomad ?  


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  • poopipe
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    poopipe grand marshal polycounter
    I am also interested in this question (admittedly though, not interested enough to spend my own money) 
  • Eric Chadwick
    I've been using this Dell laptop build for a year, my employer bought it for me, it's been great.
    https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/alienware-x14-r2-gaming-laptop/spd/alienware-x14-r2-laptop 
    Very lightweight & sleek. Good GPU for a mobile. Small screen, but easy to hook up to any hotel TV with HDMI. Keyboard is typical laptop flat chiclet, but workable. 


  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    Hardware is one thing but in my experience the Mac builds of our kind of software are usually somewhat inferior. Either lacking in features here or there or less stable (Blender). 

    The Mac software side is also a bit of a rat race because Apple nowadays release a new OS every year. It's free to download and install but your applications may not work anymore and require to be updated/incur new license cost. I've stopped updating and frozen my Macs on the OS side. You become incompatible with new application versions quite quickly this way.

    That issue simply does not exist on Windows.

  • gnoop
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    gnoop sublime tool
    My youtube lately is bombarded  by videos saying how great  m4pro chip  is.    Comparable with 4060 laptop on gpu side and  gives twice better cpu performance than recent  intel laptop cpu.
    Wonder if it's true.

    And new macmini looks really  small box.     My MSI rtx3080 laptop  has bigger power unite alone   probably , needs separate cooling pad  and sounds like jet engine when you need good performance.      Not sure how big mini psu  is although. Should be small too I hope.  

     I can't find how Designer or Painter do there.   My last mac  experience was i5 mini  without dedicated video-card . Had been just a toy really . Never had issues with Blender although.  


  • poopipe
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    poopipe grand marshal polycounter
    If an M4 mini stands up to a discrete desktop GPU for intensive work I'll eat my 3080 and then buy the biggest, most powerful M machine that exists. 

    You can invent a benchmark that proves anything you want and I believe that is what you are seeing.

    The arm/apple architecture is Incredibly efficient but that does not equate to Incredibly powerful.
    If arm based chips offered the same ultimate compute capacity as intel/amd chips the world would be running on arm servers because they use less power to do the same work and that makes them cheaper to run . 
    Arm shines in power limited scenarios and we're mostly not thinking about that for the sort of work that we need to do.

    That said though - I don't think most of us use more than about 20% of our machine's capabilities for the vast majority of the time so it may actually be completely fine to have something with a much lower ceiling in terms of ultimate power - it'll depend a lot on how much rendering/baking etc you do I expect 

     I think thomasp raises the most pertinent points though - a machine is useless unless the tools you need work properly on it.

  • gnoop
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    gnoop sublime tool
    I am sure regular  desktop hardware  would easily outdone  Apple  but question still is how it's against top gaming laptops.

    Wonder what people think of this construction?  Mini pc  box with videocard  slot  + desktop videocard.
    as I understood  the base works as power supply.   Looks still portable enough to put in your  suitcase disassembled. 


      


  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    gnoop said:
     I can't find how Designer or Painter do there.   My last mac  experience was i5 mini  without dedicated video-card . Had been just a toy really . Never had issues with Blender although.  


    Well, Blender was a good deal less stable for me and also rendered the eevee viewport differently. You could test that out with the demo scenes they publish.

    Other programs that behaved different or worse on Mac that I came across:
    • ZBrush: some functionality missing, somewhat less stable, ZScript wasn't fully compatible between Win and Mac versions
    • Marvelous Designer: no GPU hardware acceleration for cloth compute back when Intel Macs came with AMD cards. I imagine it's not gotten better with the switch to M series
    • Mudbox: if I had a nickel for every crash I experienced...
    • Maya: Some viewport features missing. Didn't use it much otherwise so hard to say how complete or not it is
    • Mari: Interface display niggles. Development was shut down a while back and the Mac port had been lagging well before that. This was a program that was demonstrated on/advertised for Mac even.

    Bottom line: don't expect too much from ports to the niche platform. Mac is lovely to use but only makes sense if you primarily use software that is being developed on it. Else you get the bastard ports.

  • gnoop
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    gnoop sublime tool
    Thanks   thomasp   for those extra details .
  • gnoop
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    gnoop sublime tool
    Why nobody just make desktop videocard with laptop  cpu and memory attached  somewhere on its side?   Under  a branch of same heat pipe.     I have never ever used  a laptop from its batteries since smart phones have emerged.    Every AirBnB  place and hotel  should have an option  "workplace and PSU  available"

    Wonder if 145 W of build in PSU is enough for desktop GPU  ?
    Well. They say the base have its own in-build 600W PSU . That suddenly looks much more interesting .


  • poopipe
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    poopipe grand marshal polycounter
    Honestly for your use case that seems like a good option.  You have the option to run the GPU when you need it but can also just run off the iGPU when you're doing less compute intensive tasks (the GPU will not be quiet when it's running in the open air). 

    On the other hand though - how different is that really from a mini-itx machine in a small case?  some of them really aren't much bigger than what's pictured there and come with the benefit of a box protecting the GPU. They're expensive compared to a normal PC but they're not a mac money.


    The minipc you've linked appears to have some sort of dedicated connection so presumably it'll run at full speed  (i'd still check that quite carefully) but if you're looking at other models it's worth looking into the connection used and making sure it can cope with the GPU you're throwing at it - usb3/thunderbolt afaik cannot handle 16x PCIE speeds so you have a performance ceiling 



    I have a much less fancy beelink mini pc, it's really nice, surprisingly well built and did not come with mcaffee or norton installed. Now I want one of those 


  • gnoop
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    gnoop sublime tool
    if I understood it right it's not usb3/thunderbolt connection. It's a normal  pcie  connector  on the side of beelink box the  videocard is being connected to through a couple cm cable inside that base .   
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    If that's still about the Apple Mini: you cannot use e-GPUs with the M series machines since there are no drivers and no support for it. A few years earlier when they were still rocking Intel chips Apple was actually selling e-GPUs (Blackmagic AMD-equipped ones). A few years before that you had the choice of hooking up an AMD or an Nvidia with full driver and - I think - CUDA support.

    Progress. Or is it? :s

    As for using a Mini PC for work: depends on your noise tolerance I guess? I got a Ryzen based one to replace my Mini as a media player. Sadly I can hear the damn thing even when it's idle. Gahhhhh.
  • gnoop
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    gnoop sublime tool
    Well. The last desktop I had was just a motherboard laying  in a corner of my table  with videocard and cpu stack in . Been too lazy to accomplish full assembly   and yet  it never sounded so loud as my current MSI  rtx3080 laptop with high GPU usage.
  • poopipe
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    poopipe grand marshal polycounter
    my little ryzen one is basically silent even if i'm giving it a kicking - its only a 5560u though so I can imagine something a bit more fruity might make a bit more noise.

    gnoop - you know the case is there in part to stop ESD wiping your machine out right ? 
  • gnoop
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    gnoop sublime tool
    poopipe said:
    gnoop - you know the case is there in part to stop ESD wiping your machine out right ? 
    I heard of it but never experienced .  Always used gloves  when touched it . Not sure if it does much of a difference.  Still  been too lazy to assemble . With huge videocards to stuff in  It got too complicated.   

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