Developer Workstation Laptop Decision, Help

[Anthony Mendez]

So, in the beginning, I never liked to play macs. I hated Macs with a passion. But I have grown to respect them. There are two things that I never used to like Macs for. One, all of their products battery life is a large margin ahead of their current competition, and two, their products can last more than a decade and not get messed up like Windows and others. Anyways, I wanted to get a laptop for game design and development, in Unity and 3d modeling in Maya. I'm going to need a GPU intense with all that I'll be designing, and I want to be able to have this laptop last me a LONG time. One of my supervisors suggested a Mac, and I actually entertained the thought. I now want to buy the newest Retina mac with an AMD r9 m370x . It costs 2500, and thats really pricey. If there is an equivalent, please let me know. Thanks

 

[thejackal85]

With a program like Maya and 3d modeling/rendering, you're going to need a laptop with some serious horsepower. Are you sure you want a laptop for this? It would be better justified getting a workstation for this.

Just Maya alone on a laptop will eat up the battery in minutes if you don't have it plugged in.

 

[Anthony Mendez]

With a program like Maya and 3d modeling/rendering, you're going to need a laptop with some serious horsepower. Are you sure you want a laptop for this? It would be better justified getting a workstation for this.

Just Maya alone on a laptop will eat up the battery in minutes if you don't have it plugged in.

Yes im going to need it on the go. I not be able to be at home. Will that mac be able to do? I'll send a link of the specs, I forgot what they were.

 

[thejackal85]

I'm familiar with that model of MAC you mentioned. It will do the job, yes, but there will be other factors you will have to watch out for. Battery life, temperatures of components, resource usage, etc. But to answer your question, yes, that MAC should do the job. Either way, I would get the RAM up as high as you can; Maya relies a lot on that.

 

[Anthony Mendez]

I'm familiar with that model of MAC you mentioned. It will do the job, yes, but there will be other factors you will have to watch out for. Battery life, temperatures of components, resource usage, etc. But to answer your question, yes, that MAC should do the job. Either way, I would get the RAM up as high as you can; Maya relies a lot on that.

Isn't 16Gb enough? But ok if possible I will try and get the mac, I was thinking of getting maybe one of the ASUS ROG laptops but I've ocme to learn how macs are better at working. Thanks for the help

 

[thejackal85]

16GB will be enough for basic usage, but it might take a little longer for the rendering. All our machines here that utilize Maya are all over 32GB for maximum performance.

Good luck!

 

[Anthony Mendez]

16GB will be enough for basic usage, but it might take a little longer for the rendering. All our machines here that utilize Maya are all over 32GB for maximum performance.

Good luck!

One last question, Hopefully you'll be here to rrespond , but if I cannot afford the AMD R9 m370x, will there be a huge downside and a drop if I get the Intel Iris GPU? Because all of the GPU's are all integrated and thats not going to be good at all. I personally do not approve of any Integrated GPU's just yet..

 

[thejackal85]

You might notice a small performance drop, but it really will depend on the size and details of the scene you're working on. At this point, it's hard to tell, but as you said, by default, integrated is a bit of a drop.

If you can't get the AMD R9, it's not the end of the world. You just might have to settle for a bit less of a performance.