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I can only chime in with my anecdote but I started hitting hardware limits on my macbook and I went to shop for a new computer. The cheapest mac that solved my
by alexanderstears 9y ago
I can only chime in with my anecdote but I started hitting hardware limits on my macbook and I went to shop for a new computer.
The cheapest mac that solved my bottleneck (ram) was a $900 Mac Mini but that computer had no upgrade room and I recently got a 4k display and I didn't want to find out whether the Iris graphics were up to the task.
I built a badass linux box for $850 - Ryzen 1600, 1050 ti, SSD, 32 gb of ram. It's hard to make an linux to apples comparison because mine is just a desktop and most macs come with displays but the apple premium just wasn't worth it.
I had a few issues out of the gate (not getting it running, but installing Nvidia drivers and getting tensorflow to use GPU acceleration) but it was an excellent learning experience and a few hours of time (which was honestly an enjoyable use of time) saved me considerable money over Apple. My desktop is the performance peer of an $2,400 iMac.
I'd pay a premium for an Apple but not 3x as much. And I'll probably continue to use a Macbook as a secondary device but when my Macbook fails, it's going to be harder and harder to shell out Macbook money when I know that a used Lenovo with Ubuntu will get the job done.
- hak8or 9y agoAny specific reason you used a dedicated eh GPU instead of just the integrated one? Or do ryzen igp's not do too well?
- ahartmetz 9y agoRyzen plus IGP products are not available yet.
- alexanderstears 9y agoYeah - training neural networks and running my 4k main monitor. Also, the current Ryzens need dedicated GPUs.
- closeparen 9y agoApple isn't really playing in the desktop market and has been phoning it in with the Mac Mini and Pro for some time. Usually developers talking about Macs are talking about MacBook Pros.