I know we’ve spoken about this quite a bit in the past, but the time is now to upgrade and unfortunately, you are the only other person that I know who has and uses Apple hardware.
I know you’ve suggested to go with the newer M1 chips, but also you favoured the Mac Mini over the 16" MacBook Pro that I was then opting for.
My only hesitation for not going the 16" MacBook Pro route is based on my current frustration when in design tools and asset-heavy libraries when the performance drops off. Especially when I am working on artboards that ~60k pixels wide with thousands of artefacts. Not to mention having multiple apps open and switching.
I just thought that the additional graphics processing power would solve the design tool issue.
Perhaps worth noting that I am also working on a 4K display, if that would have any impact.
I got this when my brother upgraded to the MacBook Pro. That touch bar thing on the Pro is amazing and the SSD is also faster than mine. Go for the Pro.
I have the MacBook Pro 13" already, just not the M1 chipset. The 16" would make life easier when designing on the go due to the extra screen space as well as the layers and properties panels take up space on the left and right of the screen.
If I can make a suggestion, go for the new 14”. It effectively replaces the 13” M1, but has the new M1 Pro chip in. The extra money you need to pay for the 16” is just not worth it, IMHO.
The Mac Mini has better airflow, due to being physically thicker than the Macbooks. So it can keep boosted clockspeeds for much longer than the Macbooks can.
My wife currently uses a 13” (Intel i5) + Mac Mini setup, all syncing via iCloud. So when she works at her desk, she has the benefit of the faster M1 (non-Pro) chip. But she can work somewhere else and everything is synced back perfectly to the Macbook.
As for the touch bar, it’s a gimmick that even Apple now acknowledges. They dropped it on the new 14” and 16” models and went back to physical function keys. There just wasn’t enough support from devs and most professionals ended up missing the function keys more than what they benefited from the touch bar.
Good suggestion IMO, I didn’t even consider that. I know “money isn’t an issue” and business will go with whatever option I opt for, but I don’t like that mentality and don’t want to cost the business unneeded expenditure if not necessary.
Just after a practical set up really.
Fully agree with that statement. While intended to increase productivity I find it to be more of a frustration or annoyance.
But thanks for the suggestions, I was angling at the MacBook and Mini approach as lugging around the bigger (and heavier) 16" can be a little more cumbersome.
Finally got all my stuff last night. I haven’t been able to really get stuck into it but the few games I tried out had a massive performance boost. The best thing is how fast it boots though.
EDIT: OK yeah this is amazing haha. Pretty much every game I’ve tried that I had issues with before is now running perfectly smooth 60FPS. Saints Row 3 remastered hovered around 34FPS now matter what settings I tried, now it runs rock solid 60FPS at ultra settings.
So I am interested in a new keyboard (even though I just cleaned this one), unfortunately the volume control buttons are acting up, randomly changing volume, pausing videos on it’s own etc. I currently have the “Logitech G510”, best keyboard I have ever owned, and if I am being honest I would like another keyboard with an LCD screen again, but I know they don’t really exist anymore.
I don’t really care for mechanical or membrane, as long as it looks OK. This time I don’t want any volume control buttons or macro keys (G1, G2, G3, keys etc.), RGB would be great, and of course it needs to last a long time again, (pretty sure this keyboard has lasted me -+13 years). Must be wired definitely. I am doing research on my own here, but would like your recommendations as well, a quick look at rebeltech and I found this one: which looks very nice to me.
In terms of budget, the keyboard mentioned above is the most I would pay, honestly would like something cheaper.
I’ve been using a Red Dragon K556 for a few years now. Mechanical, RGB, no nonsense. Very solidly made with a full metal base. Was around R900. I can recommend as a device for typing letters.
Kaihl clone red switches are bad reproductions of the original Cherry MX switches. They are scratchy, and don’t mimic the same force actuations properly, but are just as sturdy. But you don’t care about such things, so maybe this is useless info for you.
Here’s a weird idea. Drop the LCD requirement attached to the keyboard. Streamdeck, while not having a full display, basically has many little displays, and an absolute shit ton of plugins, to display any info you want, on this little display buttons. And you get the benefit of it actually being a “macro/function mappable” set of buttons. Means, the keyboard can just be a keyboard, which also means, it will open up your options much more, w.r.t. layout, RGB, switch, keyboard type, even price.
6600XT is the worse performer, but also cheaper. If you only game at 1080p, go for it, and save the cash. If you’re using a 1440p display, 3060Ti is probably the better choice.
On the other hand, if it’s only for work, no gaming, you should be looking at slower cheaper stuff.
All this is just waffling, because you didn’t set the stage for your situation, how you plan to use it, or your requirements.
I’ve got a RX6600XT and I love it. It also has RT support but no DLSS sadly. It does support AMD FSR and 2.0 is coming out sometime soon (with specific games of course). Realistically its not really an RT card, in most games your performance will be halved when playing with RT on, but we’ll have to see how FSR 2.0 helps that, if at all.
For just regular old 1080p gaming it is amazing though. I play pretty much everything with maxed out graphics with smooth 60FPS performance.
Future proofing, I usually say, that’s just in people’s heads. No one is clairvoyant. But anyway, DLSS is the thing that just blows the radeon cards out the water. Man it’s so good. You can take a game that is barely playable, but if it supports DLSS, you can get potentially massive performance boosts from a relatively minor dip in picture quality. That said, if you aren’t playing games that have it implemented, then that isn’t a useful feature at all. I don’t know what the list of games that have it look like, but if this interests you, maybe look up that list.
By “future proof” I mean it will last me longer before I need to upgrade again, as there is a noticeable performance difference. And it’s quite big on some games.
I can guarantee you it’s A LOT longer than FSR list. And we’re probably looking at years before FSR 2.0 will have a decent spread. and even then it won’t be as good as DLSS probably.
so how much is R700 really when you are looking at an average of 20% better performance, proper ray tracing (if you’re into that kind of thing) and DLSS to boot…
I like his ideas!