ZBrushCentral

MacBookPro Retnia: Wich one ?

Community
#1

Heya guys,

For some reason, i NEED to buy a new laptop before next friday and it HAS to be a mac. I want to buy the MBP 15" retina 2.6ghz with 16gb ram.

The problem is, i can’t find it anywhere in my country since it’s a “non-standard” config and i can’t order it online since i’m not sure it will arrive before friday.

After tons of phone calls i’ve found some shops witch have these 2 options:

Either i buy the 2.3ghz with 16gb ram OR the 2.6ghz with 8gb ram.

So here is my question: should i go for RAM or CPU ? (ofc it’s for Zbrush use)

Thanks in advance guys :slight_smile:

PS: anyone got new MBP and using it with Zbrush ?

#2

Zbrush needs RAM, RAM, and lot’s more RAM. Better yet; lots of RAM with an SSD instead of an internal hard drive. Zbrush also need a very fast hard drive. Especially if you are doing High Density meshes and/or lots of sub tools.

The 16 gig MBP with the slower cpu will actually seem faster than the 8 gig MBP with the faster cpu. Same is true when comparing internal SSD to a hard drive. As for the Retina display, that’s driven by the GPU card not the cpu. so I’d get the 16 gig RAM with an internal SSD if possible. If you can’t get the SSD internal, fortunately, the new ZB 4r4 lets you put the scratch file on an external drive. And, also fortunately, Apples come with a Thunderbolt port which is much faster than USB 3. So you could buy an SSD external drive and plug it into the Thunderbolt port and that would really give Zbrush a speed boost.

:wink:

#3

Thx for your answer. Both will have SSD drive. The 2.3ghz will have 256gb drive while the 2.6ghz will have 512gb. So for you, i should go for the 2.3ghz with 16gb and give prior to ram instead of CPU ?

#4

Yes, if I was in your shoes, with only those two choices, I’d go with the maximum RAM. Not only will Zbrush benefit but Photoshop as well. Both will be significantly faster with scratch files on an SSD.

Of course, if it -is- possible to customize your purchase through another vendor, then a faster machine with less RAM initially, can be expanded with more memory, later. I tend to look for the fastest CPU+GPU machine with the lowest price and upgrade the RAM and storage later. But only if the upgrades are cheaper than the Apple offering.

#5

Yeah, the problem is that with the new macbookpro Retina, u can’t upgrade later, the RAM is attached to the motherboard at factory. That’s why i’m stuck with thèse choices. If i want the 2.6ghz AND 16gb RAM i need to wait like 2-3 weeks and i can’t do that.

This choice is driving me crazy… Thank u for helping mate :slight_smile:

#6

I’d go with the 16 Gigs. And console myself with the happy fact that the Pro is still expandable with the card-slot and Thunderbolt port. And to put things into perspective, I’m running Zbrush on a 2008 2.6 GHz MacbookPro with only 6 Gigs of ram, but upgraded the internal drive to SSD and also use the card slot for high speed SATA 300 drives. Zbrush runs quite well on this system. The new models have much, much faster system bus speeds, and the quad-core Intel Core i7 processor (Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz) with 6MB shared L3 cache is pretty cool. I also run Zbrush on my personal laptop which is an old Macbook 2006 with only 3 gigs RAM. Zbrush still does well even on this old system with the scratch file on an SSD.

Hope that helps :smiley:

#7

hi acmepixel , i think that you know a lot of tecnology…also i will ask you a info…
i’ve a laptop asus rog g75 with 16gb ram (win 7 64 bit)…if i will more speed, it’s right to buy a ssd disk (128gb) to use for the scracht disk of zb 4r4sp2? o i must install also zbrush in…?
this woul’d give more speed at the software? what do you think?
thanks:D