AMD vs. NVIDIA | MacBook Pro vs. Win10 laptop - Mobile solution for EEVEE?

I’ve been thinking about getting a macbook pro for some time. (System stability, longevity, design, resale value)

Due to my work I am dependent on mobility.

My heart beats for Apple, but I’d be forced to buy a Win10 laptop with a built-in GTX 1080, if the EEVEE performance is significantly better for a 5-year period on NVIDIA GPUs.

Apple is clearly on AMD. Even eGPU is officially supported only with AMD GPU.

Can someone at best tell me with evidence (benchmarks, developer statements) in which to invest my money?

Please no basic Apple vs. Win discussion …
Thanks in advance!

Go for the Mac if that’s what you like (odds are it’ll have the better resale value), but be prepared that you may have to install Linux or Windows (Boot Camp) one day. The future of OpenGL, and with it Eevee, on macOS is uncertain as Apple isn’t showing any interest in updating their OpenGL framework.

What an understatement - you mean that they deprecate the OpenGL framework…

Note: Largely a cross-post as a recommendation from the original posting community at blender.stackexchange.com

I have the same concerns / questions as the OP. I really do not want to transition to Windows. I really want to run Blender 2.80. I have a MacBook Pro 2018 with the Radeon Pro 560X 4096 MB graphics option. While I know that I could put an eGPU on here, I would like to juice as much out of my laptop as possible, mostly for mobile work. I have downloaded the latest Blender 2.80 beta (2018-12-14 build date from the startup screen) and have found that when I attempt to enable graphics hardware acceleration in the preferences dialog, it states that there are no comparable eGPU.

I have looked online to see what is the story here and have found may different confusing and possibly outdated threads discussing OpenCL support and Mac GPU issues.

What is the current state of running Blender 2.80 on the modern MacBook Pro laptops? Can somebody in the know give me some pointers here?

I have attempted to run the Radeon ProRender plugin and found that it does nothing and does not appear as an option in Blender.

BTW: I am running 10.14 osx just to be clear.

Thanks for any feedback.

Well…
https://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2018-December/049695.html
and…

in casue you would like to stick to Apple someday buy a better mac and eGPU.
I quiet liked macOS but I like to have a choice what hardware to use. For the time being apple hardware are not good for 3D.

Better Check this report from the development blog. Dev talk December 10, 2018
and this Video at 11:07 for more in depth explanation.

I believe it’s more on the os side (MacOs) where they are switching to their proprietary API (Metal), and ditching OpenGL.

I was wondering this too, as i have a MacBook Pro already. I did load Windows 10 on it for games, but maybe i should have Blender running under Windows 10 on my MacBook. In that case what EGPU setup would be best?

I use a macbook pro on the road (2016, i7 3.3ghz, 8gb ram, intel 550 1.5gb) and I have to say it’s not great for work. Choose the 13 inch mainly for mobility, easy to take in and out of carry on luggage when on the road, but in hindsight it would have been better to get a windows one with better specs for the same price.

Depends on what you need it for I guess, but with highpoly objects and rendering it’s more like an emergency solution than anything else. Also, the keyboard is awful, the smallest breadcrumb can kill a key for weeks.

As much as I like the quality of apple products (using an ipad pro with procreate for concept painting is a game changer) their laptops are just not for me. Under spec’d and over priced imo.

There is not much reason to not use a Windows based solution at this point. They have entered the space that compete and surpasses what the Mac laptops used to offer, which was largely form factor (being light and thin). I am simply blown away by the sheer number of high quality, thin, sleek, high powered windows based laptops.

Apple largely gave up on that market and is more interested in phones, watches, cars…ect

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