I want to know if Blender would work to it’s fullest compacity on this computer, also if it doesnt what should I get for Blender to run smoothly. I want to do this as a hobby, I noticed when I use smoke it freezes and it lags and also when I subdivide to many times it will lag and freeze. Is this normal?
This MacBook Pro is the 2011 model
specs
2 GHz Intel Core i7
GHz Intel Core i74 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
AMD Radeon HD 6490M 256 MB
Thanks
that system is twice as much as i have…
AMD Opteron 175 Dual Core (overclocked 2.75GHZ)
2GB DDR RAM (Overclocked)
GeForce 8600GT 256mb 32Cuda Cores.
Windows 7 64bit/Sometimes Windows 8 64bit Developer Preview.
Blender does not have fullest capacity.
Simply, the better the machine, the better blender works.
It’s normal that your computer starts to lag when you have scenes with high res smoke simulations or many polygons because your then there are many things to calculate. I have an i7 1,6Ghz and 8GB DDR3 RAM and I have often scenes where it starts to lag.
I am relatively new to Blender and have been working with fluids and smoke thanks to Andrew Price, will my configuration become an issue down the road if I start working on bigger things like simulations or animations?
Whatever the computer is, you can always make a scene complicated enough to make it lag.
So it’s hard to tell.
Like FreeMind already said the better you machine is, the better blender works. If you want to make simulations it is important to have enough RAM so hat you can really increase the subdivisions. I think there was an interesting article on Blenderguru about that topic. Here it is:
http://www.blenderguru.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-buying-a-computer-for-blender
You could easily get 4x the computer in desktop form for the price of a MBP, be prepared to be left in the dust in no time at all with that machine if you plan on doing heavy duty things like smoke/fluid. That being said it’s an ok machine I imagine if you keep your scenes optimized and don’t do anything too intensive. Plus with cycles around the corner that video card is lame, you’ll be discouraged with it fast.
Yeah, get a 4x pc, and if you hate microsoft, get Ubuntu.
man, I was hoping I would hear that. 
While it’s almost always possible to get better hardware, you might want to keep in mind that when getting a computer that is four times at fast that just means you can use one subdivision level more before bringing that one to its knees. And if you would need yet another level of subdivision, you’d need a system that is sixteen times as fast as you laptop. Smoke simulation is something where system resources never seem to be enough, so even with the fastest system available it’s still easy to choose settings that will make the system look too slow.
I’d suggest to continue using Blender for a while on the system you currently have, then after you’re more familiar with the program try it on a much faster system and see if it makes a significant difference. Personally I find a two year old laptop with a Core 2 Duo processor still perfectly usable but I don’t do any smoke simulations.
Actually, my 4X statement was very conservative- my rig that I bought 3 years ago has 2.66 quadcore, 8 GB RAM, and a 1GHz Nvidia 9600GT, and it was about $1000. Depending on the MBP you get, you could easily get a rig that’s a real beast for the same price.
I don’t mean to sound paranoid but If i ran a complex render or baked something complex could I break my computer. I have heard stories about this happening but is their a fail safe on a Mac and what are the odd’s of this happening?
obviously stressing anything, can make things fail… that said…
things are made to be used…
if you ran a marathon or went to workout…
there is a chance that you would have “heart attack”, or get another injury
running an car engine at high rpm you have a chance of spinning a bearing or ceasing it…
one of my friends father told me this quote and it very true…
“Anything that shts hard, dont sht long”
(that applies to lots of things in life, but this example was his muscle car a 1963 Corvette)
All that Said… I have had my PC Overclocked since i built it over 6 years ago,
it runs all the time, it has been sh*tting hard for a long time… no issues… knock on wood
I like that, what I mean though is would their be warning signs such as i my computer burns my hand or I can hear the fan or it starts to run slow until it burns out. Nice Car:)
besides turning my computer off for a week when I went out of town once, I never leave my computer off for two years, and I never left my macbook pro of for the six years I used it before my imac. It runs wonderfully, and if anything where to happen to it, it is covered under apple care. I am sure any other computer mac or non mack can do the same thing, holyenigma74 seems to do it too. Of course my macbook fan was a little noisy after six years of nonstop use, but it worked, and would still work if the computer was worth using. I’ve done plenty of 24-40 hour renders on my computer, and it didn’t even skip a beat, I was sometimes even able to continue surfing the internet while my computer was rendering, and I only have an imac.
It’s the ram that you need the most, so if you have room for ram you will be ok, just buy more when you need more. Usually you only need more processors when you want to render stuff, and then you want to buy more cheaper computers to supplement you current computer. That’s when you would buy a bunch of computers like what jay has (that are just as fast but much cheaper) rather than getting another new mac, since with rendering is quantity that matters, not quality (I am not suggesting that other computers are lower quality). So you want to get the highest number of processors and graphics cards for you dollar, since you won’t actually be physically working on them. You would use it as a render farm, and farm out the work from your favorite computer to the other computers.
Now having said all of this, unless you are plunging into complex animations consistently, it might be just as worthwhile to explore other options before purchasing six extra computers.
It’s pretty funny with these kinds of discussions for us who done this for a while. I made a pretty huge project in 1999 on a dual Pentium 3, 1.2Ghz and I don’t even remember how little RAM, but 768Meg’s or something I guess - and that’s still 6-7 years after they made Jurassic Park…
Another example is working in Nuke. It’s like the worst on acceleration, you basically work on single frames all the time - and so they do in the big Hollywood studios. We ‘smalltimers’ do it as our computers aren’t fast enough. They do it as they work in 4- or 8k resolution and layers upon layers with assets on top. There’s just no CPU’s or graphics cards that can shuffle that kinda data around - and when computers get faster, resolutions and effects gets heavier, go figure… So ‘real’ realtime editing is nothing but a dream for all of us… 
And basically it’s all about optimizing & patience when working on complex projects. Strange though, as I don’t have that last part and still do it… ;D
You are more likely to damage your computer by dropping it or spilling coffee on it than just running Blender. Make sure you don’t block the back heat vent port. Heat is what kills these machines.