Will I struggle with a MacBook Pro Mid 2014

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#1

I’m just trying to give blender a go as an arty type… not so much a technical person.
I notice that you can use GPU rather than CPU on blender,
however, I believe it makes no to little difference if anything my graphics card is slower.
Will it be worth attempting this venture on my laptop ? I’m not sure if my computer can hack it, can anyone help me out, my specs are below:

MacBook Pro Mid 2014

Processor

  • 2.2GHz
    2.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor (Turbo Boost up to 3.4GHz) with 6MB shared L3 cache
    Configurable to 2.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 3.7GHz) with 6MB shared L3 cache or 2.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz) with 6MB shared L3 cache.
  • 2.5GHz
    2.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor (Turbo Boost up to 3.7GHz) with 6MB shared L3 cache
    Configurable to 2.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz) with 6MB shared L3 cache.

Memory

  • 16GB of 1600MHz DDR3L onboard memory

Many Thanks Ben

#2

Which cpu do you have? There are 2 listed. But i dont want to crush your dreams so ill say that mac os does not support nvidia gpu and so you will be stuck using the cpu 100% and 4 cores @ 2 ghz is going to limit you. All that being said its free and theres no reason not to try.

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#3

I used a late 2013 macbook pro for blender up till a few months ago. It was fine, but limiting at times. It depends on what you want to do. For NPR stuff, it’ll be good I’m sure. if you already have the laptop though, why waste time asking us when you could just download blender and try it out?

#4

It all depends on what you’re trying to do and what your expectations are. If you’re mostly doodling around, and testing out the idea of possibly diving deeper in CG, I think that machine will do fine. Up until recently I had a doodle machine which was a 2018 Mac Book Air and I was surprised at how well Blender ran in it. I recently upgraded to a 2020 Mac Book Air M1 and I’m much happier with the performance, but it’s not like my last laptop was unusable.

Blender is free, download it and see for yourself. Hopefully this piques your curiosity in the world of CG, and once you’re hooked you’ll want to purchase a newer machine as you begin pushing your goals further.

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#5

yes blender can run fine on it and as others mentioned GPU rendering is not an option and for CPU well it all depends on how complex your scene is for rendering.

for modeling it will work very well

plus for rendering we can use denoisers now

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