Curious about how the same issue affects other Macbooks I looked at how my current machine compares doing a fairly common task such as exporting an After Effects comp and then encoding in Media Encoder. And low and behold it runs a overclock for a short period of time and then maintains at it clock speed for the duration. Dipping back and forth occasionally. This is true of my 2013, my 2009, 2006 macbook and the ones before that. While I agree that the new thin design is adding even more restrictions... this is the nature of Apple laptops for as long as I have been a professional using them as a tool. Thing is I've never felt the urge to run Intel Power Gadget until now. Apple Macbooks pros are well built, perform well for most tasks and will usually keep running day in day out until you need an upgrade. For some pros that's a good definition of a Pro machine ... one that doesn't get in the may.
Yea - that’s my attitude to it.
I’ve recently returned a Alienware 17 r5 that I was going to use as a replacement to my 2017 3.1ghz MacBook Pro.
I’m Windows savvy due to being a freelance Creative Director and Animator and often using other production house equipment and thought nothing of the change - just wanted to get more power and was put off by the i9 MacBook reports.
From the get go I was having issues with the Alienware and Windows drivers not taking kindly to the various programmes I use and was experiencing multiple blue screens each day, strange quirks and general Windows roughness.
Over the 12 days I had the machine I would have a daily issue that would need troubleshooting, ranging from a 10min fix, to a few hours... granted, this is probably teething pains, but it was also something that shook my confidence in the machine.
I’d go to bed thinking a render was being output, and then wake up to find it having restarted, or I’d turn the machine on for the day and find tasks that it performed the day before would be suddenly not work anymore and involve 30min of trouble shooting, or that the battery had died when I’d unplugged it, shut the case and travelled an hour to a clients studio.
I couldn’t have this happening during deadline races, the general feeling of uneasiness as to how it’d perform or worry that it might fall flat without notice - that would lose me productivity and in a worst case scenario, clients!
So now I have returned it and bought a 2018 i9 MacBook Pro.
As with all my past Apple hardware upgrades - it’s simple and gets the job done without complaint. I’ve always found them to be reliable and conducive to productivity. I press a button, it turns on and I can jump into my programmes and do my work.
The processor might not perform quite as fast as thicker Windows machines - but it’s the only option I’ve got for the ease of use and stability I’ve had from MacOS over the years.
I’d rather be a tortoise that reliably and predictably gets the jobs I need done, than a hare that sprints to the finish line with the potential to stumble and trip.
It sits in my office connected to a 1080ti for the CUDA processing in Octane Render and Premiere and is easily transportable for off site work and getting bits done on the commute.
As for the power differences... I have a After Effects project that I’ve used to benchmark for years with lots of depth, blurs and plugins to stress the system.
On a 2010 8 core Mac Pro it used to take 4hr 38min to output.
On my 2017 3.1ghz i7 16GB MBP it would take 34min 53sec
On the i9 2.9ghz Alienware 17 r5 32GB set to overclock 2 it would take 12min 26sec
On the i9 2.9ghz 32GB it takes 14min 53sec
Don’t know the ins and outs of it all - all I know is that project is representative of some general heavy lifting that my machine would need to do.
It’s substantially faster than my last laptop, 2min slower than a Windows beast and still offers me the ease of use and reliability I’m accustomed to.
I’m raising my kids and paying my mortgage with this stuff and as long as the machine can enable you to achieve your vision predictably and reliably, that’s all I can ask for.
The machine doesn’t do good work, you do.
Christ, we were producing great work back in the early 2000’s with Power PC chips and 2GB RAM!
