[Qgis-user] Mac computer configuration

Wed Sep 9 15:36:56 PDT 2020

Hi, 

I can only add to Donal's suggestions, which seem reasonable from my experience as well. 

Until last year, I have been working on a 13 inch MacBook Pro from 2011. I changed the HD to a 500GB SSD and the 8GB RAM to 16GB RAM a few years ago, and there was a jump in performance with all my software, I could have used it some more years. But QGIS got slow though with LiDAR data last year, so I bought a new MacBook Pro with 2GB SSD and 32GB RAM, now everything works smoothly; thanks to large storage and RAM in the first place, I assume.

At the moment, I would hesitate to either buy a new machine with ARM or Intel processor but rather wait another year or a few months. 

In your case, I would try to boost RAM to 32GB in the first place (if 32 is possible, otherwise 16GB). If things are still slow, I would delete everything not needed on a daily basis from the main SSD and get the GIS data on the SSD. And then wait for the AMD Macs and look how the reviews are. It seems that everything just gets better then and cheaper. And paying for RAM now is not such a large investment. 

Best, 
Maria

> Am 10.09.2020 um 06:26 schrieb Donal Hunt <donal.hunt at gmail.com>:
> 
> You can compare the CPU ratings of your current machine vs the ratings for the currently available i5 and i7 models of the mac mini here: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i5-5287U-vs-Intel-i5-8500B-vs-Intel-i7-8700B/2575vs3382vs3388
> 
> Additional memory (16gb or 32gb) may also help. You could potentially attach a fast nvme drive to the thunderbolt 3 port (you can't upgrade the SSD on the latest generation of mac minis as they are soldered to the logic board).
> 
> I would highly recommend profiling where the bottleneck / performance issues are occurring. Tools such as activity monitor, instruments and sample can provide more insight. See https://gist.github.com/loderunner/36724cc9ee8db66db305 for some suggestions.
> 
> Hope that helps.
> 
> Donal
> 
> On Wed, 9 Sep 2020 at 15:04, RMG <reikogoodwin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Donal and list,
> 
> Many thanks for asking. Below is the info:
> 
> Model Name: MacBook Pro
>       Model Identifier: MacBookPro12,1
>       Processor Name: Intel Core i5
>       Processor Speed: 2.9 GHz
>       Number of Processors: 1
>       Total Number of Cores: 2
>       L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
>       L3 Cache: 3 MB
>       Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled
>       Memory: 8 GB
>       Boot ROM Version: 192.0.0.0.0
>       SMC Version (system): 2.28f7
>       
> Apple SSD Controller:
> 
>       Vendor: Apple
>       Product: SSD Controller
>       Physical Interconnect: PCI
>       Link Width: x4
>       Link Speed: 5.0 GT/s
>       Description: AHCI Version 1.30 Supported
> 
> APPLE SSD SM0512G:
> 
>       Capacity: 500.28 GB (500,277,790,720 bytes)
>       Model: APPLE SSD SM0512G                       
>       Revision: BXW1SA0Q
>       Native Command Queuing: Yes
>       Queue Depth: 32
>       Removable Media: No
>       Detachable Drive: No
>       BSD Name: disk0
>       Medium Type: Solid State
>       TRIM Support: Yes
>       Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
>       S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Reiko Matsuda Goodwin
> Comoé Monkey Project
> Guenon Conservation Community
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Sep 9, 2020 at 5:05 AM Donal Hunt <donal.hunt at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can you provide the following information from the command line (run these commands and paste the output):
> 
> $ system_profiler SPHardwareDataType
> 
> $ system_profiler -detailLevel mini SPSerialATADataType SPParallelATADataType
> 
> * you may want to remove/redact the "Serial Number (system)" and "Hardware UUID" values before emailing.
> 
> That will provide some information on your existing system and disks which will make it easier to determine what appropriate replacements are needed. Normally, I would look at CPU performance, amount of RAM and disk speeds (HDD vs SSD vs NVMe makes a huge difference).
> 
> Hope that helps!
> 
> Donal
> 
> On Wed, 9 Sep 2020 at 02:00, RMG <reikogoodwin at gmail.com> wrote:
>  Hello QGIS users on Macs,
> 
> I would like advice on purchasing a new Mac. My Mac is 5 years old and cannot handle heavy-duty QGIS procedures. I process many satellite images and some vector files with 30 m grids have millions of features, for example. To process anything is taking too long. I know there has been a discussion on ARMS hardware, but that seems a few years away. So right now, what would you recommend? I plan to partition the hard drive to handle ArcGIS as well. I do not think I can afford a dream machine like Mac Pro, though. Is a Mac mini something that you guys use and recommend?
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Reiko Matsuda Goodwin
> Comoé Monkey Project
> Guenon Conservation Community
> 
> 
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