Question / Help MacBook Pro with touchbar : 13 or 15?

[Kim Rii Shein]

Hi, first thread here. Just wanted to know if I was to get a new MacBook Pro with touchbar model solely for running OBS, both display capture and live streaming another pc or game console only, which model would be good for 1080p 60fps?

The 13 inch model with 3.5GHz dual-core 7th-generation Intel Core i7 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz, or the 15 inch model with 3.1GHz quad-core 7th-generation Intel Core i7 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.1GHz?

Thanks for taking your time to read and hopefully answer this silly question.

 

[Fenrir]

A laptop, at best, is a very bad choice as a streaming platform.

A mac laptop is, in my opinion, even worse as there are a host of issues when it comes to the standard methods that are available for capture (for example, you can't capture the mouse cursor on a mac because Apple decided you don't need to do that).

Unless you ABSOLUTELY need the portability of a laptop, I strongly suggest you look into building a simple desktop PC. Not only will you get significantly more bang for your buck, but you will also have a much better overall experience with OBS.

 

[Kim Rii Shein]

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I do need the portability of a laptop, especially since my desk has very limited space, and my polytechnic laptop shop had a MacBook promotion for new students, hence the question.

But I won't be using the MacBook for streaming and recording what's on the MacBook, but what's on my Wacom Mobilestudio pro since it always gets hot while OBS is running, worse when running ZBrush since that program is CPU intensive as well.

So any suggestions on what laptop components to look out for, or any hardware suggestion?

 

[Fenrir]

If you do go the macbook pro route, you'll need the 15" as the 13" has no real GPU in it. If you're not going to be running anything on the macbook itself, it should be ok.

 

[Kim Rii Shein]

Thanks. Apologies for asking more questions, I just wanted to know more in details on how the GPU would play a role in live streaming and screen recording, since I mainly know that the program is mainly CPU intensive.

 

[Fenrir]

OBS uses the GPU to render the scene, regardless of what you are using to encode it. Rendering a scene at 1080p 60fps on a laptop with no proper GPU can cause performance issues very quickly.

 

[Narcogen]

How does OBS decide which GPU to use for scene rendering on a system that has two?

 

[Fenrir]

How does OBS decide which GPU to use for scene rendering on a system that has two?

Please do not hijack other users posts for an unrelated question. In the future, please make your own post for your question. It is considered poor forum etiquette to post in someone else's thread like this.

For information on laptop GPUs and capture and performance issues you'll run into there, see this guide: https://obsproject.com/wiki/Laptop-Performance-Issues

 

[Kim Rii Shein]

Thanks, I didn't know there was a guide for laptops. Something else came to mind, would a Nvidia Quadro card work for this program?

 

[Narcogen]

Please do not hijack other users posts for an unrelated question. In the future, please make your own post for your question. It is considered poor forum etiquette to post in someone else's thread like this.

For information on laptop GPUs and capture and performance issues you'll run into there, see this guide: https://obsproject.com/wiki/Laptop-Performance-Issues

My apologies.

I am not asking an unrelated question. I am asking a followup question that I thought would be relevant to helping the user with their issue. You advised that OBS uses the GPU, and as the wiki says many laptops use two GPUs. Knowing which one OBS is, or should be using, or how to direct it to use one or the other, I thought would be helpful for this user to know in deciding which laptop to purchase, since some MacBooks have only integrated graphics, and some have additional discrete GPUs.

Further, the linked wiki refers entirely and exclusively to Windows, and this is a support question in the Mac forum-- there does not appear to be any information there relevant to using OBS on MacOS.