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I am using Macbook Air 2020 M1 with 8GB RAM.

I am just starting to learn Blender, and I am noticing rendering with Cycles instead of Eevee takes considerable amount of time.

How can I make it faster? Should I be getting a eGPU? Should I be getting a 16GB RAM?

Thanks, Sam

sam k
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1 Answers1

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First, before even going out buying anything new you should consider to optimise your scenes and really invest time into it.

Common things I do for optimising is checking that maybe i remove a subdivision level where i dont need it, lowering the samples (if possible, new default in Cycles is 4096 which is kinda high imo) and definitely using a Denoiser. Definitely use OIDN because it yields the best results. Also see if you can clamp things like the indirect light to 0.5 and reduce the Max Light bounces under render options to further reduce noise, samples and therefore render time. Optimising is an art for itself so you will want to do some of your own googling about this.

Upgrading hardware is however more difficult. Macs tend to be not very upgradable leaving limited options:

  1. Upgrading RAM (possible, as you stated that you could upgrade); Problem: Doesn't add that much to the overall performance. It may make bigger scenes renderable but upgrading RAM is not your priority unless you can't do anything else
  2. the eGPU: it is possible to do such thing but the world is undergoing a huge microchip shortage right now making GPUs extremely expensive. So if you have the money to spend this is an option, just be sure to buy a capable graphics card and not something that will perform just about the same.

At last, you could use cloud rendering. It can cost money, or you can use something like SheepIt which is free but expects you to connect a device to the farm to make back points that you have spent. The advantage here is that you can have your device rendering when you don't need it at the moment.

rafe
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