marcingrzegzhik t1_j67vr5l wrote on January 28, 2023 at 10:18 AM

It depends on the scope of your projects. If you're only training small models (like GANs, CNNs, etc.), then a decent modern laptop with 8+ GB RAM and an intel i7 or Ryzen 7 processor should suffice. GPUs are nice to have, but with an Intel i7 or Ryzen 7 processor you can do most of the work without them. As for the OS, Windows and Linux are both fine, but I'd recommend Linux for ML projects for maximum compatibility. Hope this helps!

PleasantBase6967 OP t1_j67vufs wrote on January 28, 2023 at 10:20 AM

Thanks

PleasantBase6967 OP t1_j67w2s0 wrote on January 28, 2023 at 10:23 AM

What is your opinion on macOS and the M1 chip using PyTorch

float16 t1_j67wop0 wrote on January 28, 2023 at 10:32 AM

It looks like you don't care about throughput so it doesn't matter.

PleasantBase6967 OP t1_j67wue5 wrote on January 28, 2023 at 10:34 AM

Throughput matters for me. How is it affected?

float16 t1_j681kmd wrote on January 28, 2023 at 11:40 AM

Then you shouldn't be training on a laptop, and should train on a remote server, in which case your laptop doesn't matter.

CKtalon t1_j682dxf wrote on January 28, 2023 at 11:50 AM

Don’t bother. mps support is terrible. Tensorflow GPU support is better in comparison.

However, the MBA is good for fast and efficient cpu prototyping which you should ship off to a Linux running workstation or cloud with discrete Nvidia GPUs.