Nuke compositor here looking to begin my journey with Flame. Currently thinking of going the Macbook Pro route. I humbly ask for any suggestions navigating this:
How would you prioritize investing in specs for RAM/CPU/GPU for Flame? (I’d hate to use my limited $ on GPU cores only to wish a month later I threw it all towards memory, etc)
Any considerations regarding the different flavors of M1/M2 chips? I read some compatibility issues on the forum here, but the topics were a bit older so not sure what’s still an issue or sorted now.
The goal is to have a (reasonably affordable) machine I can use to learn Flame on. Portability would be ideal. I don’t have experience with Linux, but if I’d be doing myself a disservice to not consider some other workstation for a much better working experience/price point, I’d be keen for those suggestions as well…
Welcome to Logik! Great to have you here. Flame will run on any Apple Silicon Mac, but just like with anything your experience will vary based on the config. The simple answer is buy the most maxed out computer that you can, because you can’t upgrade anything on a MacBook Pro. Plus, you’ll be using this for everything eventually. Likely Nuke as well. On these machines memory is shared between RAM AND GPU. If you can swing it, go for the M2 Max with 96GB. You can certainly get away with 64GB. I’m still using a 2020 Intel MBP with 64GB RAM for on set work, and Flame runs remarkably well on it. I def feel it, though, if I’m doing larger setups at 4K. The only other thing I’d recommend is getting a min of 2TB of internal storage.
The benchmarks show that the performance diff between M1/M2 aren’t that significant, so also look at certified refurbs from Apple.
Yo! Welcome! Great advice above from Andy. Plus, we’ll be starting a Flame for Nuke Artist series on Logik Academy Pro soon. Will post here when we begin.
