“What is the best Mac to use with mimoLive?” is a questions we get quite often. The answer is not easy to give, because it depends on what you want to do. This section contains some example configurations together with some information on what you can achieve with this configuration.
Here are some general guidelines:
CPU
- More cores are better
- Newer processor model is better
- Apple Silicon: mimoLive fully supports the Apple Silicon processors. However, as of Spring 2023, the top of the line Intel Mac Pros still outperform the top of the line Apple Silicon chips used in the Mac Studio M1 Ultra.
GPU
Apple Silicon is going to change this over time as it introduces a unified architecture where there is no dedicated GPU. The GPU is part of the Apple Silicon chip.
For Intel based Macs, these rules apply:
- Dedicated GPU is better than the on-chip GPU.
- More video RAM is better than a faster GPU. (Usually, faster GPUs also have more RAM)
eGPU
With Apple Silicon, the eGPUs have become obsolete and are also no longer supported.
For Intel based Macs, these rules apply:
- eGPUs are supported and can be used to upgrade the graphics card if your Mac doesn’t have a dedicated graphics card or you want a faster one.
- eGPUs are only beneficial if they have much more video RAM and processing power than the card built into your Mac.
RAM
- Generally, mimoLive uses very little RAM (usually around 4GB), so it is not important to have an excessive amount of RAM.
- For Apple Silicon Macs, due to the fact that RAM is shared between CPU and GPU, we recommend a minimum of 16GB.
Laptop vs. Desktop
Mobile Computers are optimized for low power consumption, so you would need a bigger machine to get the same performance out of it as with a smaller desktop Mac.