I want to replace my ancient macbook pro 2013. I don’t have high end requirements, I think the most demanding application I use is darktable.
I was thinking on buying something compact and affordable like a mini pc. I’ve been doing some research and I think that something like the minisforum UM790 PRo could do the trick. But I then started to check in the forum about the AMD Ryzen compatibility and I get the impression that the Linux drivers don’t play well with OpenCL and Darktable. I also get the feeling that AMD machines are less stable with Linux than intel ones (happy to be corrected about this).
I am not thinking on an alternative mini pc like this I9. I realise the intel iris is far worse than the AMD GPU, but if the AMD is not going to work with Darktable then it is useless for me. I have used a 2017 laptop with an i7 and an intel GPU with opencl and Debian, and Darktable was running very well, so I then assume that a 12th generation i9 will do well too.
Any recommendation?. DId I get the whole AMD thing under Linux wrong?.
What people are talking about with AMD is the performance and support of openCL in their drivers. The and computer you link has an integrated GPU, and likely won’t provide much of a performance boost for darktable.
However, your 2013 macbook is certainly using CPU only, and that AMD computer is way way way faster than your macbook. The price seems nice too.
There is not many issues with AMD CPUs on Linux and that one will probably work fine.
I guess that what I am not sure is if to go for the AMD or the Intel with a worst GPU but that works better in terms of opencl and darktable would be better.
While I wouldn’t say that I’m correcting you, I run an AMD Ryzen 9 with an nVidia RTX video card and the proprietary nVidia driver on Arch Linux. I have had this steup for quite some time, and I note no stability issues at all. OpenCL is working just fine.
Couldn’t you get a used PC? They can be extremely good value for the money. With an Nvidia 1060 or better, even an older PC can deliver decent performance under darktable – my Nvidia 1060 is 5-10x faster than my Ryzen 5 3600X. See here for a recent performance comparison (of a 2019 iMac, M2 Mac Mini with low RAM (8 GB), and my home-built, 3-year-old PC using an 8-year-old Nvidia card): Export times on iMac and Mac mini with diffuse&sharpen
Good point. I had considered used but for space matters I pivoted to the mini PCs. But looking at what you shared I am reconsidering. I’ve seen some i5s 12400 and Ryzen 5 6500 with rtx3060 for about the same price as the mini PCs. I assume the performance of those type of machines will be far superior.
You can do better than assuming: there are published benchmarks. See the similar thread linux laptop darktable 2024, where I posted links in a comment.
Looking at those benchmarks I am surprise on how good the Ryzen 9 in that little mini pc is, about 30% faster than the i5 and Ryzen 5 from 2022 that I can find in used pcs. Then the integrated GPU in the Razen 9 is about 50% slower than the Nvidia rtx 3060.
That made me smile. I’m still using an ‘ancient’ 2011 iMac as my main photo-processing PC (albiet running Linux via Virtualbox). I likely won’t replace it until it bursts into flames.
Wow. Does. Darktable runs well?. I don’t care too much about the long export times, but the interface is super unresponsive. Trying to apply diffusse and sharpness is painful.
I have used a laptop from 2017 with an intel i7 and integrated graphics and everything was quite smooth.
