r/AIToolBench • u/OctrusZamp • 2d ago
Comparison Macbook with Cloud GPU vs Windows with integrated Nvidia GPU
hello fellow ai engineers, I want to buy a new laptop for my personal use and experimentation in this domain, specifically in AI engineering. My core use cases are Trying out small open source models in local, experimenting with agents, occasionally doing some training stuff (learning purpose only), etc.
I'm having confusion between buying a macbook and using colab for ml training related stuff OR buying a windows laptop with a dedicated graphics card.
For macbook, I'm thinking of Macbook Pro M5 with 24gb unified memory. For Windows, I haven't finalized it yet.
Need your opinion on this!!!
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u/NeuralNomad87 1d ago
Careful with the 24GB figure, it is not 24GB of model. macOS reserves a chunk and the default cap on what the GPU can claim sits around 70 percent of total, so a 24GB machine realistically gives you somewhere in the high teens for weights plus context. That puts it level with a 16GB dedicated card rather than comfortably ahead of it.
Given your actual use case I would still lean Mac, but for a different reason than the one usually given. You said the training is occasional and for learning, which means Colab genuinely does cover it, so the laptop only has to be good at running things locally and being carriable. That is the Mac argument and it is a decent one.
The thing that would flip my answer: if you want to fine tune anything on the machine itself rather than in a notebook, go Nvidia and do not look back. Almost every tutorial you will follow assumes CUDA, and the hours you lose working around that are real hours.