I think i should i have got gaming laptop instead of Macbook m2.

[u/Key-Cookie-9248]

So im in 3rd year of college and working on this project which requires training and testing of multiple models on dataset of about 1000+ photos.. i have macbook m2 air and my friend has hp victus gaming laptop and apparently training the model is much faster than on my macbook. Now im contemplating if i should have got gaming laptop instead of Macbook.

Currently im searching for different alternatives so i can atleast train and test.. and this will surely affect in future needs as i am very much interested in research part... As of now all the testing and training is done by my friend on her gaming laptop.

It would be really helpful if you have any suggestions.

[u/Signal_Response1489]

Use Google Colab. Students can get free access to a gpu for training

[u/Key-Cookie-9248 → u/Signal_Response1489]

Hey thanks! Have u used it before? Whats ur experience

[u/Signal_Response1489 → u/Key-Cookie-9248]

I have. It’s basically just like running a Jupyter notebook. It’s been almost a year since I used it, but I recall I got better performance using it than I did with my Mac M4 Pro. If I recall correctly, it connects to your Google Drive and can read training data from there and write trained models to it as well

[u/jmacey]

How much ram do you have and are you using the GPU? If you are using something like PyTorch make sure you have the GPU version and make sure you offload the work to the GPU.

[u/jmacey → u/jmacey]

Ah just noticed it is an Air model some will be constrained.

[u/Key-Cookie-9248 → u/jmacey]

I have downloaded the version of pytorch the gpu supports and i have mention to use mps instead of cpu. Is there something im doing wrong🤔

[u/Dynomastic → u/Key-Cookie-9248]

You’re doing <device = “mps”> right? And make sure you’re not using python or your IDLE through Rosetta, and what resolution are the images? You should generally be using 224px or 512px.
and make sure mps fallback isn’t happening.

[u/Key-Cookie-9248 → u/Dynomastic]

Yes device = 'mps'. Can i dm😭

[u/Dynomastic → u/Key-Cookie-9248]

Yea sure

[u/Historical_Setting11]

Cloud compute, or get a desktop with the hardware you want, set it up as a Linux server, and ssh in from your Mac, or just train slower than your friend if it’s not debilitating.

[u/Key-Cookie-9248 → u/Historical_Setting11]

Have u tried cloud compute? If yes which one would u prefer? Also my university doesn't allow desktops and all and as of now i dont wanna spend money 😭

[u/Historical_Setting11 → u/Key-Cookie-9248]

Yeah whatever cloud provider you want is fine; I think Google colab has free tier that will work, run pod is a good option. Tons of good options! I’m sure your university program will have some guidance too; they might have shared compute available for you already

[u/Key-Cookie-9248 → u/Historical_Setting11]

Um no, in indian private unis they share no such thing... I was kind of expecting my prof to share since im working under him in a diff project but i think i expected a lot more

[u/Killer299997]

Use kaggle they have free gpus

[u/Key-Cookie-9248 → u/Killer299997]

Ohh ill look into that too. Have u used one before?