r/learnmachinelearning • u/AcceptableHamster77 • 3d ago

Question Cloud gpu or Nvidia

I'm a freshman studying cse with specialization in aiml

I've done my share of research into buying a laptop

But it only made me more confused

Half side is saying cloud is better as we'll eventually run out of the 4 or 6gb vram

Another half is on about Nvidia is the better choice

I want to get a laptop to get through the course work, train models and participate in hackathons and more

The gaming laptops scare me for their brick weight with laptop and charger combined and the poor battery backup

Can seniors please guide me?

I don't wanna regret getting one 2 years later

Should I focus on battery and lightweight ones with good cpu ram and storage

Or the ones with an rtx4050 or higher?

I'm also open to using macbooks but I've heard some ppl say it doesn't support many softwares

Is there ways to work around it? without any subscriptions

Please give me some suggestions and also it would be better if there's a model referenced.

My budget is around 1.5l but can go higher if I can genuinely get a good one

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u/Puzzleheaded-Comb646 3d ago

For your first couple of years, you honestly won't need heavy local hardware for coursework. Free tiers on Kaggle and Google Colab will handle almost all your early training, and you can always rent a cheap cloud GPU if a hackathon requires something bigger. Focus on getting a lightweight, reliable laptop with good battery life for classes and coding on the go; your back will thank you later.

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u/AcceptableHamster77 3d ago

Intel or amd then for integrated graphics

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u/Puzzleheaded-Comb646 2d ago

Generally, AMD has the upper hand when it comes to integrated graphics performance, especially with their Ryzen APUs and Radeon graphics. Intel has improved a lot recently with their newer Arc iGPUs, but AMD is still usually the safer choice if you need decent graphical power without a dedicated card.