16' for a developer

[Yoav Namir]

Hi all, after much consideration and disappointment that the 14' hasn't arrived, I've decided to go for the 16'.

I'm considering getting the i9 8 core, 32gb ram, 5500 4gb, 1tb
Do you think that as an app developer I'll feel any benift from upgrading to the 2.4 i9?
And about the graphic card, if I want to game every now and then, should I go for the 8gb one? Or is the 4gb good enough?

Thank you!

 

[MrGimper]

Save the 200 on the 2.4 and spend half of it on the 8GB VRAM. I had a 2.4 with 32GB and swapped it for the 2.3 with 64 GB. Both with 8GB VRAM. Geekbench benchmarks were so close between the two processors it’s not worth the money IMO.

 

[SawThings]

Save the 200 on the 2.4 and spend half of it on the 8GB VRAM. I had a 2.4 with 32GB and swapped it for the 2.3 with 64 GB. Both with 8GB VRAM. Geekbench benchmarks were so close between the two processors it’s not worth the money IMO.

I agree with the above..

 

[Yoav Namir]

Save the 200 on the 2.4 and spend half of it on the 8GB VRAM. I had a 2.4 with 32GB and swapped it for the 2.3 with 64 GB. Both with 8GB VRAM. Geekbench benchmarks were so close between the two processors it’s not worth the money IMO.

Thanks!

What do think the 8gb vram worth it?
Where will I say the improvement?

 

[iandk]

Are you doing some gaming, video rendering or working with 3D models?
Otherwise you wont notice a difference.

 

[Yoav Namir]

Are you doing some gaming, video rendering or working with 3D models?
Otherwise you wont notice a difference.

I do plan on some, not a lot, if gaming

 

[recoil80]

I'm an app developer, as I needed the laptop asap to work from home during the pandemic I couldn't wait the extra shipping time to build a custom configuration, so I went for the higher tier with the i9.
If you're on low budget, those are the priorities I'd have:
1. RAM (16 are enough but 32 better if you run virtual machines)
2. storage (512 is good enough actually, but 1TB will be ok for years)
3. CPU
4. GPU
I don't play games, so GPU isn't really important to me. You may have different priorities of course.
I can tell you the faster CPU is good for development, but I only save a few seconds for each build compared to my older MBP. Not a deal breaker.

If I had time to wait for a custom configuration I'd have built this machine:
2.6GHz 6‑core 9th‑generation
32GB RAM
1TB SSD
2999 is the price of the machine, while 2799 is the price of the model I got (I found a really good deal on it, that's the advantage of buying one of the base models)
The extra RAM is pricey, but it is easy to use a lot of it nowadays. I have a few simulators opened, plus web inspector and a lot of tabs in safari/chrome.
Sometimes I can see some swap has been used by the system. SSD are really fast, so if you swap a little bit you are not stuck with a painfully slow machine like it happened in the past, but the extra RAM would help sometimes.
I think my next Mac will have 32GB, as I said I was in a hurry and I found a similar deal on a 15" machine with 32GB of RAM, I didn't buy it because of the keyboard actually, otherwise I'd have gone for the older machine only to have more RAM

 

[Mojo1019]

Thanks!

What do think the 8gb vram worth it?
Where will I say the improvement?

I don't think so. I have played some more demanding game like Rise of the Tomb Rider in MacOS or Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare in Windows 10 (HERE you can find my impressions) and as you can see if you want to use high definition texture you need that VRAM!

 

[MrGimper]

I don't think so. I have played some more demanding game like Rise of the Tomb Rider in MacOS or Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare in Windows 10 (HERE you can find my impressions) and as you can see if you want to use high definition texture you need that VRAM!

I'm confused. Your reply starts by saying you don't think the additional VRAM is worth it, but then you go on to describe why the additional VRAM is worth it.

 

[Mojo1019]

I'm confused. Your reply starts by saying you don't think the additional VRAM is worth it, but then you go on to describe why the additional VRAM is worth it.

Oh, I am sorry! My english is just really bad a rusty. What I was trying to say is that 8GB are worth it IMO.

 

[MrGimper]

Oh, I am sorry! My english is just really bad a rusty. What I was trying to say is that 8GB are worth it IMO.

Hey no worries, just wanted to be clear for the OP

 

[leman]

In my opinion, the price-performance sweet spot for the 16" is the 2.3Ghz CPU, 16Gb RAM, 5500M with 4GB VRAM. Other updates are situational:

- 32GB RAM if you work with high-res content creation or need to have large memory-resident dataset (as in case of running multiple parallel VMs for development)
- 2.4Ghz CPU if many of your workflows are single-threaded in nature and you can benefit from that peak 3-5% performance difference
- 8GB if you are working with high-res content creation and your workflows are GPU assisted, but in this case you probably want something much more beefier

There is not much point in getting 8GB GPU for gaming, since the 5500M won't have enough horsepower to run games at resolutions where it starts being necessary.