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16-Inch MacBook Pro Now Available With Up to 75% Faster Radeon Pro 5600M Graphics

Question for you hardware experts.. I have been waiting to upgrade to the 16 MBP, hoping a refresh was coming at WWDC. It seems unlikely now. I am currently running a 2017 13"MBP with the crap keyboard.

My uses are currently app development all day every day, on each and every platform. Some final cut pro use, but nothing professional. I want to upgrade for a few reasons.. my 13" battery life is a joke, I hate the keyboard, and I want to run bootcamp and install racing simulation games.

So my question is this.. which configuration of the 16" MBP makes the most sense. I was learning towards the 2.3 8core cpu, 32ram, 1TBssd and the 5500 8gb gpu. This is around 3100.00, and they will give me 850 for the 13" trade in.

Any thoughts? Is the new gpu worth it for 'future proofing'?
 
So no 10th generation CPUs and no Wifi6 this year.

I don't get it. Did Apple invest heavily in Dell stocks? I was going to spend a lot of money on a new 16" MBP this year. I guess it's going to be the XPS17 instead.
 
Brian Greenstone said:
Great! Now give me back my SD card slot, USB ports, and everything else that makes the Pro not a Pro and I'll buy one.
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Yes, let’s replace a 20Gbps port that can be anything you want it to be, and replace it with an SD card port that can only ever be an SD card port, an HDMI port that can only ever be an HDMI port, and an Ethernet port that can only ever be an Ethernet port.

Need 3Ethernet ports and no HDMI port? Tough titty, you get what you get and you don’t get upset.

The TB3/USB3 port is a quintessential Apple port. With the right adapter, this port can do anything desired by the user. If user A wants multiple monitors connected, they just buy USB3 to monitor cables. If user B needs to be on multiple networks at once, they buy multiple Ethernet adapters. The person who needs that sweet TB3 RAID is also in luck.

I can’t think of a port more suited to what Apple wants to deliver in a portable device.
 
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If people do not know, you can buy an AMD Radeon 5700XT and a thunderbolt 3 graphics card enclosure. External gpus will always be faster and cheaper than what Apple offers defacto in a Macbook.
 
OMG, that's $875 Canadian, talk about gouging !!! You might as well buy an external GPU or switch to windows...really considering now because with their own chips they will be an even greater monopoly and choices and prices will be premium...not worth it any more ...looking at 16 core dell with AMD Ryzen
 
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bsbeamer said:
Documented thread with benchmark scores since MBP16,1 release with RX5700XT in eGPU:
forums.macrumors.com

MBP16,1 with RX 5700 XT via eGPU (Reports, Issues & Benchmarks)

Been running some tests with an MBP16,1 configured with 2.4GHz, 5500M 8GB, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD. Currently on 10.15.2. Have a Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box 650 GPU-650WOC-TB3, which is the OC model that provides 100W power delivery (newest model). Been running a Sapphire Pulse RX 580 8GB in that...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com
Click to expand...

Geekbench compute is an odd choice for a benchmark for GPUs. When I upgraded my eGPU from a 580 to a Vega 64, Geekbench compute went up about 17%, while my gaming FPS doubled. I’ve also found that Geekbench compute scores about 50% higher booted into Windows 10 on my MacBook Pro, using my eGPU.
 
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Peperino said:
So I guess the MacBook Pro, was not that "Pro" that they have to charge an additional $800 to upgrade the graphics...
Click to expand...

Personally I'm done with "desktop replacement laptops"...especially from Apple. I'm betting the new iMac will be awesome.
 
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edhnb said:
Question for you hardware experts.. I have been waiting to upgrade to the 16 MBP, hoping a refresh was coming at WWDC. It seems unlikely now. I am currently running a 2017 13"MBP with the crap keyboard.

My uses are currently app development all day every day, on each and every platform. Some final cut pro use, but nothing professional. I want to upgrade for a few reasons.. my 13" battery life is a joke, I hate the keyboard, and I want to run bootcamp and install racing simulation games.

So my question is this.. which configuration of the 16" MBP makes the most sense. I was learning towards the 2.3 8core cpu, 32ram, 1TBssd and the 5500 8gb gpu. This is around 3100.00, and they will give me 850 for the 13" trade in.

Any thoughts? Is the new gpu worth it for 'future proofing'?
Click to expand...
Last week I ordered a refurb 2.3/32/1tb/5500 4gb. It's awesome and was $2719. I purposely hedged by ordering within the 2 week window to WWDC so just in case something was announced I could return within the 14 day window. I agree that the new video card indicates it is less likely, although not impossible, we'll see a bigger 16 update anytime soon.
 
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Zdigital2015 said:
Honestly, that was my first thought. Unless I am mobile so much that lugging an eGPU around is prohibitive, I would go with the 8GB 5500M option and spend $700 on an eGPU box and either a Radeon VII, if you can find one, or a 5700XT until RDNA 2 GPUs are introduced and Apple includes support in a future version of macOS. $700-$800 just seems a bit ridiculous to me. I guess benchmarks and real world testing will tell us if it’s worth the extra expense.
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I'm sure barefeats.com will be testing the 5600M in terms of cost effectiveness.
 
Zdigital2015 said:
Which means it isn’t a trivial purchase/BTO option for most users here who are already complaining. The 8GB 5500M is almost a no-brainer buy at this point, but there’s going to have to be some significant gains in relevant apps to make a $700-$800 BTO option relevant for 90% of users.
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Unless you need the maxed out GPU option on a regular basis when you're away from your desk, I've always felt like it was better to get the lower end GPU, and invest in an eGPU option that I can upgrade yearly - the desktop cards will aways be more powerful over time than the dGPUs on MacBook Pros.
 
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NickName99 said:
Geekbench compute is an odd choice for a benchmark for GPUs. When I upgraded my eGPU from a 580 to a Vega 64, Geekbench compute went up about 17%, while my gaming FPS doubled. I’ve also found that Geekbench compute scores about 50% higher booted into Windows 10 on my MacBook Pro, using my eGPU.
Click to expand...

eGPU’s are a lot better for gaming than for productivity. The TB3 bottleneck is much less of a problem when the traffic mostly goes one way in the cable. For productivity tasks it needs to go back and forth a lot and this is where you really take a hit compared to internal GPUs.
 
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Zdigital2015 said:
Honestly, that was my first thought. Unless I am mobile so much that lugging an eGPU around is prohibitive, I would go with the 8GB 5500M option and spend $700 on an eGPU box and either a Radeon VII, if you can find one, or a 5700XT until RDNA 2 GPUs are introduced and Apple includes support in a future version of macOS. $700-$800 just seems a bit ridiculous to me. I guess benchmarks and real world testing will tell us if it’s worth the extra expense.
Click to expand...

You could pick up a secondhand Vega 56 for $200 on eBay, they’re probably faster than a 5600M.
 
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