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2018 13" Maxed Out = Perfection

DougFNJ

DougFNJ

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 22, 2008
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I am coming from a maxed out 2017 MacBook Pro. There was nothing wrong with it, I planned to keep it for a few years until a quad core 13" MacBook released, and was pleasantly surprised when I read the announcement the other day. I had always considered a 15" for the performance, but the size would never work for me. I feel like I finally got that performance of the 15" I had been looking for, and it came in the size that is so ideal for me.

It's only my first day, and obviously there is still novelty here, but I am SO impressed with the performance of this Quad Core I7. The nicest thing about this machine so far is every high performing task I have thrown at it cuts the time in half. The first thing was when I started it up for the first time, started a test account to make sure everything was working as it should. I erased the drive, rebooted a fresh OS to migrate my info over clean. The OS took 10 minutes to install. Any other time I have done this it takes at least 20-30 minutes. I migrated everything over....this was a 4 hour move with around 500 Gigs. When I have done this before, it has typically been at least 6-8 hours. I have been situating my accounts, making sure everything has been moved over correctly. I realize in the background, there is plenty of indexing going on right now. I went into Final Cut to see how the videos I am editing moved over, and as I am doing some light editing just to see how it performs at a basic level, I have never seen everything complete and render so quick. Everything I am throwing at it is instant.

Not that I had to wait a ridiculous time before for these tasks, but I am getting precisely what I was hoping for. If I was just doing basic computing with Word Processing, browsing, and email, I would had kept the 2017 and been happy. But I am looking forward to really putting it through its paces over this next week.

As many have said, I never had any problems with the 2017 Keyboard. I am one of the ones who also never had a dislike for it either. The shorter key travel to me has actually helped me type faster. The keyboard definitely has some subtle improvement. I do like that its quieter, like it muffled the clicking of the previous version. It also feels slightly more tactile.

I have not used it enough to determine anything regarding battery life, and I keep True Tone turned off, the only place I like True Tone is my iPad Pro. I am not a deep tech guy, I have no plans or intentions to to geek bench scores, or any of the tests, I am just giving a real world perspective, if you need the speed, get this MacBook!
 
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Congrats! That sounds like a win. How does the machine tolerate the heat when doing a long render in Final Cut / Compressor? & what did you do with your 2017?

edit: this post made me a 604... finally
 
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Zwhaler said:
Congrats! That sounds like a win. How does the machine tolerate the heat when doing a long render in Final Cut / Compressor? & what did you do with your 2017?

edit: this post made me a 604... finally
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Thank you! I’ll let you know about the heat. I’ll be playing more with it tonight. I’m still deciding what method I’ll be using to sell the 2017.

Lol glad my thread helped you get there.
 
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Could someone enlighten me why others keep creating a guest account first then erasing their iPads? I could see doing that on a windows computer that is full of spam software but why on a Mac?
 
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Yeah man, I am typing this on one right now (though I can't call it maxed maxed out as I have a 1 TB instead of 2 TB drive)

Such a wonderful device. So expensive. Lol.
 
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Do you have an external monitor that you can hook up to? I'm curious to see how well the 13' fairs when hooked up to an external and putting it through the paces (adobe suite). I'm leaning towards the 13' but a little hesitant with the non discrete graphics.
 
bully worm said:
Do you have an external monitor that you can hook up to? I'm curious to see how well the 13' fairs when hooked up to an external and putting it through the paces (adobe suite). I'm leaning towards the 13' but a little hesitant with the non discrete graphics.
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I have an external 4K monitor running at 60 hz (TB3->displayport). But, I don't have any adobe products to test. For what I do, it works wonderfully.
 
I am just bringing up my new 13" also maxed except the 1TB drive. So far, so good, I've loaded Office and still have to load Fusion and AutoCad LT and other apps. So far everything is very snappy. One thing I plan on doing to keep it that way is to keep everything Adobe off to it. Since they moved to subscription, I have really hated just how much they take over a machine with processes to manage their subscription and such. It's a little invasive on the Mac, but on Windows it's crazy. I am done with them. I will stick with Bluebeam for PDF and FCP for video and am moving my photo workflow to Capture One.
 
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Thank you for the info, I'm following this thread with great interest. I too have a maxed out 13" 2017 MBP, and I'm going to upgrade to the 2018 model for the quad core. I'm particularly interested in what you find out about your battery life... that's my major disappointment with the 2017. I'm debating whether to go with the i5 or i7; obviously I want the screaming-fast performance of the i7, but battery is a big factor for me, so if the i7 impacts it in any notable way, it may be better in my case to go for the i5... please keep us posted! :)
 
SkimPappa said:
Could someone enlighten me why others keep creating a guest account first then erasing their iPads? I could see doing that on a windows computer that is full of spam software but why on a Mac?
Click to expand...

Rather than loading everything on the MacBook and finding a defect to problem with it after hours of the migration, for me its just easier to just create a guest account, turn it on, do simple things and make sure all works good. Restoring is to just keep a clean install altogether.

mikethebigo said:
Yeah man, I am typing this on one right now (though I can't call it maxed maxed out as I have a 1 TB instead of 2 TB drive)

Such a wonderful device. So expensive. Lol.
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Sorry, maxed out with processor and RAM.....same setup on my SSD....1 TB.

BayouTiger said:
I am just bringing up my new 13" also maxed except the 1TB drive. So far, so good, I've loaded Office and still have to load Fusion and AutoCad LT and other apps. So far everything is very snappy. One thing I plan on doing to keep it that way is to keep everything Adobe off to it. Since they moved to subscription, I have really hated just how much they take over a machine with processes to manage their subscription and such. It's a little invasive on the Mac, but on Windows it's crazy. I am done with them. I will stick with Bluebeam for PDF and FCP for video and am moving my photo workflow to Capture One.
Click to expand...

Are you talking Flash? For PDF edits and creation, I work with PDF Expert....may be a good solution.

cep55 said:
Thank you for the info, I'm following this thread with great interest. I too have a maxed out 13" 2017 MBP, and I'm going to upgrade to the 2018 model for the quad core. I'm particularly interested in what you find out about your battery life... that's my major disappointment with the 2017. I'm debating whether to go with the i5 or i7; obviously I want the screaming-fast performance of the i7, but battery is a big factor for me, so if the i7 impacts it in any notable way, it may be better in my case to go for the i5... please keep us posted! :)
Click to expand...

I'll update at the end of the week on battery life.......I usually cycle the battery on the initial and second charge.
 
Buyers... kindly help me with info regarding sound. Supposedly the speakers are slightly redesigned. Do let me know how the sound sounds compared to the old 2017.
 
Vazza said:
Any update on your experience thus far including heat and battery life?
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For normal day-to-day tasks my fans are off and temp is 35-40C, nice and cool. Battery lasts me >10 hours regularly.

I haven't pushed it yet with my workflow which will involve VMs and all that though.
 
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I also have a maxed out 13in (i7, 2TB, 16GB) and I am extremely impressed with it. I have added an Akitio Node Pro with an eGPU and I am finding that it is powerful enough to replace my desktop gaming system.

I am actually selling two high end gaming rigs I have because of the performance of the macbook - one 6 core 5820k system at home, and a quad core 7700k system I have at work. For the first time, I anticipate myself being able to have one laptop that is powerful enough (with egpu help) to be my only computer. We will see how it goes, but I am hopeful.

After the patch, the throttling is a total non issue. I have four cores sitting between 4.0 and 4.1ghz for hours at a time playing Civilization 6. The same goes for when exporting Premiere Pro or working in Lightroom.
 
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how are your speakers..have read issues with people hearing cracklling sounds just want to know if you have experienced anything like that
 
computerpro3 said:
After the patch, the throttling is a total non issue. I have four cores sitting between 4.0 and 4.1ghz for hours at a time playing Civilization 6. The same goes for when exporting Premiere Pro or working in Lightroom.
Click to expand...

What about the heat and temperatures?

What I wonder is whether 13 2018 get hotter and more uncomfortable to hold on lap than 2016/2017.
 
I don't really use my built in speakers; I have Sennheiser IE800S headphones I use on the go and HD650 headphones I use at my desk.

The laptop definitely gets hot when gaming, the processor sits around 90C. I expected that though and it doesn't bother me. I have gamed for hours on end and it never crashes, and I have been running heavily overclocked and overvolted Intel processors over 90C even on watercooling for years and have never had a problem.

I would not want to game with the laptop on my lap, but during normal productivity work I have not noticed it getting hot.
 
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computerpro3 said:
I also have a maxed out 13in (i7, 2TB, 16GB) and I am extremely impressed with it. I have added an Akitio Node Pro with an eGPU and I am finding that it is powerful enough to replace my desktop gaming system.

I am actually selling two high end gaming rigs I have because of the performance of the macbook - one 6 core 5820k system at home, and a quad core 7700k system I have at work. For the first time, I anticipate myself being able to have one laptop that is powerful enough (with egpu help) to be my only computer. We will see how it goes, but I am hopeful.

After the patch, the throttling is a total non issue. I have four cores sitting between 4.0 and 4.1ghz for hours at a time playing Civilization 6. The same goes for when exporting Premiere Pro or working in Lightroom.
Click to expand...

What’s the heat like running a game using a eGPU...I can imagine the 15” with dGPU would be burning hot during gameplay but hoping an eGPU would negate this effect in the 13”?
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mikethebigo said:
For normal day-to-day tasks my fans are off and temp is 35-40C, nice and cool. Battery lasts me >10 hours regularly.

I haven't pushed it yet with my workflow which will involve VMs and all that though.
Click to expand...

That’s pleasing...I’ve only just got my 13” but only the peasant i5 version :p
 
It gets hot for sure, the cpu sits about 90C and the chassis is pretty warm. But I leave it on a desk since I'm using egpu, docking station, external monitor, etc. I don't even touch the machine when using it with an egpu, so it doesn't bother me at all how hot it gets.
 
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macintoshmac said:
Buyers... kindly help me with info regarding sound. Supposedly the speakers are slightly redesigned. Do let me know how the sound sounds compared to the old 2017.
Click to expand...
No crackling here and sound is louder and fuller compared to both my iPad Pro and my prior 2015 MBP.
 
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Does it get noisy when hooked to TB3 dock and connect to 4K display? Some ThinkPad has such issue.
 
pubmsu said:
Is it staying cool to the touch when doing just browsing and productivity apps? Mildly warm is fine, too. But warm onwards is not good.
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Yup. iTunes playing through speakers, using Safari, other typical Mac apps open - CPU temp is only 39C, and fans aren't on. Not warm/hot at all.
 
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