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Gaming on 16 inch MacBook pro
- Thread starter icyfire
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Yeah they’re useless. Just placebo effect (imaginary)
the MacBooks intake ambient air from the side, blow it through the heat sink fins, and exhaust out the back hinge. As a secondary sink the heat sink assembly is connected to the aluminum top case, so above the keyboard can get quite warm. Neither of these areas are enhanced by placing more fans underneath the computer.
the MacBooks intake ambient air from the side, blow it through the heat sink fins, and exhaust out the back hinge. As a secondary sink the heat sink assembly is connected to the aluminum top case, so above the keyboard can get quite warm. Neither of these areas are enhanced by placing more fans underneath the computer.
The 16" Macbook Pro is a beast at playing games. However, there is a bit of a mistake being made by people purchasing the 16" MBP. Going beyond the base configuration 5300M 4 GB is just not worth it. The jump to a 5500M results in perhaps a 200 MHz faster boost clock, and the jump from 4 GB of VRAM to 8 GB is completely wasted on the limited power offered by the 5500M. To put this in perspective for y'all, the 5700XT 8 GB is the highest end video card currently being marketed by AMD. It has been said to be the mid tier card of the RX 5000 series being offered by AMD. And it's the card they're hilariously going to be offered in the Mac Pro soon enough in a single GPU and dual GPU setup. The higher end AMD GPU that'll take advantage of RDNA architecture in the Navi GPUs being produced will likely be a 5800/X/XT or 5900/X/XT. So, the video card going into this MacBook Pro are the lowest performers of the Navi series produced by AMD.
Save yourself $100-200 USD and just go for the 5300M. If you have an actual use case for the 8 GB model of the 5500M, you know, as much as I can't imagine what it is, that should be your reason for getting that $100-200 upgrade. You won't be future proofing yourself for years by investing that extra $100-200 in the 5500M 4/8 GB dGPU. I for one play FFXIV Online on my 16" Macbook Pro on High settings, and although I've not checked the FPS I'm getting? It's all very smooth and enjoyable for me. Please make good decisions so you don't get shoveled complete garbage.
Save yourself $100-200 USD and just go for the 5300M. If you have an actual use case for the 8 GB model of the 5500M, you know, as much as I can't imagine what it is, that should be your reason for getting that $100-200 upgrade. You won't be future proofing yourself for years by investing that extra $100-200 in the 5500M 4/8 GB dGPU. I for one play FFXIV Online on my 16" Macbook Pro on High settings, and although I've not checked the FPS I'm getting? It's all very smooth and enjoyable for me. Please make good decisions so you don't get shoveled complete garbage.
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8 gb will help if you play at the Mac's native resolution. Look at performance benchmarks at 4K with 4gb vs. 8gb. Some games see a significant improvement.
Texture quality is the big thing dependent on VRAM. If you like that turned all the way up, the 8GB card would probably be worth it, probably more so in coming years than right now.
And sane will be true about any laptop, no matter the brand. It is just how games work - they try to draw as fast as they can. I don’t know any game that would be designed with efficiency in mind. All of them pretty much require exclusive access to all the CPU and GPU resources your machine can provide.
If the difference was £400, then you'd have a point, but when the upgrade from 4GB to 8GB costs £90, there's no reason not to get it. The additional memory might be used by video editing software and certain games once you increase the resolution and use ultra textures. If anything, it will give you a sense of security that your laptop is a bit more future-proof. I doubt people will have regrets about spending £90, but they might regret at some point for not upgrading it.
Additional 4GB video memory for £90 is a no-brainer.
For comparably sized machines, sure. But fans on a proper gaming laptop like an alienware M15 do sound far more pedestrian even at full load due to other design elements taking some of the load off of just fan cooling. Particularly for a comparable CPU/GPU combo (i9/ GTX1660). Heck, even the exotic design of the Surface book 2 lets the GTX 1060 in the base stay around 70C under load. One more reason this is a machine that can run games but isn't an especially good option if you're wanting to do it a lot. You wouldn't specifically buy an XPS 15 or HP X360 for much the same reasons.
Notebook check measured fan noise for the M15 (2080 max-q) at 49 dB under load and 55 dB max. The 16” MBP is in contrast 43 dB under load and 46 dB max. In general, most gaming laptops are considerably louder than the MBP. Which is no surprise since they need to dissipate around 100 more watts. No matter how good your passive heat transfer is, you need active cooling to remove rust heat from the system which means high-rpm fans.
Sources:
The Area-51m mini-me: Dell Alienware m15 R2 Laptop Review
If you've ever wanted the 17.3-inch Alienware Area-51m desktop replacement but wished it was smaller, then the 15.6-inch Alienware m15 R2 should fit the bill. The new model is a complete design overhaul of last year's Alienware m15 R1 that unfortunately feels more like a lateral step sideways...
Apple MacBook Pro 16 2019 Laptop Review: A convincing Core i9-9880H and Radeon Pro 5500M powered multimedia laptop
Notebookcheck.com reviews the flagship model of the MacBook Pro 16, Apple's latest multimedia laptop. The machine comes with an AMD Radeon Pro 5500M GPU and an Intel Core i9-9880H CPU, along with 16 GB of DDR4-2666 RAM and a 1 TB SSD. Read on to find out why have awarded the MacBook Pro 16 top...
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Just quoting max Db levels misses my point (also you cut out the part of my post mentioning comparable internals) - how often does the laptop need to spin up to max? what constitutes 'load'? The Mac will almost certainly spin up the fans sooner for a comparable load because it's smaller and denser with a smaller heat sink. Basic physics of heat dissipation. Just because the laptop does move more air (and get louder) if you really need it to doesn't mean its going to be doing it all the time, or even on a regular basis.Notebook check measured fan noise for the M15 (2080 max-q) at 49 dB under load and 55 dB max. The 16” MBP is in contrast 43 dB under load and 46 dB max. In fact, most gaming laptops are considerably louder than the MBP.
Sources:
The Area-51m mini-me: Dell Alienware m15 R2 Laptop Review
If you've ever wanted the 17.3-inch Alienware Area-51m desktop replacement but wished it was smaller, then the 15.6-inch Alienware m15 R2 should fit the bill. The new model is a complete design overhaul of last year's Alienware m15 R1 that unfortunately feels more like a lateral step sideways...www.notebookcheck.net
Apple MacBook Pro 16 2019 Laptop Review: A convincing Core i9-9880H and Radeon Pro 5500M powered multimedia laptop
Notebookcheck.com reviews the flagship model of the MacBook Pro 16, Apple's latest multimedia laptop. The machine comes with an AMD Radeon Pro 5500M GPU and an Intel Core i9-9880H CPU, along with 16 GB of DDR4-2666 RAM and a 1 TB SSD. Read on to find out why have awarded the MacBook Pro 16 top...www.notebookcheck.net
Gaming laptop are like jets..mbp are weaker at gaming but also quieter. The nice thing to my razer with 4 fans is that the temps under gaming are lower , and the laptop is colder to touch and this translate to a better experience (but again this apply to the razer with 2 fans on top and 2 little ones in the battery area)
agreed. This time around the stock base config is actually the sweet spot.
True, you can add extra VRAM for $90, but only to the 5500. And if you’re getting the 5500, you might as well get the higher tier starting point for the upgraded CPU and SSD. Then, well, you figure oh I should upgrade RAM to 32 Gb too. Before you know it you’re spending an extra $1000 for upgrades that will make a negligible difference in your experience over the lifetime of the machine (IMHO of course).
point being, if you’re buying a Mac then you’re compromising on gaming performance already. Don’t spend the extra cash for the sake of games on these machines.
bless you for thinking the 5500M will ever push ultra settings, sweetie. so hilarious. 😂
I use it to play Fortnite on mid resolution with most settings on the high side of medium and it runs pretty smoothly. Way better than my 2015 iMac 5k did. That said, it has recently started freezing my mbp 16 (2.3, 32, 8gb) during gameplay. Total visual freeze with continued voice and sound, inevitably followed by a screen blackout and high fan spin, then hard restart. Kernel panic? Not sure if it’s Os, hardware or the game itself? Ugh.
I agree it will give difference, but who would play games with 5500 at 4k?
Even my 1080ti PC has hard time maintaining 60hz at 4k (higher graphic setting of course, but still).
If you are really serious about gaming on MBP due to it being only your machine and you would also like to run games, I'd consider a bootcamp with nvidia eGPU. Otherwise, I'd limit the games at FHD and only run casual games which can be easily handled by 5500 at 4gb.
8gb only if your work requires it.
I'm not trying to be a jerk to any of you about the 5300M - 5500M 4-8 GB options you have. I'm very knowledgeable about computers and usually build my own. In fact, I have hopes that Apple will release a midrange user serviceable desktop unit for users like myself. It's just that there are so many factors at play that make the 5500M 4 GB to 8 GB options unnecessary for everyone beyond video editing, and that's only if you want to compile and work with video marginally faster. We got really lucky to have them include Navi dGPUs instead of Vega dGPUs because the latter are completely worthless(Yes, every Mac Pro user who spent cash on any Vega dGPU wasted their money and should return the computer and reconfigure one with a 580X for later upgrading to the 5700X single/dual card that's "Coming Soon").
The 5300M & 5500M will age the same as one another, given the only difference is a slightly higher boost clock between the two. Pushing for the 5500M 8 GB will not benefit you at all. Not even in the off chance that reality distorts and makes the 5500M more powerful than it is, but as it is, the GPU will throttle your workload well before you need 4 GB extra VRAM/video memory because it is a very, very weak dGPU. It will never do anything better than Medium to High settings regardless of if you stick with the 5300M or 5500M 4 GB or waste money adding an entirely useless extra 4 GB of VRAM.
The 5500 for gaming/linux computers is never going to do any better. Most people will insist you get an Nvidia GTX 1660/1660 Super or an Nvidia RTX Geforce 2060 for budget to midrange gaming, and I suspect that with Nvidia promising big, positive changes for their GPUs on Linux? AMD's edge with the better driver support will fade away.
The fact is, Apple has continued to make a huge mistake by relying on AMD for the dGPUs. Apple is losing a whole lot of business with the Mac Pro because it doesn't support Nvidia cards whatsoever. AMD is still very much playing catch up with Nvidia, and I don't expect them to meet next generation performance gains from Nvidia with the future release of the 5800/5900/X/XT cards, as those cards will be trying to reach equal ground with Nvidia's 1000 series GPUs. You could say AMD is grasping for Nvidia 2000 series performance, but they've clearly missed the target with what has been released thus far.
The 5300M & 5500M will age the same as one another, given the only difference is a slightly higher boost clock between the two. Pushing for the 5500M 8 GB will not benefit you at all. Not even in the off chance that reality distorts and makes the 5500M more powerful than it is, but as it is, the GPU will throttle your workload well before you need 4 GB extra VRAM/video memory because it is a very, very weak dGPU. It will never do anything better than Medium to High settings regardless of if you stick with the 5300M or 5500M 4 GB or waste money adding an entirely useless extra 4 GB of VRAM.
The 5500 for gaming/linux computers is never going to do any better. Most people will insist you get an Nvidia GTX 1660/1660 Super or an Nvidia RTX Geforce 2060 for budget to midrange gaming, and I suspect that with Nvidia promising big, positive changes for their GPUs on Linux? AMD's edge with the better driver support will fade away.
The fact is, Apple has continued to make a huge mistake by relying on AMD for the dGPUs. Apple is losing a whole lot of business with the Mac Pro because it doesn't support Nvidia cards whatsoever. AMD is still very much playing catch up with Nvidia, and I don't expect them to meet next generation performance gains from Nvidia with the future release of the 5800/5900/X/XT cards, as those cards will be trying to reach equal ground with Nvidia's 1000 series GPUs. You could say AMD is grasping for Nvidia 2000 series performance, but they've clearly missed the target with what has been released thus far.
It's not useless, 8gb vram and you can setup textures quality to ultra on 4gb in some current and many future games you can't and texture quality is really important
You know, what's point of going ultra texture at high resolution like 4k if your graphic core is gimped GPU like 5500? It's vastly improved GPU offered by MBP 16" compared to previous models I agree. But 5500 is not serious gaming chip. and running at 4k? I wouldn't do that.
8gig option may be a good option for those whose work requires high capacity graphic ram, but for gaming, I'm not sure. The games that I care to run at 4k with high graphic setting will not run well with 5500. I'm not sure which games that runs well really benefit from 5500? Age of Empire 2 with high definition texture perhaps? May be that will benefit I guess.
on 8gb vram you woulnd't have any performance penalty when setting textures quality to ultra so why not do it ?
Hey, cooling mats are like snake oil for laptops. They are not going to help much at all.this one works well:
The 5500M is too weak. Even it's gaming/linux desktop option, the 5500/XT, will not push Ultra settings unless you massively drop the resolution. The 5500M is a VERY, VERY, VERY WEAK PERFORMER.
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benefit is that textures are good quality ;d
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i talk only about textures quality on ultra no other graphic settings
If you play WoW, any chance you can test World of Warcraft retail? I'm thinking of getting either the upcoming 13 inch with an eGPU (once they fix the keyboard) or a 16inch, I'd like to know how it performs in 25-man raids i.e. LFR or 40-man PvP i.e. AV/Ashran. I'd specifically like to know how hot it'll run. I'd really prefer not to get a PC if possible. I'd even settle for slightly above 30fps since I'm a casual player.
If this is an 4x Very weak performer, than how its the Radeon 460?