Gaming on 16 inch MacBook pro

[gtg465x]

Could anyone theorize how the MBPs 8gb 5500 would compare to the iMac with the 8gb 580X? Since I game so much I wonder if I would be better off with the 27” iMac now or even waiting for the next update.

The 5500M 8 GB should be slightly better than the 580X for gaming. See my benchmarks above. However, it's still behind the iMac 5K's Vega 48 option, and there are rumors that the 2020 iMac 5K will have a 5700 option which, if true, would be the best bet for Mac gaming and quite a large step up from the 5500M.

 

[MrGunnyPT]

So it’s a no brained to upgrade the 5300M to the top 5500M 8GB instead of 4GB? I assume so regarding gaming and connecting to an external monitor above 1080p?

 

[leman]

So it’s a no brained to upgrade the 5300M to the top 5500M 8GB instead of 4GB? I assume so regarding gaming and connecting to an external monitor above 1080p?

8GB is usually wasted on gaming unless you want to go high-res, and 5500M is too weak to support 4K gaming. The 8GB option is there for productivity/compute work.

 

[fokmik]

Yes, for gaming best go for 5500M with 4gb...or go with the base dgpu and buy an eGpu if you want more than 1200p high settings

 

[badsimian]

It’s crap because and never release boot camp drivers the only drivers are ones they come with so games are never optimised my 2019 15 Vega 20 hasn’t had one driver change but amd has new drivers every few days but boot camps don’t get updated
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Vega 20 didn’t have one amd driver update so games never get optimised that’s the problem

Does that mean you can’t just install
the normal AMD drivers when in boot camp? You’re in Windows natively at that point running PC hardware.

 

[leman]

Does that mean you can’t just install
the normal AMD drivers when in boot camp? You’re in Windows natively at that point running PC hardware.

No, since AMD does not whitelist Apple-specific GPUs in the drivers. It’s very annoying and bad customer support, but not much we can do about it. Anyway, Mat from bootcampdrivers.com has been doing great community service by offering modded drivers that work great, so this solves that issue for me.

 

[MrGunnyPT]

8GB is usually wasted on gaming unless you want to go high-res, and 5500M is too weak to support 4K gaming. The 8GB option is there for productivity/compute work.

Yes, for gaming best go for 5500M with 4gb...or go with the base dgpu and buy an eGpu if you want more than 1200p high settings

Thank you for your reply I'll go with the 5500M 4GB then!

 

[cap7ainclu7ch]

Is the driver support for the new Navi based stuff going to be better?

 

[leman]

Is the driver support for the new Navi based stuff going to be better?

What do you mean?

 

[TheRealAlex]

I know of course that no MacBook is meant for gaming but I was wondering if anyone knows what the capabilities are with the new 5500m. Any benchmarks out yet?

Problem is that the 16” could be a capable Gaming machine. On paper it’s delivering 4TFLOPS performance which is Xbox One quality but less than Xbox One X.
BUT, the 16” MBP has poor air circulation and will throttle back performance to avoid killing itself With heat.

Take Diablo 3 Reaper Edition, plays at Ultra settings in 4K 60FPS on Xbox One. You’ll be lucky to get Half that resolution and performance on a 16“ MBP. It’s just not designed for Gaming.

https://www.amazon.com/Razer-Blade-...jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

But hey at least your CPU won’t be stuck at 3.5Ghz and get all cores to 4.5Ghz when gaming and it has a 144Hz Display and WiFi 6 and a RTX 2080.

 

[leman]

But hey at least your CPU won’t be stuck at 3.5Ghz and get all cores to 4.5Ghz when gaming and it has a 144Hz Display and WiFi 6 and a RTX 2080.

The 15" Razer Blade is throttling worse than a touchbar MBP, and the 17" does much better but still far from maintaining 4.5 ghz as you claim.

But then again, I don't understand the comparison. The Blade is surely a capable gaming alptop, but its CPU performance is subpar compared to the MBP, the screen quality is average at best and the battery performance is low-tier. Not to mention that it is heavier by a whopping kilogram (including power supply) and bulkier. I wouldn't consider a Blade for my main computer. I mean, in the end its just an expensive toy (unless you do something that needs a large GPU and you don't care much for mobility, at which point jut get a desktop).

And of course the MBP can't compete with a dedicated gaming laptops, but it does very well in comparison with other premium segment multimedia laptops (e.g. Dell XPS, X1 Extreme and others), while also being a serious work tool. The point is not about buying a laptop for gaming. The point is having a serious daily driver that you can also use for gaming. Why would I spend additional 2k on a toy if I can just game on my main machine anyway?

 

[Ma2k5]

The 15" Razer Blade is throttling worse than a touchbar MBP, and the 17" does much better but still far from maintaining 4.5 ghz as you claim.

But then again, I don't understand the comparison. The Blade is surely a capable gaming alptop, but its CPU performance is subpar compared to the MBP, the screen quality is average at best and the battery performance is low-tier. Not to mention that it is heavier by a whopping kilogram (including power supply) and bulkier. I wouldn't consider a Blade for my main computer. I mean, in the end its just an expensive toy (unless you do something that needs a large GPU and you don't care much for mobility, at which point jut get a desktop).

And of course the MBP can't compete with a dedicated gaming laptops, but it does very well in comparison with other premium segment multimedia laptops (e.g. Dell XPS, X1 Extreme and others), while also being a serious work tool. The point is not about buying a laptop for gaming. The point is having a serious daily driver that you can also use for gaming. Why would I spend additional 2k on a toy if I can just game on my main machine anyway?

The worst crime by the Razer on the 15" is the strange keyboard layout (fn key at bottom right!? Arrow keys invading shift..) and also other than the US market, the key back lighting is only for primary keys only, not secondary keys. This resulted in me promptly returning mine.

 

[fokmik]

Take Diablo 3 Reaper Edition, plays at Ultra settings in 4K 60FPS on Xbox One. You’ll be lucky to get Half that resolution and performance on a 16“ MBP. It’s just not designed for Gaming.

Maybe you have a 55-60" 4k TV...where that resolution is a bless to play on Xbox but..
the 16" native can have 3072‑by‑1920 so its even impossible and useless to try 4k 4096 x 2160 (unless external monitor)
So probably the 16" can have 60hz at 1920 by 1200 which probably is more than ok for a laptop that has 15-16"
Even razer its thin...so even there i would go with the base dgpu and take a good egpu that share the cooling with its gpu and let the laptop breath
Bottom line is, that in these days even an mac with full tb3 can game with an good eGPu

 

[gtg465x]

8GB is usually wasted on gaming unless you want to go high-res, and 5500M is too weak to support 4K gaming. The 8GB option is there for productivity/compute work.

Not true anymore. A lot of modern games are making use of more than 4 GB now, even at 1080p and 1440p. For example, with Red Dead Redemption 2, you can turn up texture quality to Ultra without much hit to performance if you have an 8 GB card, which makes the game look amazing, but you need to turn down texture quality on 4 GB cards. And anything less than Ultra texture quality in RDR2 looks significantly worse.

Just look at this comparison between a 4 GB GTX 1060 and an 8 GB GTX 1060 that was done a couple years ago. The 4 GB card skips and lags in every game. And the GTX 1060 is very similar in performance to the 5500M, so this isn’t some ultra high res 4K gaming comparison that won’t apply. These tests are at 1080p.

 

[ha1o2surfer]

Own or Disown did a review of the RX5500m. It's just.. alright. Almost seems like a budget GPU. The 1650 is a budget GPU for sure.

expect less performance in a macbook with a restricted power budget and worse cooling

 

[MacDevMike]

Own or Disown did a review of the RX5500m. It's just.. alright. Almost seems like a budget GPU. The 1650 is a budget GPU for sure.

expect less performance in a macbook with a restricted power budget and worse cooling

Thanks for posting. Im actually impressed by the numbers here...5500m was faster then 1650 and the 1660Ti in 5 of the 8 games...thats a major jump in graphics tech for Apple. Id call it a bigger jump then Vega20 was. Love what AMD is doing with 7nm tech

 

[leman]

Thanks for posting. Im actually impressed by the numbers here...5500m was faster then 1650 and the 1660Ti in 5 of the 8 games...thats a major jump in graphics tech for Apple. Id call it a bigger jump then Vega20 was. Love what AMD is doing with 7nm tech

Don't forget that the Pro 5500M version Apple uses is slower than the "normal" RX 5500M. The max clocks are down by 20% (no idea about sustained clocks) and VRAM bandwidth is down by 15%, but the Pro 5500M also has a 10% more compute units. I expect the MBP to be around 90% of the RX 5500M performance overall. Again, still very respectable for this type of laptop and certainly more than competitive.

 

[Mojo1019]

It seems to me that AMD is slowly clearing the gap with NVIDIA in the low / medium range. But at the moment there are simply no AMD mobile video cards that can compete with the 2060/2070/2080 (mobile version) in terms of performance. Next years will be exciting!

 

[ha1o2surfer]

Thanks for posting. Im actually impressed by the numbers here...5500m was faster then 1650 and the 1660Ti in 5 of the 8 games...thats a major jump in graphics tech for Apple. Id call it a bigger jump then Vega20 was. Love what AMD is doing with 7nm tech

my post might have come off bias, the 5500m is impressive. The TDP of the 5500m in that windows laptop is 85 watts. So apple has it set to 50 i heard somewhere so take that into account.

 

[buran-energia]

It’s crap because and never release boot camp drivers the only drivers are ones they come with so games are never optimised my 2019 15 Vega 20 hasn’t had one driver change but amd has new drivers every few days but boot camps don’t get updated
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Vega 20 didn’t have one amd driver update so games never get optimised that’s the problem

There's a webstie with custom AMD drivers for MBPs (google "amd bootcamp drivers") that work for MBPs and are loaded with newer drivers. I haven't tested them, but I definitely would if I had a 15'+.

 

[fishmoose]

For someone looking to play Civ and maybe some CS Go should upgrading to the 4GB 5500 be sufficient?

 

[TechZeke]

How I would look at:

If choosing between the 5300M or 5500M 4GB, I'd save my money and get the 5300M. The base GPU has proven to be quite capable out of the gate. If choosing between the 5500M 4GB or the 5500M 8GB, you might as well get the 8GB so the GPU isn't bottlenecked.

In terms of the grand scheme of things, these GPUs aren't really going to be quick enough to game AAA titles at native res anyway, so I probably wouldn't bother with the GPU upgrades at all unless I didn't care about cost or knew it was going to make big difference to my workflow.

 

[MrGunnyPT]

How I would look at:

If choosing between the 5300M or 5500M 4GB, I'd save my money and get the 5300M. The base GPU has proven to be quite capable out of the gate. If choosing between the 5500M 4GB or the 5500M 8GB, you might as get the 8GB so the GPU isn't bottlenecked.

In terms of the grand scheme of things, these GPUs aren't really going to be quick enough to game AAA titles at native res anyway, so probably wouldn't bother with the GPU upgrades at all unless I didn't care about cost or knew it was going to make big difference to my workflow.

I mean it sounds like it would be a big upgrade for World of Warcaft.. And I play tons of it while i'm out of town where I can't use my main rig.

Thinking of getting the 8GB 5500M or 5500m 4GB

 

[schae614]

For anyone who's considering getting the 16 inch MBP for gaming on BootCamp.


Boot Camp currently does NOT work on the 16 inch MBP at the moment since Apple hasn't quite uploaded the drivers for the new hardware.

 

[nbuubu]

The cost of upgrading the GPU is relatively small compared to the other upgrades, and it obviously comes down to a personal decision, but gaming is a consideration in my laptop purchase and I wouldn't even consider anything other than the 8GB 5500M.

The extra VRAM absolutely matters in games, even at lower resolutions all the way down to 1080p. This GPU should be more than functional in games for a few years going forward. 8GB is pretty much the mid-level minimum in PC gaming right now.

Bootcamp will be updated, probably this week, and the lack of drivers now shouldn't be a significant concern. The holiday return window is until early January if for some reason Apple decides to suddenly abandon support for Bootcamp in their laptops.