Going for a 16" MBP - Advice needed

[pau5]

Hi,

I'm thinking about ordering a new MBP 16".

I will be doing mainly audio production work (Logic Pro/Ableton and lots of plugins) and also a bit of design work (Adobe Suite etc)

I think I will be going for the high spec as the money for the extra SSD space and i9 instead of i7 is a good choice. I'm just wondering if 16GB will be ok for me or it would be worth spending a little more for the 32GB as I use quite big libraries in Logic etc. I certainly don't need 64GB.

One thing I have noticed is that built to order deliveries are looking like they will be early March now so quite a wait.

So does anyone have any opinions on what would be good for my workload? A high-end stock with 16GB or shell out a bit more for the high end with 32gb and wait?

Thanks

 

[mick2]

Personally I'd ditch the i9 for the i7 - Logic gears around multiple cores/threads rather than fast, short single CPU bursts - and if the money's burning a hole in your pocket then put the saving towards 32Gb RAM, although in truth it will likely be fine on 16Gb. Depends on how many tracks / virt intstruments etc etc you're dealing with AT THE SAME TIME (ie a collection of large libs in itself doesn't need any Ram - it's how many of these you use simultaneously that matters).

If it was my money, I'd go i7 & 16GB & buy more external T5 drives with the savings as you can never have too much storage space, but that's just me

 

[Marzel]

Hi,

I'm thinking about ordering a new MBP 16".

I will be doing mainly audio production work (Logic Pro/Ableton and lots of plugins) and also a bit of design work (Adobe Suite etc)

I think I will be going for the high spec as the money for the extra SSD space and i9 instead of i7 is a good choice. I'm just wondering if 16GB will be ok for me or it would be worth spending a little more for the 32GB as I use quite big libraries in Logic etc. I certainly don't need 64GB.

One thing I have noticed is that built to order deliveries are looking like they will be early March now so quite a wait.

So does anyone have any opinions on what would be good for my workload? A high-end stock with 16GB or shell out a bit more for the high end with 32gb and wait?

Thanks

You understand your workload better and I guess you already know the limitations of your current setup. As a rule, don't bother going for higher configurations unless you really know you are bottlenecked in a specific area. I doubt you'll need an i9, since the i7 is already extremely powerful at single threaded tasks and quite powerful when multiple cores are needed as well. RAM is an expensive upgrade and I would only advise upgrading it if you know you are consistently bottlenecked below 16 GB. Most people argue for the 32 GB but I've yet to see a scenario where RAM pressure at 16 GB is consistently high and affects overall performance.

Even the basic configuration of the 16'' is a beast and I would only advise upgrading your SSD to 1TB. You can then just buy additional external storage solutions. There are relatively cheap and very fast these days.

 

[pau5]

Thank you Marzel for your post. I'm totally happy to get the higher spec'ed one as I think the upgrade is money well spent plus it has the 1TB as stock.

The only thing I was debating was the RAM, but you raise some good points. I have a 2015 model with 16GB and haven't run into problems, as far as I know, I just didn't want to spend all the money and have that as any kind of limitation.

Thanks for your feedback to Mick.

Thanks.

 

[Velin]

I'm totally happy to get the higher spec'ed one as I think the upgrade is money well spent

It won't be, as many benchmarks confirm. Prior posters gave you excellent advice. It's your dime, and thus your call, but one thing it won't be is a wise price-to-performance expenditure.

 

[chrono1081]

Always upgrade the ram if you can afford to. I would get the 32 gigs.

 

[pau5]

The only reason for getting the i9 other than the extra cores is the reason ill get 1TB stock and won't have to wait. It's the RAM that's really getting me.

Thanks

 

[pau5]

Well I ordered top spec with 16gb. Sure this is going to be enough for me. In three years I’ll probably wanna upgrade to latest and greatest and by then 32 will probably be base and I still won’t need it

 

[shoofirbin]

I'm kind of in the same boat as you. I work as a designer and do a podcast and some other audio audio production odds and ends. I have a 2012 MBP and am ready to spring for a new 16" MBP and was wondering the same thing as far as which of the upgrades make sense. My thought was to max out the ram and the processor and go with the 1TB SSD. I'd appreciate if you could let me know what your experience is like.

 

[XNorth]

The base model i7 does fine for most light to medium duty work. Heavier workload for music, photo or video editing, get the 2.3GHz i9, minimum specs of 32GB, 1TB SSD, 5500M 8GB.

 

[Camarillo Brillo]

Hi,

I'm thinking about ordering a new MBP 16".

I will be doing mainly audio production work (Logic Pro/Ableton and lots of plugins) and also a bit of design work (Adobe Suite etc)

I think I will be going for the high spec as the money for the extra SSD space and i9 instead of i7 is a good choice. I'm just wondering if 16GB will be ok for me or it would be worth spending a little more for the 32GB as I use quite big libraries in Logic etc. I certainly don't need 64GB.

One thing I have noticed is that built to order deliveries are looking like they will be early March now so quite a wait.

So does anyone have any opinions on what would be good for my workload? A high-end stock with 16GB or shell out a bit more for the high end with 32gb and wait?

Thanks

I went with i9 2.4 and 32g ram... after returning a base i9 2.3 with 16g ram.
The first computer worked fine but I wound up feeling like I should get the extra ram while I still could, so I did.

I’m sure the i7 is fine but the i9 does score higher on logic benchmarks as far as I know, so it’s not like you won’t get somewhat better performance by upgrading the cpu. The question is will you need it? The CPU is arguably more important than the ram for recording audio...

 

[shoofirbin]

what about the graphics upgrade? thoughts?

 

[pau5]

Well, i'm hoping the 16GB will be fine for my needs I guess I can test and see how it goes? Seems like most are saying 16GB will be more than fine for me.

 

[pau5]

Well I got it today and I’m very happy happy with it. Done a test in logic and had 100 mixed exs Sampler and Alcemy tracks playing and ram was 9gb with memory pressure very low.

 

[mick2]

Looks like you'll be fine with the 16Gb

 

[pau5]

Looks like you'll be fine with the 16Gb

I think so. The rest I use are VSTs are they are all on the processor and in reality I never make tracks with more tracks than this and probably won't for a very long time.