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Is Vega worth it?

S

Sun Salute

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 25, 2017
17
2
Hi!

So I'm looking to buy a new MBP 15'' for myself, and I'm considering if getting the Vega for $350 more is worth it.

Things that I do:
- general productivity. Often with a lot of things open (chrome/slack/excel/word/scrivener/whatsapp/FB messenger/etc).
- amateur video editing. That said render times and stuff like that don't matter at all to me, as long as there is no lag during editing itself I'm pretty happy :D
- gaming. Again, nothing too heavy - things like Divinity Original Sin, XCOM 2, and other similar games.

Would the Vega make any difference for me? Also I've heard that (possibly) there is no Bridge OS crashes on the new Vega, can anyone confirm if that resolves the issue?
 
I questioned its value too when ordering, and I looked at it this way.....it's a small price to pay for the life of the machine. Performance is fantastic compared to the 555/560X. Since you play games I would say get it. From what I've seen from YouTube, gaming was pretty subpar on the 560X.

As far as BridgeOS crashes....it's the T2 chip causing the problem.

Check out this video, about 8 minutes in:

 
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Well, I guess it could be useful for games. But then again, we are likely to see the new MBP cycle (which hopefully fixes all the issues of the current generation) probably around summer 2019, which would be a good time for the upgrade. So you might just get the base 15'' model (or the second base model :D ), sell it in summer and upgrade to whatever Apple has coming next.
 
Pangalactic said:
Well, I guess it could be useful for games. But then again, we are likely to see the new MBP cycle (which hopefully fixes all the issues of the current generation) probably around summer 2019, which would be a good time for the upgrade. So you might just get the base 15'' model (or the second base model :D ), sell it in summer and upgrade to whatever Apple has coming next.
Click to expand...

No it wont. The MBP have throttled and had fans blasting when pushed for as long as I can remember....... so nope they wont 'fix all the issues'.

Get the machine you need, and if you can afford Vega then get it. If it is a push to afford it, then don't. who cares about next year, as nothing is guaranteed in the Apple world of updates.
 
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On the flip side, there were way better deals to be had on the "old" model without it recently. I would have saved $1000CAD going for a refurb 560X.
 
This.

richinaus said:
No it wont. The MBP have throttled and had fans blasting when pushed for as long as I can remember....... so nope they wont 'fix all the issues'.

Get the machine you need, and if you can afford Vega then get it. If it is a push to afford it, then don't. who cares about next year, as nothing is guaranteed in the Apple world of updates.
Click to expand...
 
Trying to figure that out myself. Altho it'd be nice to have for extra kick, not sure it's worth for what I do.

For gaming it'd be nice, but I play pretty easy to run games and usually on low graphics to keep the system quiet. From what I hear the fans are louder on the Vega GPUs so that'd be louder and unneeded power anyways.

For video editing it'd be nice to have the extra power to export, but even when doing 4K videos I edit in proxy only switching to 4K files when I export (or some grading) anyways. I may shave some time off the export but for actual editing not sure it'd help much, and again hotter and more noise from fans.

Also I'm pretty bummed you can't get the Vega with the baseline CPU, would have probably justified the GPU easier with the coolest and quietest running CPU option available with it. As it stands tho I'm just boosting the power and heat across the board.
 
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lJoSquaredl said:
Trying to figure that out myself. Altho it'd be nice to have for extra kick, not sure it's worth for what I do.

For gaming it'd be nice, but I play pretty easy to run games and usually on low graphics to keep the system quiet. From what I hear the fans are louder on the Vega GPUs so that'd be louder and unneeded power anyways.

For video editing it'd be nice to have the extra power to export, but even when doing 4K videos I edit in proxy only switching to 4K files when I export (or some grading) anyways. I may shave some time off the export but for actual editing not sure it'd help much, and again hotter and more noise from fans.

Also I'm pretty bummed you can't get the Vega with the baseline CPU, would have probably justified the GPU easier with the coolest and quietest running CPU option available with it. As it stands tho I'm just boosting the power and heat across the board.
Click to expand...

I would have gone with the 2.2GHz processor with Vega 20 too had that been an option.
 
lJoSquaredl said:
Trying to figure that out myself. Altho it'd be nice to have for extra kick, not sure it's worth for what I do.

For gaming it'd be nice, but I play pretty easy to run games and usually on low graphics to keep the system quiet. From what I hear the fans are louder on the Vega GPUs so that'd be louder and unneeded power anyways.

For video editing it'd be nice to have the extra power to export, but even when doing 4K videos I edit in proxy only switching to 4K files when I export (or some grading) anyways. I may shave some time off the export but for actual editing not sure it'd help much, and again hotter and more noise from fans.

Also I'm pretty bummed you can't get the Vega with the baseline CPU, would have probably justified the GPU easier with the coolest and quietest running CPU option available with it. As it stands tho I'm just boosting the power and heat across the board.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm on the same crossroads. I mean obviously Vega is more powerful, no doubt, but how much will we actually gain from it in our use cases for $350 more? Demanding gaming is one thing, and possibly some high complexity/resolution video editing is the other one - probably not even in Final Cut, as I can't really push it to the limit with the stuff that I do. Regular use - probably nothing, and reliability/stability - who knows.
 
richinaus said:
No it wont. The MBP have throttled and had fans blasting when pushed for as long as I can remember....... so nope they wont 'fix all the issues'.
Click to expand...

I said hopefully, we all know of course there's no limit to Apple's insanity :D
Or should I say...thinsanity?
 
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Sun Salute said:
Yeah, I'm on the same crossroads. I mean obviously Vega is more powerful, no doubt, but how much will we actually gain from it in our use cases for $350 more? Demanding gaming is one thing, and possibly some high complexity/resolution video editing is the other one - probably not even in Final Cut, as I can't really push it to the limit with the stuff that I do. Regular use - probably nothing, and reliability/stability - who knows.
Click to expand...

For Adobe Premiere Pro users it's a much bigger deal. That program has never really worked well with MBP video cards but from benchmarks I've seen the Vega seems to be helping a lot with that software. I use FCPX tho so, maybe not so much.
 
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