Macbook Pro 16" for design work: 4gb or 8gb GPU? Radeon Pro 5300M or 5500M?

[Beliblis]

Hi,

Short version of my question: What's more important when it comes to graphics cards, to have a lag-free mouse pointer with 2 external screens attached? (Working predominantly in InDesign and Illustrator, sometimes Photoshop)
GPU memory? GPU upgrade to 5500M? Or i9 instead of i7?

I work as a designer. My employer will roll out new MacBook Pros for everyone within the next few weeks. (Waiting for the new models to come out sadly isn't an option).

We usually work with 2 external screens attached. Our current laptops are mid-2015 models (GPU: 2gb AMD Radeon R9 M370X), and even with just 1 external screen at 2560 resolution, there's a noticeable mouse pointer lag.

Our IT department have decided to roll out the following setup to us graphic designers:
i9 – 32gb RAM – 4gb GPU (probably the 5300M Radeon)

The only thing that annoys me with my current 2015 model is that mouse pointer lag. Will this setup get rid of the lag?
Or wouldn't it be better to go for an i7 instead of i9, but an 8gb 5500M instead of the 5300M?
(Our video guys btw will be getting an 8gb GPU)


Many thanks!

 

[mBox]

Looking for answers on this as well.
My designers will be on all Adobe products even After Effects and Premiere.
When I did the research for my 2019 Mac Pro, I was told CPU was king for any After Effects/Premiere needs.
Now, where does InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop stand with this?

 

[SRTM]

I'm a PM/web designer/front-end designer on my team, and my company gave me a 2017 mbp a few years back, with a 2.9ghz i7, 16gb ram + a Radeon 560 4GB.
I use the Adobe suite, Figma, Visual studio. Laptop with 2 external monitors.
Rarely any issues overall, although the fans are always running. Technically, I don't really NEED anything better than this.
I don't do any video editing - so the top-end GPU may be useful there if you needed it. Shouldn't have issues with pointer lag.

 

[IceStormNG]

I have a 16" (i9, 5500M 8GB) and also work with such type of Apps here and there.

1) If you use the 16" with lid open and external displays, the GPU will crank up the VRAM frequency, sip power and make your Mac fly away with high fan speed for no good reason.
Works fine with most monitors in Clamshell mode though

2) The i9 is quite a bit faster due to the two extra cores. PS and InDesign rely more on the CPU than on the GPU, so if you have to choose, go for the i9 + 5300M. All CPUs in that machine are thermal and power limited anyway.

3) Connect everything transfer-heavy (like monitors or a TB3 dock) and the charger to the right side ports. The left side have a lower thermal threshold and cause the machine to throttle and ramp up the fans just because the Thunderbolt controller gets too hot. Don't ask me why. They used the same chips on both side. But left side has less thermal headroom than the right side.

The mouse pointer on this one should not lag when on the AMD GPU, which is always the case when connected to external monitors. Mine doesn't, I tested it with 4 4K displays once to see how far I can go. They all worked fine. Except if you use DisplayLink docks. That's not a hardware fault of the 16", but how DisplayLink works.

 

[Beliblis]

Thanks @IceStormNG – this is really useful to know.
Lid open, my current 2015 MBP does the same: high speed fans for no reason. Will see if our IT department can provide an external keyboard so I can use it in Clamshell mode if need be.

Re: mouse pointer lag: You said yours is fine – but you're on a 5500M GPU.
If you had to chose between i9 or(!) the 5500M, which one would you go for?

The way I see it is: My current i7 2015 MBP is just dandy without external screen (meaning: I don't feel the need for i9). That's why my gut feeling tells me I'd benefit more from the 5500M card, instead of the i9.
Then again.... my current MBP only has 2gb of ram on a M370X card. So maybe the 5300M is already so much better anyway.

Either way, turns out our IT department have now ordered what they see fit. So not much I can do about it anymore, can only hope the mouse pointer lag is a thing of the past.

 

[nudoru]

Been using Macs for web dev and light design work for 10 years and I've never seen pointer lag on a Mac that I couldn't explain away by a rogue program or a 30hz display. When you're connecting to an external display, make sure it's running at 60hz, not 30 - a lot of cables/docks/adapters don't support 4k 60. I currently have an i9, 32gb, 5500m and it's fine for everything I do for work w/ 2 external displays in clamshell mode - an LG UltraFine 5k and an LG 5k2k - zero mouse lag even when the CPU is maxed by a program or video call (curse you Google Meet!)

The 5600m gpu is much better than the 5500, if you can influence the decision now, I'd get the i7 w/ that gpu.

Max has a video on the 5300 vs 5500 and some 5600 videos too -

 

[Beliblis]

@nudoru Thank you. Good point about the cables. I usually run 2560px resolution. Would you say that resolution is more widely supported by cables at 60hz? Any cables causing more problems than others? (Displayport? HDMI?)
Display is connected via HDMI cable and Mini DisplayPort adapter.

 

[nudoru]

@nudoru Thank you. Good point about the cables. I usually run 2560px resolution. Would you say that resolution is more widely supported by cables at 60hz? Any cables causing more problems than others? (Displayport? HDMI?)
Display is connected via HDMI cable and Mini DisplayPort adapter.

Just saw this reply!

There are tons of cables that go from DisplayPort or HDMI at 4k or 8k at 60hz on Amazon all under $20. Just get one of those. I can't speak of any cables causing issues.