MBP 16 - GPU choice in light of power consumption/heat

[Mephisto26]

Hello everyone!

I am considering buying a MBP 2016.
As the price is steep, the laptop should last the six years my last one (late 2013 model) lasted. The latter is a bit on the slow side these days, no side car support, etc.

So although the six core model would be OK right now, eight cores offer some peace of mind. The update to the larger i9 does not seem to be worthwhile though.

32 GB RAM and 1 TB of storage are what I need/want.

I am now wondering whether the 4 GB or 8 GB Radeon Pro 5500M GPU would be better.

I am working with reasonably large RAW files in Capture One Pro/Lightroom, transcode my music library to lossless formats, and do coding. All this would not tax the GPU.

However, I would play the occasional game on Bootcamp and want to dip my toes into 4K video with my camera.

All that being said, I am not a creative professional but a hobbyist.

Is the upgrade worth it or do I incur larger power consumption, heat, and a potential loss in mobile running time and overall longevity of the system by going for 8 GB instead of 4 GB? Most comparisons are between the weaker 5300M and the top-of-the-line 5500M.

Thank you and stay healthy!

 

[bill-p]

Get 8GB if you can. Many games require close to 4GB of VRAM just for 1920 x 1080 now, and that requirement will most likely ramp up rather quickly when the next generation of consoles hit. If gaming is an afterthought, though, then 4GB will do just fine. I'm on 4GB, and it seems adequate for Forza Horizon 4. But I'll most likely delete my Bootcamp partition when Xbox Series X hits.

Also 8GB helps with video encoding as well. You'll see an improvement when encoding 4K videos.

Capture One Pro does not make use of the dedicated GPU at all. It makes use of OpenCL, which doesn't seem to need the beefier GPU at all. Heck, when on battery, Capture One Pro doesn't even engage the dGPU for me. It stays on integrated.

Lightroom does engage the dGPU and sucks more battery life than C1 while somehow running slower overall.

Basically... I'd say, get it if you can spend the extra dough. Otherwise, 4GB will get by just fine.