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MBP 16" - Light Gaming / Dev Work - 16Gb vs 32Gb or 5300M vs 5500M

btraill

btraill

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 3, 2019
32
12
Ontario, Canada
Hello,

Sorry to be that guy asking the question... I've never been the type to play the latest and greatest. Usually playing things like Runescape, CS:GO, etc.

I'll be using Parallels with a Win10 installation for work compatibility. Have some apps that I'd rather not run over Citrix. I do a decent amount of personal projects/VMs (hosted on another machine, though), but often spin up Apache/MariaDB instances locally as a dummy staging environment. Also do some music mixing + MIDI, but nothing too crazy.

Ideally I'd like to use this thing for awhile. I keep good care of my electronics, for the most part this device will sit on a riser connected to a CalDigit dock.

The question remains: Will the base model suffice? Do you think the 32Gb of RAM will make much of a difference? The price jump from the 5300M -> 5500M is pretty minimal; so I was leaning towards that as a 'no-brainer'.

I previously had the 15" i9/16Gb RAM/512Gb SSD/560x model (just returned). I'm willing to go down to the i7 as the thermals were a little concerning for me with the i9. I do not think the performance jump for me will be noticeable enough on the CPU side of things.

Would love to hear some input!

Many thanks in advance.
 
I would get the best GPU for gaming alone, although those games you listed are fairly 'light'.
32GB ram to be more futureproof, but should be useful for VM.
CPU isn't as important imo
 
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Generally GPU is the first bottleneck in gaming, followed up by RAM, then CPU comes last in third. Unless you run games that are heavily modded or that have huge areas, 16GB of RAM should be fine. Also I'm not sure if apps running in VM's can fully use 32GB of RAM now?
 
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I'm a big proponent of "buy as much as you can reasonably afford". As others said bump the GPU first but I would say if you're planning on keeping this machine for many years upgrade the ram to 32 gigs. You may not need it now, but spending a little extra now is cheaper than an early upgrade.
 
jerryk said:
My exact same thoughts. The price jump from 16 to 32 is the same as the price jump from 32 to 64, but you only get half the memory increase.
Click to expand...

Yup :( Which is unfortunate because I would ideally like to grab the additional RAM -- just can't seem to make a rational argument on the extra ~480 CAD I would be spending.
 
if you develop locally you'll end up using docker/kubernetes locally and it will eat you some 4GB right away:
github.com

Memory Leakage com.docker.hyperkit · Issue #3232 · docker/for-mac

NOTES TO FUTURE READERS OF THIS THREAD. PLEASE READ THE WHOLE THREAD BEFORE REPLYING. IN PARTICULAR, PLEASE UNDERSTAND: There is a bug in MacOS that it reports twice the amount of memory actually a...
github.com github.com
better go for 32GB :)
 
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also resale value will be about +250$ for 32gb in a few years vs 16gb model. So technically it's not 480$ difference but more like 230$ net difference overall.
 
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Understood.

If I go for the best GPU option with the 8Gb of VRAM -- that should help substantially in regards to opting for the lesser 16Gb of RAM correct? (As far as gaming + caching textures etc)
 
btraill said:
Understood.

If I go for the best GPU option with the 8Gb of VRAM -- that should help substantially in regards to opting for the lesser 16Gb of RAM correct? (As far as gaming + caching textures etc)
Click to expand...

Gaming really doesn't benefit from 32GB of ram, generally speaking. The GPU VRAM is far more important than system RAM, and the huge difference in cost for the SysRAM upgrades really aren't worth it to *maybe* smooth out framerates *slightly*.

There are other reasons to opt for a 32GB machine, but really, gaming isn't high on the list. 16GB should be fine as the added RAM cost is higher than an entire high-end gaming console.
 
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Whenever people aren’t sure about RAM capacity the rule is to go lower. Professionals that are limited by RAM know that they need more. For gaming I would definitely go for the 8GB of VRAM. Very useful for gaming.
 
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Thanks very much for the additional thoughts everyone!

Would there be much of a performance boost in games going from the i7 to the base i9?
 
Last edited:
"Whenever people aren’t sure about RAM capacity the rule is to go lower."

16GB is not a lot for a dev.
You can use external GPU and external SSD but not external RAM.
 
I tend to agree. 16GB is probably adequate but I'd recommend 32GB. 6 or 8 cores with 16GB RAM is kind of an odd pairing in my opinion.
 
junkw said:
"Whenever people aren’t sure about RAM capacity the rule is to go lower."

16GB is not a lot for a dev.
You can use external GPU and external SSD but not external RAM.
Click to expand...
^^ this is the winning advice, right here.
[automerge]1574039514[/automerge]
I should add that if you ever want to do actual game development, you’ll absolutely want 32 GB at a minimum if you want the machine to last 3/4 years without compromises.

I’m the one crazy guy who went for 64 GB. I have my reasons.
 
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