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New 15" 2016 touchbar, pro photographer, choose 2.6ghz/512gb/460 or 2.9ghz/256gb/460?

M

matthewh133

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 15, 2016
22
2
Trying to decide what model is going to suit me best. I'm a photographer who lives in the road half the time. I need to be able to smoothly edit large 42 megapixel photo files in both Photoshop and Lightroom, as well as edit some video. Gaming is a plus as I don't mind killing some time once in a while.

I'm trying to stay under $3000 and I think these configs are probably the two best options. Which do you guys things would give me the best performance for my needs, keeping in mind I store all my photos on portable hard drives and they would not be on the SSD.
 
Get the extra SSD, honestly.

The spec bump from the processor is really small bang for buck, but those blazing fast new SSDs are worth stacking up a bit. And more SSD actually often means faster read/writes.

Give yourself some breathing room on the drive. Space for a music collection or whatever. I have a feeling these things are going to just torch through LR and PS, whether it's 2.6, 2.7 or 2.9.

Also, check the benchmarks vs. your current machine I suppose.
 
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I can chime in on this. I'm on the road half the year too. Personally, I would choose better graphics over CPU clock speed, but if there is any way you can afford the higher clock speed, I would strive to do so.

As for storage, you really need 512 GB as a base. That would get you by when you don't have externals on-hand. 256 GB is just cutting it too close, especially with your Sony/Nikon sensor. The good news is that you can buy Samsung T3 externals for increased SSD capacity at a fraction of the price that Apple charges.
 
2.7GHz/512GB/460 is the same price as 2.9GHz/256GB/460, so that might be the best option if you're tempted to bump the CPU. It's only a modest clock speed bump, but it will also give you the larger cache that the 2.9GHz also has. In saying that, I didn't bother upping the CPU and got 2.6GHz/512GB/460, so I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with that either. CPU upgrade should definitely be lower priority than storage or graphics as the differences aren't that much.
 
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