Performance of MBPRO 2017?

[hoffman2000]

Hi guys,

I've been a Linux user for a while but all the battery life of my laptops has been poor so far, and heavy af. I thought of finally going to buy one of these but I can't max it all, so I have to see what's the best deal. I will do programming and run 2 parallel Virtual Machines at most (but that's gonna be rare, usually 1 VM at most), although VMs will be run on-battery. No gaming or video / audio editing, just work.

I don't think I will feel comfortable with the touch-bar, so I thought of going for the non touch-bar, 13" i5 256gb and 16gb of RAM. Would that be the best deal? Is the i7 really worth it? I heard it drains the battery a lot more. Is the i5 going to work smoothly for want I need?

Storage is not a problem, I own a portable HD already.

Thank you in advance.

 

[Falhófnir]

Hi guys,

I've been a Linux user for a while but all the battery life of my laptops has been poor so far, and heavy af. I thought of finally going to buy one of these but I can't max it all, so I have to see what's the best deal. I will do programming and run 2 parallel Virtual Machines at most (but that's gonna be rare, usually 1 VM at most), although VMs will be run on-battery. No gaming or video / audio editing, just work.

I don't think I will feel comfortable with the touch-bar, so I thought of going for the non touch-bar, 13" i5 256gb and 16gb of RAM. Would that be the best deal? Is the i7 really worth it? I heard it drains the battery a lot more. Is the i5 going to work smoothly for want I need?

Storage is not a problem, I own a portable HD already.

Thank you in advance.

The i5 in the touch bar model will quite possibly out-perform the i7 in the ntb for sustained loads due to extra allowed power draw and thermal headroom - for virtually the same money the TB model with 16gb ram could be a better bet? The TB model also has fractionally better integrated graphics, and, again, more headroom to make use of the graphics...

 

[hoffman2000]

The i5 in the touch bar model will quite possibly out-perform the i7 in the ntb for sustained loads due to extra allowed power draw and thermal headroom - for virtually the same money the TB model with 16gb ram could be a better bet? The TB model also has fractionally better integrated graphics, and, again, more headroom to make use of the graphics...

Problem is that TB model with the 16GB of RAM goes 300-400€ ahead... And I don't know how the ESC key would work, since I rely on it for VIM

 

[Falhófnir]

Problem is that TB model with the 16GB of RAM goes 300-400€ ahead... And I don't know how the ESC key would work, since I rely on it for VIM

Ok I guess you must be looking at 3rd party retail deals? I did price the two machines up before I commented and new from Apple there’s a virtual dead heat between an i5/16gb/256gb touchbar and an i7/16gb/256gb non touchbar model on pricing. If there’s a significant price difference and the esc key is an issue then yes the ntb would probably be the better option, though I would stick to my previous advice that the touchbar model offers more (sustained load) power if they are about equal in price.

 

[hoffman2000]

Ok I guess you must be looking at 3rd party retail deals? I did price the two machines up before I commented and new from Apple there’s a virtual dead heat between an i5/16gb/256gb touchbar and an i7/16gb/256gb non touchbar model on pricing. If there’s a significant price difference and the esc key is an issue then yes the ntb would probably be the better option, though I would stick to my previous advice that the touchbar model offers more (sustained load) power if they are about equal in price.

I really only checked the website, what are the prices you are seeing it at ? I checked and 1950 for the NTB i5/16/256 and 2300 for the TB i5/16/256 - Is there any other recommended site to buy?

 

[Falhófnir]

I really only checked the website, what are the prices you are seeing it at ? I checked and 1950 for the NTB i5/16/256 and 2300 for the TB i5/16/256 - Is there any other recommended site to buy?

Well i’m in GB but I can’t imagine there would be all that much difference - here the i7/16GB/256GB non touchbar model goes for £1,899 while the i5/16GB/256GB touchbar model goes for £1,929 as configured on Apple’s website. Where it might be complicated is if you have a retailer that’s got offers, which seem to be more common on the ntb versions, if you could get even €1-200 off the ntb machine that’d probably swing it back in it’s favour as the difference between the two machines configured as above won’t be enormous. Really it’s the ‘unseen’ extras of the Tb model (2 extra ports (and stemming from that the ability to plug in the charger in either side) the faster ram and SSD, the quieter dual-fan cooling set-up) in addition to less throttling as mentioned that would personally make me opt for the Tb model over the upgrade to the i7. The choice ultimately is yours - I’d recommend looking at some reviews to see what the reviewers have to say as well before making a decision

 

[ZapNZs]

My 2016 nTB with 8GB of RAM ran a single VM very well - with two VMs the performance was far less consistent, especially if we are talking about newer Windows or Mac VMs, which obviously consume more resources than older versions and most of the common Linux distros - both RAM and heat were limiting factors, and the system would be quite audible when doing this. If you are talking about at least one guest OS being a Linux VM, Windows 7 or older, OS X Mavericks or older, the 2017 nTB should do well running multiple operating systems - my 2017 retina MacBook can run my Windows 10 VM + an Ubuntu VM via Fusion 8.5 simultaneously, have good responsiveness for standard business-class Apps that are NOT resource-intensive, and still manage 6-8 hours of battery life. With both the 2016 nTB and 2017 rMB, I did not/do not run certain more CPU-intensive applications because neither system could run them all that well - those tasks are reserved for my 15-inch MBPr.

If you are needing sustained CPU performance, a refurbished 2017 touchbar with the base 256 SSD and a 16GB RAM upgrade might be advisable. IIRC, VMWare added touchbar support to Fusion 10, so you might get more functionality out of it if you are using Mac VMs, recent Windows VMs, or more common Linux distributions.

If you plan to use external displays while running VMs, I highly recommend the touchbar model (or, even better, the 15-inch.)

 

[leman]

It really depends on what you want to do. If you are going to run Visual Studio or eclipse or something else in a VM, then yes, 16 GB is pretty much a must. If you want to run a small test database server in Linux in a vm, 8gb will be fine.

 

[hoffman2000]

My 2016 nTB with 8GB of RAM ran a single VM very well - with two VMs the performance was far less consistent, especially if we are talking about newer Windows or Mac VMs, which obviously consume more resources than older versions and most of the common Linux distros - both RAM and heat were limiting factors, and the system would be quite audible when doing this. If you are talking about at least one guest OS being a Linux VM, Windows 7 or older, OS X Mavericks or older, the 2017 nTB should do well running multiple operating systems - my 2017 retina MacBook can run my Windows 10 VM + an Ubuntu VM via Fusion 8.5 simultaneously, have good responsiveness for standard business-class Apps that are NOT resource-intensive, and still manage 6-8 hours of battery life. With both the 2016 nTB and 2017 rMB, I did not/do not run certain more CPU-intensive applications because neither system could run them all that well - those tasks are reserved for my 15-inch MBPr.

If you are needing sustained CPU performance, a refurbished 2017 touchbar with the base 256 SSD and a 16GB RAM upgrade might be advisable. IIRC, VMWare added touchbar support to Fusion 10, so you might get more functionality out of it if you are using Mac VMs, recent Windows VMs, or more common Linux distributions.

If you plan to use external displays while running VMs, I highly recommend the touchbar model (or, even better, the 15-inch.)

Oh, your reply was more useful than you could possible imagine! I plan to run Win7 / 8.1 VMs, and some Ubuntu Host. What I mostly care about is that having vim + chrome + VM Fusion won't make the computer freeze or stutter, so those are my concerns to be honest. Likely my setup could usually be VIM + a Fusion VM(1 VM) + Chrome, on a daily basis.
Of course, the VM won't be always open but just want to make sure it won't stutter or freeze at the time I have to do that. But in this setup you are running an I7, right? Since my budged is limited, the problem is finding good deals for the i7 or TB within Europe. Maybe black friday?
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It really depends on what you want to do. If you are going to run Visual Studio or eclipse or something else in a VM, then yes, 16 GB is pretty much a must. If you want to run a small test database server in Linux in a vm, 8gb will be fine.

To be honest I won't be asigning the VM more than 2 cores and 4gb of RAM, but with 8GB that's gonna be short (Since I'm already at 16GB so I know what my daily numbers are)