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The 16” Competes Strongly With Gaming Mid-Tier Laptops

MacBookGamer

MacBookGamer

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 15, 2019
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I received my 5500M 8GB MacBook Pro a few days ago.

I’m getting 45-60fps on native resolution all settings low in Modern Warfare. I decided to max out the settings in Black Ops 4 Zombies and manage around 45fps (except for that boat level with lots of water reflections, it drops into the low 30s there).
This card is seeing more than double the performance of the VEGA 20 in some cases. Expect 50-100% performance increases, especially at higher resolutions thanks to the added VRAM.

Breath of the Wild gets 45-60fps with the new Vulcan Cemu builds. Yuzu still performs like garbage, but it’s doesn’t have Vulkan yet.

Amazingly, this card performs about just as good at the MacBook’s native resolution as a 4K Razer Blade with a 2080 Max-Q would perform on the 4K panels.

I did initially notice some throttling, but I disabled ULPS and turbo boost and the card runs at 80-100% it’s full speed without any issues.

This is excellent news for people who want to game on their laptop but absolutely hate Windows.
 
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I'm really confused here some people say the 5500M 8GB has the same performance or 10% more than 5300M.

Then some other person comes and say the complete opposite
 
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MrGunnyPT said:
I'm really confused here some people say the 5500M 8GB has the same performance or 10% more than 5300M.

Then some other person comes and say the complete opposite
Click to expand...
If you're going to game, then just max out the GPU. You'll need every frame you can get.
 
MrGunnyPT said:
I'm really confused here some people say the 5500M 8GB has the same performance or 10% more than 5300M.

Then some other person comes and say the complete opposite
Click to expand...
My assumption is the 5500M has a bit more performance, and the VRam options are what really makes the difference depending on your task.

Correct me if I’m wrong
 
MacBookGamer said:
I received my 5500M 8GB MacBook Pro a few days ago.

I’m getting 45-60fps on native resolution all settings low in Modern Warfare. I decided to max out the settings in Black Ops 4 Zombies and manage around 45fps (except for that boat level with lots of water reflections, it drops into the low 30s there).
This card is seeing more than double the performance of the VEGA 20 in some cases. Expect 50-100% performance increases, especially at higher resolutions thanks to the added VRAM.

Breath of the Wild gets 45-60fps with the new Vulcan Cemu builds. Yuzu still performs like garbage, but it’s doesn’t have Vulkan yet.

Amazingly, this card performs about just as good at the MacBook’s native resolution as a 4K Razer Blade with a 2080 Max-Q would perform on the 4K panels.

I did initially notice some throttling, but I disabled ULPS and turbo boost and the card runs at 80-100% it’s full speed without any issues.

This is excellent news for people who want to game on their laptop but absolutely hate Windows.
Click to expand...


Apoligising for offtopic, but how did you manage to get Breath of the Wild on a mac? I'm really curious as I wanted to play this myself for a long time
 
Ma2k5 said:
It beats the XPS 15 at gaming with boot camp, which is huge.
Click to expand...
Kind of sort of maybe - the Dell uses a GTX 1650, which is a nice GPU, don't get me wrong, but the machine does throttle, and Dell's are not known as gaming PCs - that's where Alienware comes in.

Again the whole right tool for the job comment is coming in 3,2,1...
IF you want to game, then the MBP is not the best choice, there are plenty of other machines that are designed for such things that perform a whole lot better - exponentially better. Apple has a long history of not really really caring for gaming and in macOS its really a meager inventory of games compared to the PC.

If gaming is a major factor, then buy a PC.
 
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maflynn said:
Kind of sort of maybe - the Dell uses a GTX 1650, which is a nice GPU, don't get me wrong, but the machine does throttle, and Dell's are not known as gaming PCs - that's where Alienware comes in.

Again the whole right tool for the job comment is coming in 3,2,1...
IF you want to game, then the MBP is not the best choice, there are plenty of other machines that are designed for such things that perform a whole lot better - exponentially better. Apple has a long history of not really really caring for gaming and in macOS its really a meager inventory of games compared to the PC.

If gaming is a major factor, then buy a PC.
Click to expand...

Oh of course but I guess it is the most similar in form factor - historically though I believe throttling and all XPS 15 did use to still edge out the MBP in gaming. Blade 15 and Alienware are just a bit more gaming league machines considering battery life and power supply requirements (if not dimension).
 
Ma2k5 said:
historically though I believe throttling and all XPS 15 did use to still edge out the MBP in gaming.
Click to expand...
That's not saying much though ;)

Access to a large inventory of games, is another factor, and that's where the Mac completely fails.
 
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Strangedream said:
Bootcamp + Switch emulator on a Mac sounds nastier than mixing bacon, milk, and Cheetos in the same bowl. At this point just buy a Switch.
Click to expand...
It runs terribly, so your analogy is on point.


MacBookGamer said:
Ever hear of Bootcamp?
Click to expand...
It’s amazing to me how many people forget this exists. And you can get a Windows 10 Pro key on eBay for 3-10 bucks as well, so it’s not an expensive option.
 
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If I understand this correctly, the 8GB 5500m is worth getting even for those of us whom don’t want to run Bootcamp for games? I’m looking to mostly play some strategy games such as Civ and the like and maybe a FPS or so. I won’t be running Bootcamp though and I'm perfectly fine with the games available for MacOS.
 
_Kiki_ said:
Which drivers under Win10 are you tried?
Click to expand...

I'm wondering about this as well. I'm having real difficulty getting games to run in fullscreen in win10 pro bootcamp. Every game I've tried has rendered the game very small in the right top corner. I assume its an issue with the "pro" drivers and how windows handles hidpi.
 
Alternatively, you could buy a really good Gaming Windows laptop for the price of a MacBook Pro 16"... GPUs inside of Apple laptops have never been great, I suppose the trend continues.
 
I've been running into stuttering/driver issues in Boot Camp with a lot of games so I actually gave Geforce Now a shot and it's surprisingly good (especially in light of the whole Stadia release)
 
mcaron1234 said:
I'm wondering about this as well. I'm having real difficulty getting games to run in fullscreen in win10 pro bootcamp. Every game I've tried has rendered the game very small in the right top corner. I assume its an issue with the "pro" drivers and how windows handles hidpi.
Click to expand...

do you have Adrenalin or Enterprise ?
 
Stella said:
Alternatively, you could buy a really good Gaming Windows laptop for the price of a MacBook Pro 16"... GPUs inside of Apple laptops have never been great, I suppose the trend continues.
Click to expand...

If the primary use of the laptop was for gaming, sure. But if you're wanting to buy a MacBook first, with the option to game, this 16" is great news. In a perfect world yes, we'd all have a fully specced MBP and a fully specced windows gaming PC.. but for those who can't quite justify both, this is looking like a reasonable compromise.

The RX 5500M does appear in other Windows gaming laptops, so it's not like the hardware is very far off here anyway.
 
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