Going through some equipment struggles here. Had a 15" from 2018 with the pre-Vega GPU and it was snappy, but since I don't do a ton of video work on the road/travel (I like having an external monitor at home), the 15" felt unnecessary. I sold it, grabbed a Dell (ugh, WTH was I thinking) and am considering a newer 13" and an eGPU, maybe even the Air if it has a quad-core now. I figured if I max out the RAM (32GB) and grab a quad-core and pair it with a solid eGPU, it should be darn snappy and plenty for my needs (80% handling big RAW files from photo work and 20% video rendering/processing). I also do some light gaming like Fortnite with my kids. I think Bootcamp would be necessary to run that situation, though...Any experiences in this? Thanks!
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To eGPU or not on a 13"...(gaming and video rendering)
- Thread starter crashwins
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It'd probably work decently well, but unless the size is an absolute dealbreaker I would still opt for a 16" with the 5500m instead of incurring the cost of the 13" + eGPU setup, much less clunky of a setup and you're getting 6 or 8 cores + the amount of RAM you want + a much better display for dealing with photos on if you're not at home. The 13-inch models top out at 16GB of RAM. Both the 5300 and 5500M GPUs are miles ahead of the previously offered GPUs in the 15".
Not to mention a keyboard with proper key travel and no issues with failure due to dust. I had my 2016 15" model's keyboard replaced twice and it was still going bad again on the way out the door.
Not to mention a keyboard with proper key travel and no issues with failure due to dust. I had my 2016 15" model's keyboard replaced twice and it was still going bad again on the way out the door.
Interested to know the answer to this too as I find my work issue 15" a bit too large for EDC, plus whipping it out all the time to show clients/colleagues designs/screens/docs etc. The 13" would be way nicer on my back and carrying around the office to meetings
Interesting -- didn't realize the 13" capped out at 16GB of RAM. I'd prefer 32, for sure.
The new 16" is out of my price range as I'd be looking at a used model with AppleCare (always done this). That said, maybe the 15" with the Vega would be the right move, as I've read it's a lot more robust than the 560s.
Although the 16" would be the sweets, if you could get a great deal on it (especially with DDR4 RAM vs other models having DDR3 currently), consider a 2018/2019 15" along with an eGPU (even if a year later). Price out an external case, plus eGPU and video card which will help any video work you might need now and in say a 2yrs timeframe. Much cheaper to replace an external and much more powerful video card than being stuck with an internal one.
Consider this:
from 2015, Apple has gone from 1GB internal mobile video card memory, to 2016 2GB and now 2019 to 4GB. As 4K to now 8K and beyond becomes the norm ... who knows what kind of RAW photos/videos you'll be working on. Then again I don't know nothing about that work so others advise of much more qualified. I'm just thinking better bang for buck initially and ease of upgrading in 2-4yrs the typical life of ownership on a Mac.
If you're making a good living off of photo work ... spring for a mid-tier refurbished 16" if the costs is comparable; weight is negligible and more a situation that you perception is skewed due to the size variance.
What software are you using for Photo/Video editing? - an eGPU will make no difference to RAW editing if you're using Lightroom, not sure about Premiere!
I use Capture 1 and DaVinci, which both utilize the GPU. I think a refurbished 16” would still break my bank, despite the newer models having better keyboards, which I feel like is a problem that’s been sensationalized a bit (I had one, not great, but wasn’t the worst).
Well, I’m in the mud now hahah. Now I’m starting to think I grab a 13” or an Air for photo work on the go and desktop PC for home use.
I use a Razer Core X Chroma with an AMD Radeon RX 580 (8GB) as my main set up is home use via an external monitor, but I too didn't want to have to lug around an even bigger laptop when I was using it away from home. It all works really well, the only thing that annoys me is that Razer are aware of an issue with the gigabit lan not working on the mac, it'll work for a few minutes, then it craps out and freezes, they haven't issued a fix yet. Other than that, very impressive, by doing it MBP - EGPU - External Monitor it forces it to use the eGPU for everything. I'm selling the eGPU set up soon as I won't need it any longer, let me know if you're interested as I'll be putting it all on eBay anyways 
