Specs for a Macbook Pro

You have approx. £3000 to spec up a new Macbook Pro for Photoshop & Lightroom use, with occasional video editing. Screen has to be 16" and storage will be 1TB SSD... Where do you invest the rest? 32GB RAM, upgrade GPU etc...?

I believe late model MacBook Pros have soldered in RAM chips making it essentially impossible to add or change the RAM. I’m inclined therefore to suggest the RAM upgrade. Having said that I have no in-depth experience with Apple products.

The standard config for that price should be good for photography and video work: MacBook Pro 16: i9 processor, 32GB RAM, ATI Radeon Pro 5500, 1TB SSD.

The US Store has a bunch of refurb 16". I always check there first. Might save a few pounds.

davesrose wrote in post #19075663
The standard config for that price should be good for photography and video work: MacBook Pro 16: i9 processor, 32GB RAM, ATI Radeon Pro 5500, 1TB SSD.

The Apple Store (https://www.apple.com …3ghz-8-core-processor-1tb) seems to indicate 16GB as the base memory with options for 32 or 64GB.

gossamer88 wrote in post #19075667
The US Store has a bunch of refurb 16". I always check there first. Might save a few pounds.

There is a refurb 15.4 inch available at https://www.apple.com …4f272bf652c37db​96c1410f24

John from PA wrote in post #19075673
The Apple Store (https://www.apple.com …3ghz-8-core-processor-1tb) seems to indicate 16GB as the base memory with options for 32 or 64GB.

You're looking at Apple's site. If you look at retailers, you will see my quoted specs are what you get preconfigured for $3049 USD:

Adorama: Apple 16" MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, 9th-Gen 8-Core Intel i9 2.3GHz, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 4GB, Space Gray, Late 2019

Not sure what I'm missing, but same spec on the 16" newer version is no different in price. Is the GPU much better on that refurb model or something?

John's quote does have a different graphics card: ATI's Pro Vega 20, compared to the 16" new price that includes ATI Radeon 5500M. The 5500 is actually a bit newer and faster with benchmarks. The pro cards are more for compatibility/stabilit​y with 3D animation/video. Since your goals are photography and video, the 5500 should be good. The 16" also has a newer 8 core i-9 (compared to 6 core) with same max turbo speed at 4.8GHZ.

I bought a 15.6" model last year, and am enjoying it. Except I did find the latest update with Adobe CC had the video apps crash on my laptop (where they are stable on my PC computers). I decided to ditch Adobe CC (except Photoshop/Lightroom), and have been using DaVinci Resolve for video instead. I have read that besides the extra size, the 16" also has an improved keyboard compared to the 15.6".

Hedley wrote in post #19075690
Not sure what I'm missing, but same spec on the 16" newer version is no different in price. Is the GPU much better on that refurb model or something?

Are your Apple UK prices similar to those on this side of the pond?

Looks like the US Store has a lot more options than the UK's one model only.

8 TB SSD more useful than 32 gig ram. Storage is what is always the reason someone gets a new computer from my experience. At least with the iMac you can upgrade your RAM yourself but not with the notebooks.

I do Photoshop and Lightroom on 11 inch mac Air with i7 and 8 Gig ram. Works great. What it lacks is SSD space, just 500 Gigbyte, or I would have a copy of my lightroom catalogue and actual images on it. As it is I use an external USB drive (M.2 SSD 1 TB) for that, works fine too, but on board SSD is more convenient.

I too am toying with getting the new 16. Not sure I need it though.....I am waiting for our upgrade to EPIC (medical software) to see how my 11 inch works for that. I am not sure I need the larger screen and the weight for rounds.

Not to be a hypocrite I did just buy a 13 in pro for my wife and did not max out the SSD, she does not use that much disk space, but did compromise at 2 TB as I could not get it with just 1 TB, as I think it is just DUMB that Apple even sells the thing with a small drive like that AND charges so dam much for the upgrade compared to what a SSD cost.

Just look at the Mac Pro modular? Base model has less hard drive space than my friggen iPhone. Just DUMB. They sell the thing with 256 gig SSD, W.T.F. That is just criminal. What is that system for? Email and Surfing????

Mike

The MacBook Pro with i9 has more cores though....you need more RAM for each core. I find I don't need a large main drive with my MacBook, because I can buy 2TB SSD drives that are fast via thunderbolt 3. 16GB is fine for photography tasks, but I have seen benchmarks of video rendering being faster with 32GB (as CPU cycles get maxed out with 16GB). At the time I got my MacBook 15.6, it was more expensive to get 32GB in a config available at Best Buy. So instead, I did get the 8 core i9 with 16GB. I figured that while I would use it for some video work, it wouldn't matter if it wasn't the fastest. Video apps and Maya are stable on my 16GB MacBook....but if I was shopping for a new one now, I'd side with best speed specs (and 32GB has better speed). It also can depend on software. I've noticed I have another program for video encoding. While the specs of my MacBook are better than a PC laptop I have, the laptop is a lot faster at rendering h.265 because the software has better support for NVidia graphics cards.

Storage not an issue in this case, and certainly not the reason for the upgrade. I don't store much on my editing machine generally and am rarely at 50% capacity.

The iMac I have currently (2015) is the one model that doesn't let the user modify RAM - I don't want to caught out again so 32 is insurance. Consesnus is there's not much between the various GPUs and processors from what I've seen elsewhere.

The UK store has plenty of combinations but they're not thrown at you until you hit 'buy'... Then you have all the choices to make