Blackmagic Forum

Hi all,

Currently I'm running a 13" 2016 MBP for my business (IT consultancy, nothing to do with Resolve, which is my hobby) and I'm thinking of getting a 16" MBP as a replacement - main concern is better battery life of the 16" compared to 13". I'm using iTerm/Terminal and MS Office as a main tool for business so every laptop will suffice, I'd guess, so this is not a concern.
As a hobby I am shooting with BMPCC4K (maybe I'll get a 6K in the near future, but again - this is just a hobby) so I'm thinking if getting a "maxed-out" MBP 16" for my daily work as well as an offline editing machine (final rendering will be done on my wife's HP Z8).
The question is if there's a big difference in performance between AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 8GB of GDDR6 va AMD Radeon Pro 5600M с 8GB HBM2 (in terms of Resolve) that will justify the price difference of ~805€=USD950? As you can imagine I'm used to offline editing but if I can get a "near real-time" one I'd be very happy.
Apple Silicons will come later in the picture when the warranty period of this 16" MBP will be over, so this is not a concern...

OK, my main concern is the performance gain... That 805€ will not break the bank but if the performance gain will be less than 10% I would hardly justify the purchase with my wife...

Here is some data to help you make that decision. This site measures the newer laptop against Resolve, as well as other machines.

https://barefeats.com

You can keep your current Macbook Pro for all other work, and get an MSI laptop for $1100 with 32 GB RAM, and a 6 GB GTX nvidia card (it should run 4k BRAW fine, even with grading and plugins on top). I bet it'd be faster for Resolve than your current Macbook just because you get an nvidia card that Resolve generally prefers to get accelerated fully. The MSI laptop I saw earlier used an Intel Core i7-9750H @ 2.60GHz that has a passmark for 11500 points, which while it's not really fast compared to newer CPUs, it's much higher than my 8000 points CPU that I use without problems with BRAW 4k. And especially the new BRAW version, in the new SDK currently in beta, decodes faster. So I don't think you need to spend much to have good performance with BRAW 4k.

And if you can spend a bit more, consider the Lenovo Legion 7 laptop, for $1700, because it comes with a faster CPU, 8 GB RTX 2070-Qmax, 32 GB RAM, and most improtantly: 100% SRGB screen color gamut (most cheaper laptops barely touch 50%).

So if something like that does the job and helps you save money in this economy, you should consider this solution, even if it's not a sexy one.

Sorry for resurrecting this thread, but I just came across the best deal on the internet just an hour ago, and I already purchased this laptop for myself (I'm not affiliated btw, this is simply what I bought with my own money): https://deals.dell.com/en-us/mpp/productdetail/52g5

As I write this, the price for this laptop was only $1550 (plus another $130 on B&H to manually upgrade the RAM to 32 GB).

For that price it's unbeatable, because not only it has the highest end GPU for laptops (8 GB nvidia RTX 2080 Max-Q), but it also comes with a 4k OLED DCI-P3 100% screen, which is almost unheard of on a laptop. This is the best screen anyone can get for color grading on a laptop today, miles better than the 120 hz or 240hz full HD 72% SRGB screens that are usually found on other gaming laptops.

The rest of the specs are normal, nothing extraordinary, but nothing is really missing either (you still get a 4k/60hz on external monitor, if you so desire). I think the only thing missing is the backlit keyboard (but not sure if it has it or not, it doesn't specify, it's optional).

Eugenia Loli wrote:For that price it's unbeatable, because not only it has the highest end GPU for laptops (8 GB nvidia RTX 2080 Max-Q), but it also comes with a 4k OLED DCI-P3 100% screen, which is almost unheard of on a laptop. This is the best screen anyone can get for color grading on a laptop today, miles better than the 120 hz or 240hz full HD 72% SRGB screens that are usually found on other gaming laptops.

I think it's a very, very bad idea to try to color-correct on a laptop. Read pages 2362-23633 of the Resolve 16.2 manual, "Limitations When Grading With the Viewer on a Computer Display." This explains why it's unwise to try to use a computer display for final color correction. The same problem exists with the "Clean Feed" output, since it's not color managed.

Normally I'd agree with you. But this is an OLED 100% DCI-P3 monitor. It's as good as it's going to get on a laptop today. A lot of people prefer laptops, even if they won't get super-accurate colors. Besides, many pro colorists are using OLED TVs to grade. Not special monitors: TVs.

Eugenia Loli wrote:Normally I'd agree with you. But this is an OLED 100% DCI-P3 monitor. It's as good as it's going to get on a laptop today. A lot of people prefer laptops, even if they won't get super-accurate colors. Besides, many pro colorists are using OLED TVs to grade. Not special monitors: TVs.

Yes but these OLED goes through calibration and a view lut.
And still they are not perfect.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It all depends who you are working for. If it's only YT, nobody really cares.

For the same money you can get a mid spec mbp every three years or a high spec model every five. With Apple moving to ARM it might not be the time to double down on a premium machine.

My 2016 mbp is chugging through the 12k Braw demo files at 12k and cruising through them at 2k. If you’re at the threshhold of performance a 20% faster gpu isn’t going to make a significant contribution. If you’re getting 9fps you need 300-500% improvement which means workflow changes not a moderately faster machine.

I’d take extra space over the gpu, having a couple TBs of screaming fast storage is never a bad thing.

Good Luck

danielpanev wrote:Hi all,
The question is if there's a big difference in performance between AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 8GB of GDDR6 va AMD Radeon Pro 5600M с 8GB HBM2 (in terms of Resolve) that will justify the price difference of ~805€=USD950? As you can imagine I'm used to offline editing but if I can get a "near real-time" one I'd be very happy.

I can tell you that the 4GB memory of the 5300 is the first thing that hits the ceiling on a MPB 16". So 8 instead 4 is well worth it for €120. But I would not spend another €730 for the 5600 instead of the 5500.

Eugenia Loli wrote:As I write this, the price for this laptop was only $1550 (plus another $130 on B&H to manually upgrade the RAM to 32 GB).

For that price it's unbeatable, because not only it has the highest end GPU for laptops (8 GB nvidia RTX 2080 Max-Q), but it also comes with a 4k OLED DCI-P3 100% screen, which is almost unheard of on a laptop. This is the best screen anyone can get for color grading on a laptop today, miles better than the 120 hz or 240hz full HD 72% SRGB screens that are usually found on other gaming laptops.

The spec looks nice but only 2 days later and I don't even find one offering a 2080 Max-Q option, only 2070 Max-Q.

The spec looks nice but only 2 days later and I don't even find one offering a 2080 Max-Q option, only 2070 Max-Q.

That laptop I linked went out of stock within a day.

Eugenia Loli wrote:
That laptop I linked went out of stock within a day.

You should have emailed me!! Just kidding...neighbor. I'm in Sequim.

Thank you all for your answers. Having a second laptop is out of question - it's cumbersome enough to travel with a single laptop and the BMPCC4K alone I think I'll just go with the AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 8GB of GDDR6...

how do you like it so far? i heard horror stories on 5500m and not sure if 5600m is good enough to pay this much of money. im using bmpcc6k and i would like to edit witouth proxies . or should i wait for arm ones?

danielpanev wrote:Thank you all for your answers. Having a second laptop is out of question - it's cumbersome enough to travel with a single laptop and the BMPCC4K alone I think I'll just go with the AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 8GB of GDDR6...