Lo there,
Got the MacBook Pro 16 back in April. Went for the I9 / 16GB / 1TB / 5500m version. I'm a bit funny with laptops. I've had a couple of MacBook Pro 13s in the past but ended up selling them on within a couple of months as I didn't really use them. Not this one though, I'm loving it. Not sure if it's the bigger screen, or the keyboard which seems roomier, but it really is a joy to use. The keyboard especially is something else to type on compared to the 13 inchers.
It's bloody quick too. I've not once seen the beachball of wait on it. Currently using it for Logic Pro to muck about with music, Traktor for playing about DJing, big documents etc. Not tried any games on it yet as I don't really game nowadays. Really it's complete overkill for what I'm doing with it but hey ho.
There's been a few quirks I've noticed with it. In Logic Pro, by default, the program uses the gfx GPU. So the fans quickly ramp up which is quite distracting sitting in front of it. Considering Logic Pro isn't exactly full of 3d gfx, I was a bit surprised at that. A little utility called "GSwitch" soon sorted that out. It allows you to override the gfx card a program is using. so I just set that to always use Intel and that killed the issue stone dead. Now it's quiet as a mouse.
When something does use the GPU, the laptop fans come on and the unit gets quite hot. The fans aren't loud really. If daughter is round and playing some 3d chat game she uses, I can't hear them from the sofa which is about 10 foot away. The heat worried me a bit at first. But I guess Apple have tested it to run at those sort of temperatures without causing any damage. so I don't worry about it anymore.
On the other hand (well leg really), if I come down of a morning in my boxers and grab the laptop and stick it on my lap, I forget how cold the metal and end up jumping with surprise. It's bloody freezing!
I've put boot camp on it. Again, in windows it flies. But, I can't stand the trackpad in windows. It's just not as smooth or nice to use as in OSX. I wish they'd do a better driver for it in windows.
I'm going to try Flight Sim 2020 on it in windows. While the GPU is good, I don't think it's really anywhere near good enough for flight sim. So I'm likely to be buying a external GPU before I do. I'll wait a couple of months though for MS to iron out the bugs.
Has anyone tried an external GPU with the MacBook? And if so, what are / were your thoughts?
Robb.
