Anyone using the new 16" Mac Pro laptop for Sketchup?

I am thinking of acquiring one but I know they do use Nvidia Graphics Cards and I have to buy it with full memory as it is not upgrade-able.
Thanks

Do you know which? Also, GFX card (and associated GFX memory) is just part of the story, CPU speed and RAM, main drive speed, etc. make out an important part of the config to get an optimal user experience.

No, current MacBooks all use Radeon Graphics not Nvidea. Apple abandoned Nvidea a few years ago, rumor has it partly because of contractual issues around Apple reworking the drivers.

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Thanks they dump them for some reason and not supporting them? I am not sure if Nvidia is doing something on their end right now the choice is AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 8GB of GDDR6 memory.

Just got a new 16" MBP 2.3 Ghz i9 w/16 MB RAM. The video card is AMD Radeon Pro 5500M w/ 4 GB VRAM. I have only worked in SketchUp a little since getting it, but it seems to work fine and can open more layers without choking. Running SU2019.

You can delve into this online. The players don’t advertise their motives of course. A lot people are disappointed by this.

I tested the new 16’’ MacBook Pro with this specs: MBP 16.0 SG/2.4GHZ 8C/32GB/5500M/2TB-NLD and was disappointed. (I need a laptop to present 3D model at the clients venue) I installed Sketchup as the only program. I am working on a large office building for 200 employees (lot of objects ca. 200MB). I compared it with a MacBook Pro 15’’ early 2013 / 2,4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 / 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 / NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1 GB. Her my findings: Orbiting on booth machines o.k but not very smooth. While orbiting the model, the MacBook 16’’ Pro rendered the bitmap textures, as the 2013 showed wireframes( for me not important for workflow speed) . Modeling (Push and pull, rotating etc.) on booth machines o.k ish. Zooming on booth machines o.k. Changing from scene to another scenes (with shadows on), the 2013 machine was faster!! Saving the model, the 16 ‘’ MacBook Pro was a bit faster. In general i brought the 16’’ back to the shop as there were no major workflow speed improvements, also seen the heavy investment. I am studying for weeks already on the net, to find the right laptop. Base clock speed seems to be very important, and I also got the impression that Sketchup gets along better with Nvidia graphic cards. I am a heavy Mac user for years, the ecosystem cross device is great and helps me a lot in my daily business, but I am now looking into a windows system with Nvidia Gpu. (I quickly tested the 3D model on an old laptop with a GTX 1070, 2,7 Ghz and specially orbiting the model was lightyear fast!, what I do a lot). Maybe try the 16 inch MacBook Pro with the 2,6 Ghz CPU. (less cores but higher base clock speed)

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Don’t put too much trust in mere clock speed. Other factors such as the internal architecture of the CPU also come into play. For example, comparing the single-core benchmarks for two CPUs used in the 16" MacBook Pro:

i9-9980HK (8 cores) at 2.4Ghz → 2682
i7-9750H (6 cores) at 2.6Ghz → 2476

The slower clocked i9 is actually about 8% faster than the i7!

Other aspects of the overall logic board, RAM, etc. can also affect real performance - though comparing two variants of the 16" MBP I’d expect them to be the same.

The thing about orbiting and keeping textures could mean that the new MacBook Pro is a lot faster than the old one. Whether it drops textures is down to how low the frame rate will be, and so you could get cases where the slower machine with dropped textures is behaving smoother than the new machine with textures still visible, because the frame rate is deemed to be tolerable.

Something to know about too, Apple do a trade in thing. Right now I can’t figure out how to invoke that, but in the Apple Store I was told my 2018 MacBook Pro was worth about $1600 if I was buying a new MacBook Pro. If I can work out how to do it I’m tempted to upgrade.

Click the Buy button on the Apple site page for the 16"MBP. At the top of the next page there is a link to start the trade in process.

When I follow that it tells me it has no trade in value, but can be recycled for free. That’s different to what the guy in the Apple Store discovered.

I may pop by there and see what he did different.

Yeah, that’s strange. Even my 8 year old 2012 MBP shows with a trade-in of $300.

So, funny thing… In the trade steps there is a question about whether your computer has any bulging in the case. Mine hasn’t, so I chose No. Only when going through the steps at the Apple Store did I notice that it’s asking if your computer is free of bulging. So Yes was the right answer.

It was an expensive visit to the Apple Store. I will do some performance tests before I have to send my old MacBook Pro in.

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I tried upgrading last year to the top MBP. Was so underwhelmed I took it back. At least they are offering something now-- one more inch, but is that all? I decided to take the advice of many and NOT buy a Mac brand-new anymore. I got an older version with the last nVidia card they offered, with some other upgrades, to replace mine with failing battery and speakers, etc.

Until something insanely great is actually offered.
Presentation wise I got a nice light HDMI LG monitor for a few hundred bucks at Best Buy to take to meetings. Much better than a laptop monitor for meetings.

I am wondering what folks took away from this Macbook Pro discussion. I have a 2012 macbook pro with Nivida but it is pretty slow these days and so I am shopping. I have been using sketchup since maybe 2004 and always on a mac. The macbook pros are realy expensive and maybe i could get over that but… Are they also just not up to snuff anymore? I use SU and Layout professionally for film and TV set design and just cant aford the watch the ball spin. I havent been much of a renderer but am looking to start do a bit. Maybe with Podium. I don’t mind paying a bit more to stay with what is comfortable to me but if is also jsut not as good then I guess I am looking at leaving mac. Guess I am intersetd to see if any of you that understnd what is under the hood chose to get a macbook pro. Are you happy? What were the key features you chose and if you have switched away from apple, what machine did you go to? Sorry for the long winded question and thanks for whatever info you have.

Best,
Todd

Screen Shot 2020-05-09 at 3.37.46 PM

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Good information everyone this is good discussion. I do have my 16" MacBook Pro and i9 8 core etc. Unfortunately bought it just before the business tanked for the virus. Believe it or not still setting up my programs. I will post my experience soon. Had a major crash in November so a lot of rebuilding Thanks.

Hi,
I am using a 16" MBP which is brand new, 64gb ram, highest speed processor. Graphics is AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 4gb (base spec, I am mainly an audio person so don;t really worry about GPU).
Using sketchup 2020 - nothing but crash, crash, crash. It even causes my whole computer to crash which I havent seen happen on a mac in, what, ten years? Since OSX I’m pretty sure.
So what am I doing wrong? Is it the graphics card? Should I install an aolder version of sketchup?
This is happening on my old computer too, which is a 2015 imac running mojave. That used to run sketchup fine(ish), which makes me think the 2020 version is teh problem.
I’m going to reinstall 2019 and see if that makes a difference.
Any advice please reply, I do get the feeling sketchup is a sinking ship - maybe there’s another program I should be trying? I find teh 3d warehouse very useful not sure if other apps have that user content.
Thanks!

I’m using one.
Very happy with it. I run an older version of Sketchup (Pro '18) so my experience might differ from those using newer ones.
Mine seems to have an Intel graphics card. No complaints about that.

I’m also using a new 16" MBP, Catalina 10.15.5 and haven’t had any crashes yet with SketchUp 2020.1.

@jonodrs you won’t see the Radeon graphics card on the about this mac unless SketchUp (or something else that needs it) is currently running.

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I bought the same computer and have been using it for a few weeks now. Everything seems to be working fine (except Apple in their infinite wisdom removed all the USB ports and so on - only USBC ports now). Running SU2020Pro.