I promised I'd follow up with my KeyShot performance on my new 2019 MacBook Pro 16". A big thanks to Figure1a, Richardfunnel, mattjgerard, and Furniture_Guy for their posts on this thread!
- Set-up: 2019 MacBook Pro 16" 8-Core 2.4GHz i9, 64Gb Ram,
- Time in Use: I've had it 6 weeks now and it's running like a dream.
- FPS: Like Figure1a, I'm getting around 150 fps with the camera bench mark.
- Power Draw: No problems with it drawing power faster than the power supply could provide as encountered by Richardfunnel. I went out of my way to challenge it by running KeyShot 8 and 9 simultaneously, all cores on KeyShot 9 running a rendering, all cores on KeyShot 8 setting up a scene, plus jumping around and manipulating large documents in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop and running a Youtube video on Safari. Battery stayed at 100% throughout. I then unplugged the power supply with all the programs still running until the battery dropped to 75%. Then I reattached the power supply, but the battery took about 25 mins to charge an additional 1%, so there wasn't much extra power available.
- Battery Power Only: All out at 16 cores, it lasts only about 55-60 mins. Found this out by accident when I forgot to plug in my power supply for an overnight rendering. Fortunately, it shut itself off with the battery at 1or 2%.
- KeyShot Auto Idle After Rendering Queue: I was also pleasantly surprised to learn KeyShot now ramps down after finishing long renderings and queues, especially overnight, rather than continuing to run until I'd wake up to shut it down.
- Expensive?: My MacBook build retails at $4200, but B&H Photo had a $400 discount, I opened a new freelance business banking account ($300 bonus) and a business credit card ($500 bonus) which I used to purchase it, and then with the capital expense against my taxes (~$1100 tax savings), the effective total price was only about $1900.
- Worth it? - Definitely! Paired with a 12.9" 2018 iPad Pro, I have an extremely powerful, portable 2 screen workstation whether at the office, in a coffee shop, at a hotel, on an airplane, (or now in my basement Corona bunker), that allows me do all my professional 2D and 3D design work, in a portable package less than 1" thick and under 10 lbs (including my laptop bag and accessories.)
- Next Upgrade? eGPU - I'd like to offload the longer renderings an animations to an eGPU, so I'm investigating hacks, patches, and/or Windows bootcamp interface with a Razer Core box and Nvidia cards. Any tips?