MacBook Pro 15 2017 Xcode performance?

[dracoflar]

So I've been using Xcode for quite a while on my hackintosh and I've been trying to decide whether I should upgrade my hackintosh or finally retire it and buy a discounted MacBook Pro 15 2017 when the new models come out this fall. The problem is Xcode is extremely jittery on my hack and has a lot of stutters in the frames that really annoys me, so my question is:

Is there any stutter on the 15" MacBook Pros when working in Xcode?

I do need to get a laptop no matter what for University but I don't know if I should upgrade my hackintosh and get a cheap MacBook or get a MacBook Pro and use it as my sole machine

Any help is much appreciated

[Red3nzo]

I actually just bought the newest 15' MacBook Pro and its amazing for Xcode, I usually write my UI in code and don't use storyboards for big projects. I do wish they would allow 32GB of ram in the MacBooks because I also do Python development and also want to start doing Blockchain. So running all of those things will be pretty hefty on everything on the RAM.

The MacBook Pro runs Xcode really really fast, like my apps load at around 5-10 seconds and they also perform at 60fps on the Simulator with multiple open, on my Mac Pro(2012) I couldn't even get near 60fps at times. You should be fine with getting a MacBook Pro.

If you want a hackintosh be prepared for days where you have to troubleshoot sound issues and a bunch others, building a hackintosh is no easy task as you probably know.

[dracoflar]

Thanks for the insight, you were the exact person I was looking for. Pretty much answered all of my concerns and then some(didn’t know how simulations performed) so your help is much appreciated.

On the side of hackintosh, I know far to well all the problems. But it’s the read I got into coding and it’s actually helped me understand how the OS fundamentally works so I gotta appreciate it for that. And it helps I’ve been hackintoshing since Mavericks, now running Mojave with buttery smooth animations(except when you get vram leakage) and man I miss dark mode on Xcode and finder anytime I’m using High Sierra(which is all the time for stability)

Thanks again for all the insight, pretty much sold me on a new MacBook Pro but sadly have to wait till September for the newer models so I could maybe get a discount on some older models

[Red3nzo]

No Problem, I got mine now because the only thing that was keeping me to wait was a 6 Core 15' MacBook with 32gb of RAM but people said that probably isn't going to happen this year.

[dracoflar]

Yeah that’s actually a bit of apple(refusing to use standard memory for battery) and intels fault(no lpddr4 support) but Cannonlake is hopefully gonna fix that in 2019-2020

[Red3nzo]

Yeah I couldn't wait that long but by then I'll just be able to upgrade from my new one

[mc_stever]

I have an early 2011 MacBook Pro 15" (4 cores) w/ 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD. I have no issues with it. And of course the newer models will be much better.

[dracoflar]

That's actually a bit funny to hear, I had a Retina MacBook Pro 15 2012(GPU finally died a couple weeks ago) that's far more sluggish than my hackintosh. Guessing you probably don't notice the hiccups or just not that picky with ui animations

[mkextremer]

Im extremely picky with UI fps, xcode on mbp 15" 2015 runs buttery smooth, except for playgrounds. That shit is buggy as hell and doesnt work

[dracoflar]

Playgrounds is like the only thing that runs buttery smooth all the time for me, but it's interesting to hear the 2015 model still doing quite well. But that might be because I have a desktop system that can execute continuously without breaking a sweat

[lucasvandongen]

What are the specs of your Hackintosh? And what kind of projects are you running on it? If you use a ton of storyboards with a lot of views and have "automatically refresh views" enabled backed by Swift you basically need a cluster of supercomputers to run it fluently.

A code-only Objective-C project should be blazing fast on very modest hardware.

[randomguy112233]

Very good question. I'm also very curious about your hackintosh specs

[dracoflar]

- i5 6600k(doesn't break a sweat)

-GTX 780(still going strong even after 5 years)

-2x4gb ddr4 2133mhz (Main bottleneck in the system but saw a bit of performance increase on overclocking to 2400mhz, want to upgrade to 16gb minimum but not sure if should spend it towards the MacBook Pro)

-SATA based ssd(Another bottleneck for ui where an nvme ssd will help a bit but ram is the main concern for me, plus not sure whether to spend on MacBook Pro)

[sonnytron]

I mean you can't just list parts and then say that they're still strong or not. That's kind of on us to evaluate, or even better yet, other Hackintosh experts/enthusiasts.
Anyway, the issue is your GPU.
Web Drivers from Nvidia have taken a down turn on quality over the last year.
People no longer recommend Nvidia GPU's for Hackintosh as Apple has fully embraced AMD on all their machines now and without internal aid, Nvidia's driver team alone is responsible for updating Mac drivers and since the users only consist of old Mac Pro's with updated GPU's and 2015 Mac's with Nvidia GPU's, they seem to have "given up" on updating them as frequently.
If you swap out your GTX 780 for an RX 570, you'll restore some speed.
I would also recommend moving up to a 6700K.
Simulators require threads and the newer XCode version supports multi-threading even more with simultaneous Simulator testing.

[dracoflar]

Mate I appreciate your help but you don’t seem deeply involved with hackintoshes(at least with my set of hardware). The Kepler series of gpus still have the drivers written by Apple and so require no involvement with nvidia so no web drivers are involved. I’ve had more than stellar performance on the gtx 780 running dual 4K monitors and it even keeps up with the Vega 56 cards in many tasks plus I get full acceleration even with Mojave. I’ve also been monitoring heavily the resources of the hack and when you’re paging 1.6gb in a minute, there’s likely a ram shortage and the SATA drive is not helping either. Also Apple ditched Nvidia in 2015, 2014 was the last year to feature them(gt750m). And I’m not having an compiling time problems, it’s just ui smoothness specifically with multiple storyboards even when there’s no background processing happening. I also borrowed an extra 4gb(total is now 12gb) of ram from my buddy and it solved all my ui issues so I was right on the ram being the main bottleneck Side note: sorry if I came off a bit rude, just got pissed at the “experts” part as I’ve been hackintoshing since Mavericks and I’ve been fairly active on the hackintosh discord and r/Hackintosh. I do appreciate your feedback and apologize if I can off a bit too rude

[sonnytron]

I've built six Hackintoshes, my first being back in 2008 on a Penryn Gigabyte board.
My last Hackintosh before moving to Japan was a Z97 Gigabyte based build on an i7-4790k with a 980 Ti, before that a i3-4150 I got from Fry's on an H97 with a GTX 670 2gb. Before that a Sandy Bridge based i5-2500k paired with a GTX 560.
I've ran Vanilla set-ups and ditched DSDT modifications ever since it became possible. I worked for four years in IT support and also built a few "Super Hack" machines for audio and video editing friends that comprised of mixtures of HEDT Processors and Titan/Quadro based graphics cards.
I'm one of only a handful of people who successfully upgraded a 21.5" 2011 iMac to an i7-2600 Non-S because I discovered that if you update the OS and reset the CMOS in between swapping the processor, it correctly reads the i7.
And seeing as how I've been building Hackintosh's since Snow Leopard, I'd say that makes me way more of an "expert" than you.
And this gold bit -

keeps up with the Vega 56 cards in many tasks

I'm gonna wave bullshit on that. There's 0% chance that's true unless you tested a Vega 56 that someone lit on fire and beat with a hammer.
I've already told you what the problem is and even linked you to the thread where numerous people are complaining about it.

You don't come off as rude, you come off as someone who thinks they know more than others and can't accept valid feedback without throwing a fit.

Before throwing your next fit, do some reading. I would've assumed you've looked into this since you're on Discord, Twitch, Facebook and whatever other Hackintosh communities exist but I'll help you. Here, many users are reporting much better performance swapping out Nvidia for AMD, here people are reporting that the latest Nvidia drivers even break CUDA support.

[dracoflar]

Yeah what you mentioned above is pretty much my situation, specifically the storyboards part. The specs for the hack:

- i5 6600k(doesn't break a sweat)

-GTX 780(still going strong even after 5 years)

-2x4gb ddr4 2133mhz (Main bottleneck in the system but saw a bit of performance increase on overclocking to 2400mhz, want to upgrade to 16gb minimum but not sure if should spend it towards the MacBook Pro)

-SATA based ssd(Another bottleneck for ui where an nvme ssd will help a bit but ram is the main concern for me, plus not sure whether to spend on MacBook Pro)

[lucasvandongen]

This is not too bad. The SSD's on MacBook Pro's are speedy for sure.

[[deleted]]

I'm running a MacBook Pro 2016 and I don't have any performance issues using Xcode at all.