Sorry, assumed you were referring to MacBook.
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Not OP, but I am really really not keen on the touch bar so personally only considering nTB model, which has the 2.0GHz i5 processor and can be upgraded to 2.4GHz i7, but I'm unsure whether I would need to upgrade it or not.
8GB RAM might be fine now but been told that 16GB would be noticeable a few years down the line.
You will always be told you "need more ram". 16gb is the new 8gb, and it used to be 4gb vs 8gb. There are still people powering through photoshop related work with their 4gb equipped MBPs (source: reddit). I did a lot of researching before I bought the 8gb ram model. This forum is a great resource, but you have to keep in mind the type of person on this forum. Based on the sample size I have seen on this forum, the majority of people are buying high-end to maxed out 15in MBPtb. It depends on what you need.
You will notice the ram upgrade before you will notice the upgrade to the i7. With the 15w skylake models, there is consistently a 10% increase in performance (source: surface book, dell xps 13 reviews and ownership), but this is quickly limited by the tendency for the chip to throttle. In some case, if I recall correctly, the i7 throttles even more quickly than the i5. I personally don't think the i5 to i7 upgrade is worth the extra cost, and this applies to laptops in general. Even with a gaming desktop, the i5 to i7 upgrade has more to do with future overclocking, etc than immediate gains (the i5 is often recommended over the i7 based on price to performance, when building your own desktop).
Again the ram would be more noticeable, but I don't think it will be immediately noticeable based on today's demands. I can't remember the source, but an apple centric website put out a performance review (2014, so a few years old), comparing adobe and related performance in 4gb, 8gb, and 16gb models. The jump from 4gb to 8gb resulted in large performance gains, but the jump from 8gb to 16gb results in a very small jump (not noticeable).
The 16gb would be necessary for things like 4k video encoding, but at that point you need a dGPU, and the new 15MBPtbs even struggle with this in adobe (but do fine in final cut).
I could be wrong, I admit that. But a few years from now, I don't see 8gb rendering your laptop useless. It will still run very, very well. Maybe 2,3, or 4 years from now a 16 gb model will run something noticeably faster, but at that point I would rather take the money saved, and the money earned from selling the MBP, and upgrade. If you are trying to make your MBP last as long as possible, then by all means max it out. Get the i7, and get the 16gbs ram; but at that point you are better getting the 15in MBP, and are already in the same price range. I don't think portability is a big enough differentiator, at that price, to sacrifice that much performance.
I get the desire to get the more powerful laptop, but I bought a high end 2011 15in MBP, and the battery, followed by the logic board failed before the parts became outdated. The upgrade ended up be far more costly than the benefits reaped.
Again, due to my desire to procrastinate, this post has gotten long winded again, so I apologize. In my experience, if you were to graph the cost of laptops and the upgrade version of said laptops vs time and resale price; you might find that you don't save money in the long run.
Anyway, just my opinion. I could be wrong. Everyone's needs and views are unique in this matter.