21.5 inch with 650M 512mb VS. 27 inch with 675MX 1gb + likely flash storage
very much difference in % over all? Graphics, and performance
im choosing between these two.
what would the difference be then to go from the 675MX 1gb to the 680MX 2gb?
GTX 675MX is twice as fast as GT 650M but you won't see corresponding performance gain while gaming in native resolutions because 21" has 2M pixels while 27" has 3.6M pixels to process.
MagicThief83 said:I'll be happy gaming on the high end 21.5"
Great post and I agree. In fact you're the only one in this thread who actually accounts for native resolution in the equation, something that everyone somehow easily forgets.
The 675M sounds like an awesome card, yes....but it also has to do much more work to push that massive 27" display.
* 27" + GTX 675MX 1GB - Another good choice for gamer with 3.2GHz CPU included in base price. 27" is awesome for shooters or car racing games, much better "immersion". But I picked 21" instead of this one because I play games that require a lot of fast onscreen clicking (mostly PvP WoW). When it comes to clicking on 27" you have to either set mouse acceleration on such high setting that you loose accuracy and precision or play in distracting windowed mode. On 21" one can play without mouse acceleration at all.
* 21" + GT 650M - With Fusion Drive - average game size is 10GB and it can easily be cached on SSD part. Also I will add 16GB RAM upgrade. Upgrade to i7 I will consider after first benchmark results, but I have a feeling that low performance boost may not be worth the excessive heat (louder fan) and upgrade price.
Shame that the Fusion drive does not work for Bootcamp...
I'm also going for this option for gaming. Here's why:
* 21" + GT 640M - No fusion drive upgrade is available. Nowadays games have huge textures and scratching 5400 drive will result in long waiting times and in-game slowdowns.
* 21" + GT 650M - With Fusion Drive - average game size is 10GB and it can easily be cached on SSD part. Also I will add 16GB RAM upgrade. Upgrade to i7 I will consider after first benchmark results, but I have a feeling that low performance boost may not be worth the excessive heat (louder fan) and upgrade price.
* 27" + GTX 660M 512MB - May have the same performance as 21" + GT 650M in native resolution. But 27" display will require higher texture details or games will look ugly. So 512MB of VRAM will be a bottleneck in this one.
* 27" + GTX 675MX 1GB - Another good choice for gamer with 3.2GHz CPU included in base price. 27" is awesome for shooters or car racing games, much better "immersion". But I picked 21" instead of this one because I play games that require a lot of fast onscreen clicking (mostly PvP WoW). When it comes to clicking on 27" you have to either set mouse acceleration on such high setting that you loose accuracy and precision or play in distracting windowed mode. On 21" one can play without mouse acceleration at all.
* 27" + GTX 680MX 2GB - Performance monster, and for sure upgrade price will be overkill.
Incorrect sir! Fusion Drive does indeed work with Bootcamp, that is the 1TB version is Bootcamp-able, not the 3TB.
Folks, once the game starts, nothing about drive speed will affect your game performance or framerate.
Sorry, I should have been more precise, my fault. It is true that you can make a Bootcamp partition but it will completely reside on the HDD and would not be able to benefit from fast SSD in the tiered storage setup aka. Fusion. The person whom I quoted mentioned using SSD to store games - AFAIK this won't be possible with the Fusion drive (if we are talking about Windows games, which I assume we do).
Sorry, I should have been more precise, my fault. It is true that you can make a Bootcamp partition but it will completely reside on the HDD and would not be able to benefit from fast SSD in the tiered storage setup aka. Fusion. The person whom I quoted mentioned using SSD to store games - AFAIK this won't be possible with the Fusion drive (if we are talking about Windows games, which I assume we do).
Folks, once the game starts, nothing about drive speed will affect your game performance or framerate. Spinner/Fusion/SSD/Thunderbolt external will affect how long it takes to boot and how long you sit on a loading screen waiting to click "start", that's all.
Not every game is based on levels/maps. Most open-world games (WoW, GTA, Driver, Rage, etc) have textures with summarized size few times bigger than available VRAM, so pulling data from HDD during gameplay is inevitable. With faster disk drive you're less likely to encounter texture popping or choppiness when you change zone and disk has to pull hundreds of megabytes of new textures.
Start Activity Monitor, then any modern game and observe Disk Activity tab. You will be surprised
Do you believe a game will load faster off an internal 5400 rpm or external thunderbolt?
Very interesting point there with the mouse.