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13" MBP Retina won't have its own discrete graphics chip???

Then get the 15"? It's still lighter than the current 13" MBP.

I don't know why you'd expect discrete graphics in a laptop of that size and thickness anyway. Especially with the huge battery needed for the Retina Display and use of LV processor.

Apple doesn't make special magical batteries that last for long without taking space. If you wanted space for discrete graphics you'd have to make the battery much smaller.

And even if it was technically possible it wouldn't make sense from a product line standpoint. You'd have the MBA starting at $999 and the 13" rMBP starting at like $1899 and nothing in between.
 
Just out of curiosity... what kind of games do you want to play on a Mac. A Mac. A Maaac?
 
Assuming it comes with i5 vs i7 and 8gb vs 16gb ram options, and you could only pick one, which one would you pick?
 
pgiguere1 said:
Apple doesn't make special magical batteries that last for long without taking space. If you wanted space for discrete graphics you'd have to make the battery much smaller.
Click to expand...

The 15" rMBP is much thinner and arguably smaller than the regular 15" cMBP, but yet it has a much larger battery.

cMBP has 77.5WHr while rMBP has 95WHr battery.

So they kinda made special magical batteries...
 
I'd say two things are to be taken into account.

1. Apple new philosophy of bigger yet smaller (as in the iPhone 5) is something to think about with the battery issue. Remember they can always "make it bigger in a smaller place". Also, the ODD will definitely go out which will give A LOT more room for battery and maybe the discrete graphics in a special arrangement. Also, the article above hints that Apple may arrange the battery and thus the Logic Board, in such a way that they may be able to obtain some more space to make the dGPU possible.

2. Although the Intel HD4000 is capable of handling the Retina Display for the 13", in my opinion it is not a GPU that should be appropriate for most Apps and Games. (I know Macs are not for gaming, blah blah, but they should at least run everything smooth and not forcing the iGPU all the time).

I hope you get my point. I do believe a dGPU is possible and IMO necessary.
 
raptorstv said:
Apple must be able to do it!
Click to expand...

icecoldart said:
Uhm you mean Chinese are....
Click to expand...

No, he means Apple. The Chinese manufacturers are just that, manufacturers. They aren't creating or designing any of this stuff, just putting it together; and only because they're cheaper and more flexible than robots, and the Chinese government is more accommodating to capitalism than ours. IMAGINE THAT!

Even thus, the magic still happens in California, for the time being at least.
 
i really dont care about the battery life, i will just use the macbook plugged to the AC charging all day loooooooooooooooong~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
The larger 13-inch MBP doesn't have a discrete graphics chip now. Why would anyone think it would gain one while shrinking?
 
ivoruest said:
I'd say two things are to be taken into account.

1. Apple new philosophy of bigger yet smaller (as in the iPhone 5) is something to think about with the battery issue. Remember they can always "make it bigger in a smaller place". Also, the ODD will definitely go out which will give A LOT more room for battery and maybe the discrete graphics in a special arrangement. Also, the article above hints that Apple may arrange the battery and thus the Logic Board, in such a way that they may be able to obtain some more space to make the dGPU possible.

2. Although the Intel HD4000 is capable of handling the Retina Display for the 13", in my opinion it is not a GPU that should be appropriate for most Apps and Games. (I know Macs are not for gaming, blah blah, but they should at least run everything smooth and not forcing the iGPU all the time).

I hope you get my point. I do believe a dGPU is possible and IMO necessary.
Click to expand...

Historically, Apple has not given two shoes about how people do games on MacBooks below 15" size.

Plus even the 15" rMBP overheat, so you can forget about a similar dGPU solution on a smaller body.

So while dGPU is necessary, it's not possible.
 
My intuition tells me Apple will definitely provide a discrete graphics card in the 13" rMBP. It wouldn't make sense to only use an Intel HD 4000 since it will struggle and crash any high intensive applications like gaming if you set at native resolution. If Apple does happen to use a discrete GPU, I'm sure it will be within a GT 620m~GT 635m if anything.
 
The HD4000 struggles a little to power the 4x 900p resolution of the 15" RMBP, but it should be able to reasonably power 4x 800p, which has 20% less pixels to push. Especially if Apple continues to improve the UI performance of OSX.

However, as always, if you want to play games on the 13", just LOWER THE RESOLUTION. You do not have to play at the full retina resolution, and if you play at normal 800p, performance will be significantly better than on the present 13" MBP, with the same graphics quality.
 
Erasmus said:
The HD4000 struggles a little to power the 4x 900p resolution of the 15" RMBP, but it should be able to reasonably power 4x 800p, which has 20% less pixels to push. Especially if Apple continues to improve the UI performance of OSX.
Click to expand...

The HD4000 doesn't struggle. You'll notice absolutely no difference switching between integrated and discrete on the rMBP when in the OSX UI. Indeed if you leave things on auto, OSX never switches to discrete.

Most if not all of the lagging issues is that the UI for OSX does things in CPU.

The only real complaint of the proposed integrated-only 13-inch Retina is that it can't play games. But Apple didn't design the laptop to be an ultra-light gamer machine.
 
0x000000 said:
Just out of curiosity... what kind of games do you want to play on a Mac. A Mac. A Maaac?
Click to expand...

Shall I start listing the games on Steam that are Mac compatible? You can also always boot to Windows.

I'm not sure that I would buy one for the purpose of gaming, but it isn't that unreasonable.
 
AzN1337c0d3r said:
The HD4000 doesn't struggle. You'll notice absolutely no difference switching between integrated and discrete on the rMBP when in the OSX UI. Indeed if you leave things on auto, OSX never switches to discrete.
Click to expand...

Well, some people said that it did struggle, especially when trying to render flash on webpages, if memory serves. If Apple/Adobe have fixed these problems now, that's good. Either way, 13" RMBP should perform around 25% better than 15" RMBP using the IGPU, due to less pixels to render.

Anyways, adding more general comments, the 13" MBP has never had a discrete GPU, and is clearly marketed towards people who don't know what a GPU is, or what it's used for. It is unlikely to get a discrete chip, when it will only push the cost and temperature up, and battery life way down, and be completely unnecessary for its target market.
 
The Intel HD 4000 runs on my 15" rMBP fine. I'm very sure it can run it at double 1280x800 on the 13" when it does get released. The current 10.8.2 update makes everything quite smooth.
 
Erasmus said:
Well, some people said that it did struggle, especially when trying to render flash on webpages, if memory serves. If Apple/Adobe have fixed these problems now, that's good. Either way, 13" RMBP should perform around 25% better than 15" RMBP using the IGPU, due to less pixels to render.
Click to expand...

The 15" rMBP suffers from bad throttling... that never scales up until the SMC is reset. The CPU is constantly stuck at 1.2GHz. That's why it lags. This is purely software-related. I expect Apple to push a new EFI update sometime soon.

13" wouldn't perform better than 15" even though it has less pixels to push because the 15" has the added benefit of having a quad-core CPU. UI rendering can be done on free cores, so regardless of what happens, the 15" would always have better overhead.

If anything, it would be worse on the 13" because a dual-core CPU can only push so much.
 
bill-p said:
The 15" rMBP is much thinner and arguably smaller than the regular 15" cMBP, but yet it has a much larger battery.

cMBP has 77.5WHr while rMBP has 95WHr battery.

So they kinda made special magical batteries...
Click to expand...

No they didn't.
They just removed the optical drive and standard 2.5" drive.
The battery is physically bigger in the rMBP.
 
bill-p said:
The 15" rMBP suffers from bad throttling... that never scales up until the SMC is reset. The CPU is constantly stuck at 1.2GHz. That's why it lags. This is purely software-related. I expect Apple to push a new EFI update sometime soon.

13" wouldn't perform better than 15" even though it has less pixels to push because the 15" has the added benefit of having a quad-core CPU. UI rendering can be done on free cores, so regardless of what happens, the 15" would always have better overhead.

If anything, it would be worse on the 13" because a dual-core CPU can only push so much.
Click to expand...

I don't know where you got all that from. The throttling thing, the 1.2 GHz thing, the SMC reset, everything seems thrown out of nowhere.

The rMBP has a much better thermal design than all cMBPs and is much harder to make throttle. Unlike the cMBP, Anand couldn't get it to significantly throttle in his review even after running the Half Life 2 benchmark 40 times in a row.

You're right about the bad UI performance being mainly due to software, but the rMBP virtually never throttles and certainly doesn't get stuck at 1.2GHz until a SMC reset.
 
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