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650m vs. 675MX
- Thread starter GunZi
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Most of the time it will put out 50% to 100% higher framerates. Sometimes less and sometimes more. Looking at the benchmarks at low or medium settings on modern games it seems to average about 50% more and at high or ultra details it is 100% more. So the difference is significant.
The only times it seems to be less than 50% or dead even are on games that have there framerates capped and at low quality settings. Since you can't upgrade it and you game I would get the higher end card. You can always upgrade the RAM and Hard Drive later on.
Also you have to factor in the paltry amount of VRAM in the 650M. No matter how powerful the GPU some games can only achieve low detail settings with only 512MB. There just isn't enough to handle all the objects, effects and detail.
650M: http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-650M.71887.0.html
675mx: http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-675MX.82580.0.html
The only times it seems to be less than 50% or dead even are on games that have there framerates capped and at low quality settings. Since you can't upgrade it and you game I would get the higher end card. You can always upgrade the RAM and Hard Drive later on.
Also you have to factor in the paltry amount of VRAM in the 650M. No matter how powerful the GPU some games can only achieve low detail settings with only 512MB. There just isn't enough to handle all the objects, effects and detail.
650M: http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-650M.71887.0.html
675mx: http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-675MX.82580.0.html
I would go with the 675MX with flash hands-down. Not only is the 657MX far superior in ability, it future-proofs you much longer than the 650m would. The flash storage will speed up your computer more than anything in either scenario. As has been said many times, the bottleneck is in the hard-drive these days, and the use of solid-state drives and flash-storage is alleviating that.
As for the graphics card... You have to think, many games (which largely drive the computer industry whether you like it or not) run better on today's computers than they do on a PS3 or X-box360 that utilizes (5-year-old?) technology. However, expect that to change when new Xbox and Playstation systems are released next year and again raise the bar for the technological requirements to drive modern games. Your motherboard and CPU will be up to the task, as will your flash-based storage. The bottleneck at that point will be your GPU. In that event, you could always lower the resolution or turn down some settings off max (or a combination of both, whichever you prefer) and enjoy those games for years to come.
TLDR: With technology, I always advise people to go as far as they can money-wise but spend wisely. It's almost always worth it to make the investment up-front and enjoy the computer for longer than to skimp out and be disappointed a year or two down the road. In your case, spending more would be the 675mx model, and the spending wisely would be the flash-storage. Hope this helped, enjoy whatever you get!
Between 20% to 40% on graphically intense games at high and ultra settings. On less intense games or lower settings you won't likely see any real difference as the framerates are above 60.
As games start readily needing over 1GB VRAM you'll notice a much greater difference as the 675MX simply won't be able to handle the detail at high settings.
If GTA V pushes the memory envelope like GTA IV did then 2GB may be a necessity. As 512MB simply wasn't enough to handle higher settings.
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.
I'll be happy gaming on the high end 21.5", as long as we actually get them. Hopefully this week. The GT 650M is no slouch in games.
MagicThief83 said:
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.
The 650m on the Retina MacBook Pro is managing to push 2880x1800 pretty well. The 675mx will be a phenomenal step up.
Right now I am gaming on a 2011 21.5 base with radeon 6750m. It is lower performance than all the new iMac graphics chips. I have to say I am enjoying all the games I have played. I usually have high settings and lower the resolution a little. If you take screenshots and compare you can see visual differences between native resolution and non native. But while playing you don't notice anything.
I believe 650 will be great.
I believe 650 will be great.
Incorrect sir! Fusion Drive does indeed work with Bootcamp, that is the 1TB version is Bootcamp-able, not the 3TB.
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Excellent points! The 2011 iMacs handle gaming at reasonable resolutions and settings. The 650M will only be a step up. The 27" and 680MX will definitely be overkill, not to mention pushing the price point past what I would have liked to spend. Simply put, I just don't need a screen size that big. I'm also gonna fully max out the 21.5" as well, but I'm not sure if the i7 justifies the added cost over the i5.
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Is it better to game off a 5400 rpm or a thunderbolt drive? I have a thunderbolt external and was thinking I could run all my games off the external.
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.
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).
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
That's the one thing that worries me about the 21.5" + Fusion + Bootcamp-- because AFAIK the 21.5" uses 5400 RPM 2.5" drives for the 1 TB instead of 7200 RPM drives. Eh, I guess once the game is loaded it won't matter.
Correct sir!
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Do you believe a game will load faster off an internal 5400 rpm or external thunderbolt?
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
I expect that the game would be caching what it expects to need in RAM, so texture rendering wouldn't be limited by drive speed. So you could see some performance boost if you're short on RAM and have virtual memory on a faster disk, I guess.
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Depends on the external drive - the limiting factor on external tbolt drives is the drive itself, not the tbolt connection. Generally speaking, if a manufacturer has bothered to put a tbolt connection on a drive, it will perform better than the 5400rpm internal. If you're talking about a tbolt SSD, even better.
Very interesting point there with the mouse.
Kinda stupid point to be honest.
I used to play starcraft 2 as a high master league to low grand master league player on my 30" dell monitor. And trust me there's a lot more clicking in SC2 than in WoW PvP and you don't need mouse acceleration and you shouldn't use it. EVER.
I've been using a zowie mico at 1600 dpi and a resolution at 2560x1600. No mouse acceleration and no loss of accuracy whatsoever.
Just raise the in game sensitivity or get a gaming mouse with high dpi and you're fine.