I just got mine on Friday and trying to figure out the best looking display settings without taking much of a performance hit.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Which display setting do you have your MBPR on?
- Thread starter Jacoblee23
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I always have mine running on 1680x1050 (13" rMBP) just because I like having the extra screen real estate. When I'm doing work that requires a lot of windows, I turn it up to 1920x1200 (I used a trial of SwitchResX to create this custom resolution)...which makes things a tad bit too small, but it's useful nonetheless.
I haven't seen any performance hits from using either of these two resolutions; HOWEVER, I have "reduce transparency" checked in System Preferences which helps A LOT in reducing UI lag. 1680x1050 is alright without the reduce transparency setting, but 1920x1200 becomes noticeably laggy. Battery life is also fine when using these two resolutions.
EDIT: I have a 2014 rMBP, so your 2015 model should fare even better than mine!
I haven't seen any performance hits from using either of these two resolutions; HOWEVER, I have "reduce transparency" checked in System Preferences which helps A LOT in reducing UI lag. 1680x1050 is alright without the reduce transparency setting, but 1920x1200 becomes noticeably laggy. Battery life is also fine when using these two resolutions.
EDIT: I have a 2014 rMBP, so your 2015 model should fare even better than mine!
I run my late 2013 rMBP on native 1280x800 HiDPI. I can get by with the smaller amount of screen space it offers while not having to see the minute bit of quality loss resulting from scaled resolutions.
----------
Try it. System Preferences > Accessibility > Reduce transparency. It does help somewhat to reduce lag.
----------
Try it. System Preferences > Accessibility > Reduce transparency. It does help somewhat to reduce lag.
It basically gets rid of a lot of the frosted glass effects that you see in Yosemite. Ex: menu bar, notification center, volume indicator, menus, etc. all become opaque. As redheeler said above, you should try it out!
I used to have mine set at "Looks like 1680x1050", but at this setting it's not possible to use Windows in a virtual machine at the Mac's native 2880x1800 resolution so it looks blurry no matter which resolution the VM's set at. Lag is also noticeable at this setting when scrolling in, say, Maps in full screen. Now I use the default native retina setting. Apple is right when they say "Using a scaled resolution may affect performance", because the Mac actually renders the display at what that resolution "looks like".
Only you can determine what display setting is best for you. However, here is mine.
Attachments
I ran mine at 1680x1050 for a long time but for comparability reasons I set it to 1440x900 when I was using a rMB and I have decided that I prefer the 1440x900 setting.
Yeah, I think that setting is the perfect balance between screen real estate and visibility on the 13" model.