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Gaming on the 13" rMBP? (re: scaled resolutions; how slow is it?)

S

sofakng

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 5, 2008
270
32
I'm really torn between the MacBook Air and the Retina MacBook Pro.

The screen on the rMBP is absolutely fantastic but the resolution is so high so I'm concerned about non-retina content.

For example, I obviously can't play games at a decent framerate at retina resolution so I'd like to scale it to 1280x800 (or whatever it is), but I'm concerned about the scaling performance penalty and if it will look blurry.

I'll be using the laptop mostly on my couch and on my dining room table, but gaming (very, very light games but stuff like Team Fortress 2, etc) is a big concern but again, I'm only talking about older stuff. I just don't want it to look blurry (compared to a MacBook Air with a 1440x900 resolution)

I'm also concerned about applications that haven't been upgraded to retina. How bad do they look?
 
I

inhalexhale1

macrumors 65816
Jul 17, 2011
1,101
745
PA
sofakng said:
I'm really torn between the MacBook Air and the Retina MacBook Pro.

The screen on the rMBP is absolutely fantastic but the resolution is so high so I'm concerned about non-retina content.

For example, I obviously can't play games at a decent framerate at retina resolution so I'd like to scale it to 1280x800 (or whatever it is), but I'm concerned about the scaling performance penalty and if it will look blurry.

I'll be using the laptop mostly on my couch and on my dining room table, but gaming (very, very light games but stuff like Team Fortress 2, etc) is a big concern but again, I'm only talking about older stuff. I just don't want it to look blurry (compared to a MacBook Air with a 1440x900 resolution)

I'm also concerned about applications that haven't been upgraded to retina. How bad do they look?
Click to expand...

I can't comment of the 13", but I did own a 15" rMBP so it should be similar. Some apps were not retina compatible. Check compatibility if there are apps you use frequently. Gaming on anything other than native resolution is going to look less sharp. I will say the retina looked better scaled down than other screens I've had, but scaled down on the retina won't look as sharp as another monitor with that native res.

A good solution is to put a game you play on a USB stick or small external drive, go to the Apple Store and load it up. Scale down the res and play for a bit and see how you like it.
 
L

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,200
19,060
sofakng said:
For example, I obviously can't play games at a decent framerate at retina resolution so I'd like to scale it to 1280x800 (or whatever it is), but I'm concerned about the scaling performance penalty and if it will look blurry.
Click to expand...

Scaling performance penalty is negligible, and the retina screen usually still looks better running a custom resolution than a display which has that resolution native.

sofakng said:
I just don't want it to look blurry (compared to a MacBook Air with a 1440x900 resolution)
Click to expand...

If the Air can run it, the rMBP will run it better using the same resolution.

sofakng said:
I'm also concerned about applications that haven't been upgraded to retina. How bad do they look?
Click to expand...

Most applications which use Cocoa API just work with retina resolution, because Cocoa is resolution-independent. Only applications which rely on large amount of image content or do custom rendering might have some problems. In general, non-retina elements look blurrier because your brain immediately notices a contrast between a sharp retina content and the low-resolution one. If you rely extensively on some applications, I would recommend you to check out whether they exhibit issues with retina mode.
 
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