Why the nVidia GPU ?

[dusk007]

Judging from the the various notebook designs that the 650M found its way into it cannot have a 45W TDP. The TDP was never actually published by Nvidia afaik. It is only what the X50Ms usually had.

Judging from the kind of notebooks designs and sizes the GPU is found in the TDP is most likely below 30W. The kind of thin notebooks usually had a 330M or 540M which are both GPUs in the released with 28W TDP and usually after some steppings end up around 25W.
At the same time CPUs got hotter so I doubt there is any 20W headroom the 650M just gets for free. Nvidia claimed a 100% power efficiency improvement with Kepler. I would bet that the 650M is exactly the same TDP as the 540M.
It is the manufacturers that ask for certain TDP points and if it was 45W we would see 630M and 640M used way more often.

Simple cMBP 2011 to 2012 comparison says as much.

 

[thundersteele]

@dusk
Wikipedia lists it with 45W. One of the sources they quote is this:
http://content.dell.com/us/en/home/d/help-me-choose/hmc-aw-video-card-laptops
Looks pretty reliable to me as a source.

However I doubt that the GPU is ever allowed to draw the 45W, either it is down clocked or some other mechanism is in place. It is well known that the intel CPU has a 45W TDP, so just GPU + CPU alone would draw more than the power brick supplies, add in the screen and rest of the system we would be looking at a total draw of 100W+ under load... someone would have noticed this.

Note that the 2011 models had GPUs with 35W power draw and already ran into the issue of drawing more power than the power brick could supply. I haven't heard about the 2012 models having similar problems, so I agree with dusk on that most likely the power draw is around or below 30W.


As a side note, cost is everything, even for a premium notebook. If you put a more expensive video card, you have to cut somewhere else, and there is not much room for that since stuff like the base storage options and RAM are already at the bare minimum. Also I don't think the aforementioned ATI card would be happy running with 30W or so, while the Nvidia GPU seems to be doing ok.

 

[cirus]

@dusk
Wikipedia lists it with 45W. One of the sources they quote is this:
http://content.dell.com/us/en/home/d/help-me-choose/hmc-aw-video-card-laptops
Looks pretty reliable to me as a source.

Note that the 2011 models had GPUs with 35W power draw and already ran into the issue of drawing more power than the power brick could supply. I haven't heard about the 2012 models having similar problems, so I agree with dusk on that most likely the power draw is around or below 30W.

As a side note, cost is everything, even for a premium notebook. If you put a more expensive video card, you have to cut somewhere else, and there is not much room for that since stuff like the base storage options and RAM are already at the bare minimum. Also I don't think the aforementioned ATI card would be happy running with 30W or so, while the Nvidia GPU seems to be doing ok.

I agree wholeheartedly except for the dell source.
The core speed is wrong. The dell page also says that the 660m draws 75 watts. So 30 watts more for a ~100 mhz clock speed boost.... yeah no way. The desktop 650 has a 64 watt tpd and is higher clocked. So the stuff on the dell page makes absolutely no sense, especially when you consider that mobile cards are the top bin chips.

 

[Mr MM]

I agree wholeheartedly except for the dell source.
The core speed is wrong. The dell page also says that the 660m draws 75 watts. So 30 watts more for a ~100 mhz clock speed boost.... yeah no way. The desktop 650 has a 64 watt tpd and is higher clocked. So the stuff on the dell page makes absolutely no sense, especially when you consider that mobile cards are the top bin chips.

660m has that tdp, the 670mx also has that tdp, those are what we get from the actual vendors that used those numbers for their engineering teams.

I know the 660m tdp still doesnt make sense, the 45w tdp on the other hand does.

are you actually aware that the 555m was used in a 13'' notebook? the 11'' clevo still packs a 650m albeit its with DDR3.

 

[Ice Dragon]

the 11'' clevo still packs a 650m albeit its with DDR3.

Without GDDR5, it's just not the same.

 

[Mr MM]

Without GDDR5, it's just not the same.

pretty aware of that, its clear on the sentence

 

[Freyqq]

It all depends on TDP > battery life. They won't sacrifice battery life.

anything aside 660GTX (650m in rMBP already performs as well as 660GTX, even better i believe?) consumes too much power.

For battery-life related tasks, intel graphics are used anyway. I say give it the beefiest gpu they can fit within their TDP requirements.

 

[dusk007]

@dusk
Wikipedia lists it with 45W. One of the sources they quote is this:
http://content.dell.com/us/en/home/d/help-me-choose/hmc-aw-video-card-laptops
Looks pretty reliable to me as a source.

Looks very unreliable to me.
It is Dell. They sometimes don't get the type of RAM they use right. The numbers also don't make any sense as the 7970 is the only which is right. The 675M has ever only been said to be 75W with 100W being the 680's spot. It is also the only source on the web that can be found and I would really consider the Dell website to be not even slightly reliable.
Nothing on a manufacturers website can be trusted in the notebook market. They are often not even deliberately wrong but they often make mistakes. Sometimes the numbers simply mean something different. Like the power supply specs.

There is an 11.6" notebook with the 650M. Those Dell numbers are rubbish and as the only source completely unreliable in my experience.

 

[bill-p]

Every 660m I'm aware of runs at 950 core (through boost)

Image

650M in the rMBP doesn't need boost...

Default clock is 900MHz. It's only 50MHz slower than the 660M in retrospect, and if one is willing to push, it can still be faster. Plus GDDR5 clocks are pushed slightly higher than 660M by default.

Apple really pushed this chip to make it at least comparable to 660M.

 

[cirus]

650M in the rMBP doesn't need boost...

Image

Default clock is 900MHz. It's only 50MHz slower than the 660M in retrospect, and if one is willing to push, it can still be faster. Plus GDDR5 clocks are pushed slightly higher than 660M by default.

Apple really pushed this chip to make it at least comparable to 660M.

The 660m can be overclocked too.

All im saying is that the 660m is a better binned chip. If you push it, it will on average perform better than the 650m. 4 mhz on memory doesn't make any difference considering that the 650/660m cannot even use all the bandwidth it has. The desktop 650 ti has the same 128 bit bus and gddr5 at 1350 mhz (but 768 cores at ~950 mhz) and it is a good 50% faster than the 660m.

I have a 660m and i pretty much run it at 1058 mhz (max overclock without bios mods).

All apple did was set default clock speeds to boost speed and bump that up to 900. Which pretty much any regular 650m can do.

 

[bill-p]

The 660m can be overclocked too.

All im saying is that the 660m is a better binned chip. If you push it, it will on average perform better than the 650m. 4 mhz on memory doesn't make any difference considering that the 650/660m cannot even use all the bandwidth it has. The desktop 650 ti has the same 128 bit bus and gddr5 at 1350 mhz (but 768 cores at ~950 mhz) and it is a good 50% faster than the 660m.

I have a 660m and i pretty much run it at 1058 mhz (max overclock without bios mods).

All apple did was set default clock speeds to boost speed and bump that up to 900. Which pretty much any regular 650m can do.

If you really want to compare them that much, try a 3DMark 11 run. Here's my rMBP at stock:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5545137

And here it is after overclock:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5545265

Stock: 2609 Overclocked: 2878

It's about 10% improvement.

Looking at the average score of the 660M on NotebookCheck:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-660M.71859.0.html

The stock 650M of the rMBP is about on par. Or are you saying somehow yours is above average?

Also stock 650M on Notebookchecks is well below that of the rMBP by a good margin:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-650M.71887.0.html

So I don't think Apple simply brought the 650M up to its boost speed.

 

[Ploki]

The 660m can be overclocked too.

All im saying is that the 660m is a better binned chip. If you push it, it will on average perform better than the 650m. 4 mhz on memory doesn't make any difference considering that the 650/660m cannot even use all the bandwidth it has. The desktop 650 ti has the same 128 bit bus and gddr5 at 1350 mhz (but 768 cores at ~950 mhz) and it is a good 50% faster than the 660m.

I have a 660m and i pretty much run it at 1058 mhz (max overclock without bios mods).

All apple did was set default clock speeds to boost speed and bump that up to 900. Which pretty much any regular 650m can do.

Is there a theoretical chance that apple got chips that would otherwise go into the 660m bin, seeing they overclocked it stock?

 

[cirus]

Is there a theoretical chance that apple got chips that would otherwise go into the 660m bin, seeing they overclocked it stock?

Possibly but I don't know why they would do that, they lose out on the marketing.

 

[dusk007]

No that is very unlikely. As yields improve more cool chips are made but what ends up as a 660M is limited by demand. So after GPUs aren't quite new anymore you can expect almost any chip to be good enough to have made the 660M bin in the beginning.
Also all mobile chips generally overclock very well as long as the cooling system keeps up. It is usually less of a stability and more of a cooling issue. The rMBP cooling is quite good so I guess that is why they could push it.

 

[Ploki]

Possibly but I don't know why they would do that, they lose out on the marketing.

No that is very unlikely. As yields improve more cool chips are made but what ends up as a 660M is limited by demand. So after GPUs aren't quite new anymore you can expect almost any chip to be good enough to have made the 660M bin in the beginning.
Also all mobile chips generally overclock very well as long as the cooling system keeps up. It is usually less of a stability and more of a cooling issue. The rMBP cooling is quite good so I guess that is why they could push it.

Makes sense. Leads me to believe a spring refresh is possible with bump to 2.8ghz cpu and 660m.

 

[GermanyChris]

I think it's CUDA..