13" Retina MacBook Pro

[waloshin]

13" Retina Macbook Pro only has a screen real estate of 1280x800?

 

[S.B.G]

According to Apple.com it says this:

Retina display: 13.3-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit display with IPS technology; 2560-by-1600 resolution at 227 pixels per inch with support for millions of colors

Native resolution: 2560 by 1600 pixels (Retina); scaled resolutions: 1680 by 1050, 1440 by 900, and 1024 by 640 pixels

 

[waloshin]

According to Apple.com it says this:

Though dont the scaled resolutions slow down the performance?

 

[hakkamukka]

Though dont the scaled resolutions slow down the performance?

It is more taxing on the hardware but as a user you wouldn't realise it; more so with the Iris graphics. I have the first iteration of the rMBP 13 inch with the crappy HD4000 graphics and for the most part it works well. Exceptions being fast scrolling on heavy websites.

 

[CausticPuppy]

Though dont the scaled resolutions slow down the performance?

Not really. Especially after 10.9.2 was released. I have last year's model and run at the 1440x900 scaled mode full time, and it's nice and smooth.

 

[Davidkoh]

I run either 1680x1050 HiDPI (scaled) or 1920x1200 (non scaled) on my 13" rMBP without any problem.

 

[Blue Sun]

Not really. Especially after 10.9.2 was released. I have last year's model and run at the 1440x900 scaled mode full time, and it's nice and smooth.

Same here (15" with the Iris Pro), 10.9.2 has made the scaled resolutions perfectly smooth. Those graphics drivers got a massive upgrade.

 

[Macman45]

I run mine in it's native Retina resolution and rarely switch over...When I have changed, I can't say I've seen any performance hit at all.

 

[maflynn]

Though dont the scaled resolutions slow down the performance?

Why, isn't it still pushing the same number of pixels, it still has to account for every physical pixel even if it logically scales them up or down.

 

[Davidkoh]

Why, isn't it still pushing the same number of pixels, it still has to account for every physical pixel even if it logically scales them up or down.

Far as I know the scaled resolutions are rendered at 4x the pixels before being scaled down and would thus require more graphical computing power. So my 1680x1050 is being rendered at 3360x2100 before being scaled down to 1680x1050 with all the available pixels. The best for retina is rendered at 2560x1600 and using all pixels to display it like 1280x800.

 

[CausticPuppy]

Maybe the GPU drivers are good enough now so that the GPU is doing the scaling; originally Apple had to implement their own scaling algorithm because the video drivers weren't mature enough.

That's my theory, and it would certainly explain why the scaled resolutions perform so much better with 10.9.2.