15" Retina Vs 17" non retina

[orthorim]

Here's how the scaled resolutions look:

http://www.anandtech.com/Gallery/Album/2078#5

brilliant, thanks...

of course it's a little bit late now as Ive already ordered one...

WOW!!!! This actually looks FANTASTIC!!! Way better than I expected. Way better.

1920x1600

http://images.anandtech.com/galleries/2078/Screen Shot 2012-06-11 at 4.36.07 PM.png

So this leads me to the conclusion: This is the best freaking display that has ever graced any laptop, period, with no reservations. End of story. It does retina and it runs 1920x on a 15" display and looks gorgeous.

 

[NStocks]

brilliant, thanks...

of course it's a little bit late now as Ive already ordered one...

WOW!!!! This actually looks FANTASTIC!!! Way better than I expected. Way better.

1920x1600

http://images.anandtech.com/galleries/2078/Screen Shot 2012-06-11 at 4.36.07 PM.png

So this leads me to the conclusion: This is the best freaking display that has ever graced any laptop, period, with no reservations. End of story. It does retina and it runs 1920x on a 15" display and looks gorgeous.

I was just going to post that article from anandtech! Very useful indeed

 

[charlieegan3]

when it says 'using a scaled resolution may affect performance' does that mean the bigger end or the smaller end? of the options.

 

[Stetrain]

when it says 'using a scaled resolution may affect performance' does that mean the bigger end or the smaller end? of the options.

The options with more working space take a bit more power to render. When running in "1680x1050" or "1920x1200" modes, it actually renders the screen at double those resolutions and then scales it down to 2880x1800 so it looks nice. More total pixels have to be rendered than when running in "1440x900" mode.

I'm guessing that that's all GPU accelerated. Games let you set the resolution internally so you won't be using that scaling there.

 

[charlieegan3]

The options with more working space take a bit more power to render. When running in "1680x1050" or "1920x1200" modes, it actually renders the screen at double those resolutions and then scales it down to 2880x1800 so it looks nice. More total pixels have to be rendered than when running in "1440x900" mode.

I'm guessing that that's all GPU accelerated. Games let you set the resolution internally so you won't be using that scaling there.

so it would be faster on the more space setting?

 

[Stetrain]

so it would be faster on the more space setting?

Other way around. The setting with the largest text should be faster to render and the version with the smallest text should be slower. We won't know what the actual performance hit is until someone (probably Anandtech) finds a way to test it.

 

[charlieegan3]

Other way around. The setting with the largest text should be faster to render and the version with the smallest text should be slower. We won't know what the actual performance hit is until someone (probably Anandtech) finds a way to test it.

I thought

'More total pixels have to be rendered than when running in "1440x900" mode.'

making that one slower?

 

[steve-p]

There are good deals to be had with 17" refurbs on the Apple store right now. I'm thinking about picking up one of the last models with the 2.5GHz CPU. I suspect at least some of the "refurbs" are brand new stock.

 

[NStocks]

There are good deals to be had with 17" refurbs on the Apple store right now. I'm thinking about picking up one of the last models with the 2.5GHz CPU. I suspect at least some of the "refurbs" are brand new stock.

Perfect time for me to sell my 2010 17" too!

 

[eron]

This is the way I see it as well. It'll effectively have the same real-estate as the current 1440x900 models. It seems that certain apps might work differently, however. In today's keynote, it was mentioned that the preview window on this screenshot was an actual 1080p video. If I understood that correctly, it'll be interesting to see what developers do with the resolution.

I think you answered most people's queries regarding screen estate on the 15" Retina. On "retina updated" applications where there's video, or pictures (such as video/pic edits), the user will be able to see the true resolution, which just isn't possible on other notebook displays.

 

[Auzburner]

I will probably be selling my i7 2010 17" MBP with a 256GB SSD seeing as I just ordered a retina MacBook Pro. While I'm sad to see the 17" go, I purchased the machine for the high pixel density display in the first place. I will always be running the new one at full resolution. There's not real good reason to scale to another resolution. The auto pixel doubling built in will probably be the best look.

 

[Stetrain]

I thought

'More total pixels have to be rendered than when running in "1440x900" mode.'

making that one slower?

The different modes are as follows:

"1024x600 equivalent" Largest Text, Smallest work area
"1280x800 equivalent" Larger Text, Smaller work area
"1440x900 equivalent" Default mode, will be the sharpest. Same work area as old 15" MBP
"1680x1050 equivalent" More work area, same work area as old 15" high res
"1920x1200 equivalent" Most work area, smallest text.

The modes with more work area and smaller text than default (the 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 equivalent modes) have to render more pixels than the default mode.

 

[charlieegan3]

The different modes are as follows...

ok, got you now.

 

[Xcelerate]

Yech. I didn't realize this were doing alternative scaling modes this way.

Here's the problem. Say you want the "equivalent workspace" of 1920x1200. So it renders everything at 3840x2400 and then resamples it down to 2880x1800. But when the graphics were calculated at 3840x2400, the anti-aliasing (for text and vector images) was already computed to be optimal at this setting -- in order to be the clearest, these calculations must take place at the final viewing resolution. Resampling down "unoptimizes" this. Not to mention you have extra needless calculations.

The ideal way to do it would be to simply program all vector/text rendering in natively for a given scaling factor. So a 1920x1200 "workspace" has a text/graphic that is 75% of the area of the same text/graphic in a 1440x900 "workspace" for the same screen size. So just render it this way.

*Not to mention the fact that a "larger text" scaling mode would be rendered at a low resolution and then upscaled to 2880x1800. I can see the benefit for games, but for everything else... yech... it defeats the whole purpose of having a retina display.