Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

15" rMBP with dGPU for Capture One Pro?

D

DStout

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 19, 2015
6
0
Hi,

I am new to this forum and have a question about the 15" rMBP I would like to buy to replace our current laptop.

Besides the usual email, browsing and wordprocessing, I am going to use it for photo editing in Capture One Pro (8.3). However I am not a professional but just an enthousiast.

Do I need the rMBP with the AMD R9 M370X dGPU or will I be fine with the Intel Iris Pro in the base model?

Thanks.
 
Hi DStout

I had a look on the capture one website and it'll run fine on the Iris Pro GPU.

From the website

Apple® Macintosh® minimum requirements

- Intel® Core™ 2 Duo or better
- 4 GB of RAM
- 10 GB of free hard disk space
- Calibrated color monitor with 1280x800 display, 24-bit color depth at 96dpi screen resolution
- Mac OS X 10.9 or later
- An Internet connection is needed when activating Capture One

Recommended system requirements

The above hardware specifications are to be considered as minimum requirements. If you work with high-resolution camera systems or simply want to optimize the performance, please follow the recommendations below:

- Use processors with multiple cores, e.g Intel® Core™ i7 or better
- Have 8 GB of RAM or more
- Leave plenty of hard disk space free for your images
- Use a fast hard disk e.g. a Solid State Disk (SSD)

From this it looks like it is a CPU bound app and doesn't leverage the GPU at all so it should make little difference.

Hopefully someone who uses it can answer this a bit better.
 
Hello,

The Iris Pro will do just fine for photo editing. Things like color accuracy and color depth mentioned above are things that the display is responsible for - not the GPU, as it just communicates the picture to the display, and the display takes it from there. The GPU more/less determines what is capable graphically, which doesn't come into play here. That is why it is not even mentioned within the system requirements.

If you're to assume that no other bottlenecks are present (CPU or RAM which are unlikely to begin with) the SSD will mainly impact your photo-editing experience due to improved read times on those large picture and layer files. The GPU just tells the display to show it, and depending on what time of display you have - it will be more/less color accurate and the like.

I hope this helps.
 
I can confirm. I use Capture One pro on iMacs and a MacBook Pro with iris graphics.

It'll work perfectly fine, BUT, if you plan on processing a lot of images - like several dozen or more on a daily basis - the dGPU will help speed things up. Ultimately, it depends on how much volume you're doing, how quickly you need to turn around your images, and also whether you plan on using your MBPr for other tasks. The Iris Pro MBPr is going to be tied up longer processing images... how MUCH longer depends on the volume of work you're doing.

In my case,the MBPr is excellent for on-site work and for all the other remote tasks I do, and supplements other Macs that I have, so it's not ever an issue. If this is your only computer and you depend on it for lots of things, then you might feel it more.
 
  • Like
Reactions: simonsi
The rMBP will be my only (actively used - I still have a working iMac G3 and a PowerBook G4) computer.

Besides the tasks I mentioned I only want to use it for streaming music to my hifi system, with the music stored on an external HDD.

Based on your replies I think the base rMBP with the 512 GB SSD would suffice.

Thanks.
 
DStout said:
The rMBP will be my only (actively used - I still have a working iMac G3 and a PowerBook G4) computer.

Besides the tasks I mentioned I only want to use it for streaming music to my hifi system, with the music stored on an external HDD.

Based on your replies I think the base rMBP with the 512 GB SSD would suffice.

Thanks.
Click to expand...
By that, I hope you mean base rMBP with AMD R9 and 512GB SSD.

Anyway, if this is your main computer, it should do you fine.
 
I actually meant the base model rMBP with the integrated Iris Pro GPU.
 
You're right. In the Netherlands the base model with a 512 GB SSD is € 2.609 and the model with the dGPU is € 2.799.

Another reason to opt for the base model is that the model with the dGPU could be more prone to heat issues however.
 
DStout said:
You're right. In the Netherlands the base model with a 512 GB SSD is € 2.609 and the model with the dGPU is € 2.799.

Another reason to opt for the base model is that the model with the dGPU could be more prone to heat issues however.
Click to expand...


Go for the dGPU model. C1 supports GPU acceleration using OpenCL. The R9 370MX would significantly improve performance over the Iris Pro and better support is always in the pipeline.

This is unlike the Iris Pro compared to the 750M where one can only see a 10-15% improvement in performance.

I use a mix of Capture One, DxO Optics Pro and Corel ASP2 so I speak from experience when I say the Iris Pro is a fairly poor performing chip in this respect.
 
Samuelsan2001 said:
From this it looks like it is a CPU bound app and doesn't leverage the GPU at all so it should make little difference.

Hopefully someone who uses it can answer this a bit better.
Click to expand...

I don't use Capture One, but I can quote someone who does...


http://blog.phaseone.com/processing-speedup-using-multiple-gpus-capture-one-pro-8/

In terms of the interactive speed using one of the recommended graphics cards, it is possible to get real-time feedback (30fps) for almost all slider interaction in Capture One Pro 8, including the HDR tool (which was not using OpenCL in previous versions).

As of September 15, 2014, here are the recommended GPU Cards for “best performance”

Windows:
AMD R9 290X
NVidia GTX 780Ti

Mac:
Dual ATI D700 in Mac Pro (2013)
AMD 7950 in Mac Pro Tower
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Thanks. It looks like the dGPU would be a better choice.

I am a little bit worried about possible heat issues with the dGPU though.
 
DStout said:
Thanks. It looks like the dGPU would be a better choice.

I am a little bit worried about possible heat issues with the dGPU though.
Click to expand...
Don't worry about it. When stress-testing (using a utility called Macoh), I found that the iGPU-only variant ran about 8-9ºC hotter than the one with the dGPU, because in the iGPU-only variant, all tasks were consolidated onto a single chip. On the one with the dGPU, tasks were spread out between the CPU and the dGPU die, hence improving heat dissipation.
 
DStout said:
Thanks. It looks like the dGPU would be a better choice.

I am a little bit worried about possible heat issues with the dGPU though.
Click to expand...

You can always use MacsFanControl (Ideasoft) or a custom fan curve to ramp up the fans if you feel the system is reaching temperatures beyond what you'd feel comfortable using it at.

If it was between the Iris Pro and the GT750M, I'd go with the former (had an Iris Pro machine but later got a new machine due to CUDA, larger SSD etc.). With a comparison between the Iris Pro and the new AMD chip, the dGPU is a significant performance boost especially as more and more applications support OpenCL.
 
sarthak said:
Go for the dGPU model. C1 supports GPU acceleration using OpenCL. The R9 370MX would significantly improve performance over the Iris Pro and better support is always in the pipeline.

This is unlike the Iris Pro compared to the 750M where one can only see a 10-15% improvement in performance.

I use a mix of Capture One, DxO Optics Pro and Corel ASP2 so I speak from experience when I say the Iris Pro is a fairly poor performing chip in this respect.
Click to expand...

Be wary of the "OpenCL" in C1,,,,,, A number of users have been told by C1 tech department to turn it off.

Do not know the technical reasons for this but I am one who has been told this in a package of fixes to prevent some image corruption.
Just saying!

Regards

Sharkey
 
Does someone have more information about the advice given by Capture One support to turn off Open CL? If this is the case the benefit of a dGPU would be questionable.
 
DStout said:
I am a little bit worried about possible heat issues with the dGPU though.
Click to expand...


dGPUs and Macs don't have a great history of reliability. I use C1 as an enthusiast, as an enthusiast you can wait, you don't have deadlines (except your own). I find the iGPU in my 2011 just fine for my needs with C1 - I certainly wouldn't sacrifice $$$ or reliability for "better" performance.

I'm processing 12- and 14-bit RAW 12MP images, in sessions of say 500-700 at a time, applying styles on import. There is no significant delay. I suspect any bottleneck is in the SD card interface but certainly the few minutes to import such a session is not any kind of problem to me or my workflow.
 
If you're batch processing using styles, real time feedback isn't really your primary concern, is it? But if you need to fine tune a specific image, real time feedback helps. (That's the theory, anyway.)
 
Ah true. Realtime feedback won't be related t other than a single image though so I couldn't see how a dGPU can benefit at all...
 
If the CPU takes more than 1/30th of a second to apply an effect to a image, there will be a certain lag associated with for instance, dragging a slider into exactly the right spot-- openCL gets rid of the lag.
 
Before I give input would you'll iGPU-dGPU?
As far as my MacPro is concerned the OpenCL is now off. As I understand it speed increase from OpenCL is only on a few operations in C1.... In my limited use on 75mb original files with layers at ten exported and worked on again using layers to ten again no difference at all.

Hope that helps.

The Open CL was I am told affecting images that where sent to CS5 Photoshop and then sometimes with the CS5 raw reader being used as the only editing source in CS5..

Regards

Sharkey

ps;- still trying to get import from card to work :(:mad::confused:

pps:- iGPU & DGPU - got it, internal and discreet. DUUHHH!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back