650m 512MB VRAM enough for gaming?

[2Turbo]

I'm concerned the 650m with 512MB vram will cause bad performance when gaming. I plan on running CoD Black Ops 2 in Bootcamp.

If 512 isn't enough, I might have to go 27" but I didn't want that much screen for everyday normal use. uhhh why is this soo hard. Apple please make a 21" with 675mx.

 

[ihuman:D]

I'm concerned the 650m with 512MB vram will cause bad performance when gaming. I plan on running CoD Black Ops 2 in Bootcamp.

If 512 isn't enough, I might have to go 27" but I didn't want that much screen for everyday normal use. uhhh why is this soo hard. Apple please make a 21" with 675mx.

Or atleast 1gb VRAM standard...

 

[Serban]

Are you kidding me?
Core speed mooore important than vRam.
i already tested the 640M and 650M with some more demanding games than CoD BO2.

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My old Geforce 250 GTS with 1 GB vRAM is far behind of 650M

 

[ihuman:D]

Are you kidding me?
Core speed mooore important than vRam.
i already tested the 640M and 650M with some more demanding games than CoD BO2.

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My old Geforce 250 GTS with 1 GB vRAM is far behind of 650M

That doesn't mean VRAM isn't important . It's 2013 now, 1gb should be standard.

 

[Ice Dragon]

I was just about to create a topic with regards to this and you may have seen some posts about it in the Haswell mini thread. I agree that we are getting to a point where 1 GB of VRAM should be standard.

Maybe 512 MB is acceptable on the base iMac but that should only be if you drop it back to $1,199. At $1,299 it should be 1 GB.

Or you could have put 512 MB of the 650M in the base model followed by a 1 GB in the upgraded model, but that might have gimped sales of the retina MacBook Pro which should have had 2 GB to handle the retina screen.

 

[HurtinMinorKey]

It sucks that they force you to go with a bigger screen just to get decent graphics card. A 27' is way too big for the space i have to work with, but i need at least a 1gb card (more like 2gb) to run DaVinci.

 

[Ice Dragon]

It sucks that they force you to go with a bigger screen just to get decent graphics card. A 27' is way too big for the space i have to work with, but i need at least a 1gb card (more like 2gb) to run DaVinci.

By the time 2 GB is standard or even as a BTO for anything less than the top model, 4 GB will be the option and so forth. Hell it sucks nowadays that you have to go with a bigger screen if you just want to change your own RAM.

 

[Serban]

650M is in top 100 of high end video cards

 

[leman]

A game will run into performance limitations much faster with the 650M than it will run into VRAM limitations... With another words - if your game really needs 1GB VRAM, than 650M is already too slow for it.

Of course, its nice to have 1GB VRAM... but at least Apple puts fast GDDR5 on their cards instead of crippled GDDR3

 

[Irishman]

I'm concerned the 650m with 512MB vram will cause bad performance when gaming. I plan on running CoD Black Ops 2 in Bootcamp.

If 512 isn't enough, I might have to go 27" but I didn't want that much screen for everyday normal use. uhhh why is this soo hard. Apple please make a 21" with 675mx.

Look, the main thing you'll get with 1GB of memory over the 512MB of memory is more room for textures.

The games will not suddenly be playable versus unplayable on the 512MB.

I know because I have the GPU you're asking about in my iMac.

 

[kaellar]

vRAM has nothing to do with GPU processing power limitations. It's about something completely different - storing the textures, models and shaders in it. For example, some hypothetic game has several texture quality settings. With the highest setting it requires 800mb of vRAM to put all the required textures into it. Which means, that the card with 512mb vRAM will struggle using the highest texture quality setting, while 1gb vRAM card with the same GPU will do it just fine, since storing and layout of the textures requires much less processing power than, lets say, complex shaders, tesselation or realistic lighting.

 

[Irishman]

vRAM has nothing to do with GPU processing power limitations. It's about something completely different - storing the textures, models and shaders in it. For example, some hypothetic game has several texture quality settings. With the highest setting it requires 800mb of vRAM to put all the required textures into it. Which means, that the card with 512mb vRAM will struggle using the highest texture quality setting, while 1gb vRAM card with the same GPU will do it just fine, since storing and layout of the textures requires much less processing power than, lets say, complex shaders, tesselation or realistic lighting.

Well, tessellation isn't even supported in Mac OSX. Sadly.

 

[Ice Dragon]

At minimum, at least include a BTO option to increase the memory period end of story.

 

[2Turbo]

Are you kidding me?
Core speed mooore important than vRam.
i already tested the 640M and 650M with some more demanding games than CoD BO2.

----------

My old Geforce 250 GTS with 1 GB vRAM is far behind of 650M

Are you saying the 650m w/512MB works just fine in Black Ops 2 with these settings?

Details: Extra
Shadows: off
MSAA: 2x
HBOA: off
FXAA: on
Occlusion: Medium
Dept of field: Medium
fps: around 60+

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By the time 2 GB is standard or even as a BTO for anything less than the top model, 4 GB will be the option and so forth. Hell it sucks nowadays that you have to go with a bigger screen if you just want to change your own RAM.

Yup they made it so gamers/power users MUST get the 27".

 

[d0nK]

It sucks that they force you to go with a bigger screen just to get decent graphics card. A 27' is way too big for the space i have to work with, but i need at least a 1gb card (more like 2gb) to run DaVinci.

Yes.
If you get the 21.5" you have to shell out extra for the Fusion drive and the 640m is rubbish.

Even if you go for the 27", I wouldn't want to be running that large screen with a 512MB 660m! Apple basically force you to get the high-end 27" with the 1Gig 675mx or you're a sucker.
Penny-pinchers. I am no fan of theirs atm.

Obv you don't hear all the high-end 27" 680mx users complaining. They're the first to argue that the new iMac's are good
That's because the high-end iMac is decent but you have to pay megabucks for it, which is exactly what Apple have planned for.

..and don't give me that crap about the difference between "average consumers" and "professional" users. People deserve a powerful computer for a decent price these days in order to do what they like with... We aren't living in the 90's where the powerful tech wasn't readily and cheaply available!
If I want to render 3D, render long video's, edit many large photo's and create complex music does that make me a "professional" user or just a simple user of today's tech doing what he enjoys/loves to do?

Apple seem stuck in the past and need to get with the times.

 

[thekev]

Are you kidding me?
Core speed mooore important than vRam.
i already tested the 640M and 650M with some more demanding games than CoD BO2.

----------

My old Geforce 250 GTS with 1 GB vRAM is far behind of 650M

Well, tessellation isn't even supported in Mac OSX. Sadly.

Part of the problem is limiting it to just games when a wide range of budgets and use cases exists. At the $1000+ level in the current year, no one wants to see weird budget cutting measures in machines at these pricing tiers. Beyond that it always has some impact. These were technically 2012 models in spite of delays. The early 2011 15" had 256MB. In both cases they were weirdly low on memory for their respective times. I think they should have started with a 1GB 650m. 21" displays tend to be extremely cheap on their own, but I have a feeling the new process and other changes are quite expensive. It went up $100 and they skimped slightly on the gpu rather than one or the other to balance things out.

 

[Ice Dragon]

I am fine with Apple forcing people to go for the ultimate 27" for the best video card. That isn't the problem I have.

I feel they should at minimum go:

512 MB 640M - $1,299
512 MB 650M - $1,499 (option for 1 GB)
1 GB GTX 660M - $1,799
1 GB GTX 675MX - $1,999 (obviously the option for 2 GB)

 

[kaellar]

I already said so, but in my opinion, the GPU options should be like that:

21.5 base - 1gb 650m
21.5 hi-end - 1gb 660m; 1.5gb 670mx option
27 base - 1gb 660m; 1.5gb 670mx option
27 hi-end - 2gb 675mx; 4gb 680mx option.

The reasoning beyond that is pretty simple:

1. 640m/650m/660m have not-that-big difference in oem pricing and with margins Apple has it's pretty easy to go with a bit higher model. Sadly, it's not typical for Apple to provide customers with a bit better options though.

2. RAM and vRAM are extremely cheap nowadays (especially for such a large customer like Apple), and it's pretty easy to go with more vRAM. But Apple sells RAM at x4 market prices, and vRAM amount is even worse - it's limited to the point where it becomes a real bottleneck. Pretty lame, if you ask me.

That said, I'm not Apple and we have what we have. Which is pretty sad, because with the cost of a bit lower margins Apple could provide us with a much more desirable product.

 

[Serban]

I don't understand. The high end 21.5" is getting some good quality of some demanding games at native resolution. So after i read all these posts i am aware that you refer to the gamers ! And for hard gamers for that prices you go for maxed imac or alienware.

if you are not a gamer(for me a gamer is someone who play every day/day by day lots of hours and wants everything on any game at maximum settings) you can go easily for base imac with 640M.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6jhvIwAGKs

 

[leman]

... and vRAM amount is even worse - it's limited to the point where it becomes a real bottleneck. Pretty lame, if you ask me.

Can you provide any evidence that VRAM amount is a bottleneck in the iMac? Look, I am not trying to defend Apple here. I also think that they could have easily doubled the amount of VRAM on the entry model, the few bucks wouldn't hurt them. However, I feel that this issue is completely overrated. If your game already runs with acceptable frame rates on the 650M, adding VRAM will not increase make it much better. Similarly, if it does not run on the 512Mb model, it would not run any better even if the card had 4Gb VRAM.

 

[cluthz]

Are you kidding me?
Core speed mooore important than vRam.
i already tested the 640M and 650M with some more demanding games than CoD BO2.

----------

My old Geforce 250 GTS with 1 GB vRAM is far behind of 650M

A desktop GTS250 is faster than a 650M.

 

[kaellar]

leman, there was an article at the website called overclockers.ru, about the vRAM amount necessary for modern games. I don't think you need a link to it, since it's completely in Russian
but the testing results clearly pointed that absolutely most famous gaming titles that comed out in 2011-2012, require 550-1000MB at 1080p resolution.
that said, 512mb is a real bottleneck for those who want to use highest texture quality settings.
If the GPU is too weak for, lets say, Crysis 3, more vRAM of course won't solve it. But what if the GPU is capable enough but there's no vRAM for highest texture quality? It's where it becomes a bottleneck.

 

[Irishman]

Part of the problem is limiting it to just games when a wide range of budgets and use cases exists. At the $1000+ level in the current year, no one wants to see weird budget cutting measures in machines at these pricing tiers. Beyond that it always has some impact. These were technically 2012 models in spite of delays. The early 2011 15" had 256MB. In both cases they were weirdly low on memory for their respective times. I think they should have started with a 1GB 650m. 21" displays tend to be extremely cheap on their own, but I have a feeling the new process and other changes are quite expensive. It went up $100 and they skimped slightly on the gpu rather than one or the other to balance things out.

I re-read your post, because at first I thought I missed it, but you quoted me, but didn't speak on hardware tessellation.

 

[Serban]

A desktop GTS250 is faster than a 650M.

Get real...i had Gts 250 for almost 3 years now...

 

[Irishman]

I don't understand. The high end 21.5" is getting some good quality of some demanding games at native resolution. So after i read all these posts i am aware that you refer to the gamers ! And for hard gamers for that prices you go for maxed imac or alienware.

if you are not a gamer(for me a gamer is someone who play every day/day by day lots of hours and wants everything on any game at maximum settings) you can go easily for base imac with 640M.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6jhvIwAGKs

See, this is a bit of a stereotype, if you ask me. There are people like me who don't play every day, but when we do play, we want the best experience possible.

Quality, not quantity.