Completely different user market though. SLI also means a very heavy and thick laptop.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
650m on MBP: 512MB vs 1GB?
- Thread starter Larrabee213
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Completely different user market though. SLI also means a very heavy and thick laptop.
Unless you need to upgrade storage, you may find that you are doing yourself a disservice by avoiding the Retina. I own both 15" standard and Retina MBP. The latter being the better more advanced machine. My own Retina performs exactly as advertised and i rather suspect the vast majority of owners have never had any issue.
One the things with forums in general is people mostly come to solve issue, in some case complain, and a minority just to whine about hardware they have little or no experience with, barring ten minutes hands on at "BestBuy" which is clearly the case with some posts...
Best advice i can give is go look for yourself, take time, don't hurry, read the reputable reviews, and above all else don't use a post by a kid with ten minutes hands on in Best Buy as the basis for a significant tech purchase
Unless you need to upgrade storage, you may find that you are doing yourself a disservice by avoiding the Retina. I own both 15" standard and Retina MBP. The latter being the better more advanced machine. My own Retina performs exactly as advertised and i rather suspect the vast majority of owners have never had any issue.
One the things with forums in general is people mostly come to solve issue, in some case complain, and a minority just to whine about hardware they have little or no experience with, barring ten minutes hands on at "BestBuy" which is clearly the case with some posts...
Best advice i can give is go look for yourself, take time, don't hurry, read the reputable reviews, and above all else don't use a post by a kid with ten minutes hands on in Best Buy as the basis for a significant tech purchase
Obviously the best possible setup for the OP would be a maxed out 15" rMBP with the Nvidia GPU 1GB VRAM and 16GB RAM.
Unfortunately, the OP seems to care about money. By the time he specced a 15" rMBP with the 1GB VRAM *and* 16GB RAM, he's looking at *a lot* of money compared to a 15" cMBP with 1GB VRAM and 8GB RAM (and upgrading to 16GB manually for roughly $80). And based off his intended usage, that 16GB RAM will be a *must* sooner or later, so getting a rMBP with 8GB RAM isn't an option.
But if money were no object, then a maxed out 15" rMBP would certainly be the best possible setup.
It is the same user market as the old Lenovo Y580 which was probably the most value for performance in the 15" department or in general. You got 1080p panel + decent build quality and very good performance.
The second GPU goes into the opti bay and is optional. It is not really much thicker than the old multimedia notebooks it competes with.
The Asus UX51vz is similar to the rMBP in measurements and that one also comes with 2GB GDDR5 standard. Practically all notebooks offer 2GB, some 1GB but only Apple goes as low as 512mb. Nvidia doesn't even list 512mb as a configuration option. They expect 1 or 2GB.
The point of my post was that it proves that 2GB of GDDR5 is cheap and it adds no significant extra heat over 512MB. Apple shouldn't be so cheap on that part.
The only reason they do it is because if they offered 1GB and 2GB (upgrade) nobody would seem it worth going for the high end as the CPU upgrade is barely ever worth it. If the low end is a measly ridiculous 512MB though or 256MB not long ago the consideration changes. It is a deliberate bottleneck on the low end to push buyers towards the upgrade.
It remains a joke given the price of the notebook not to have 1GB standard and 2GB the upgrade.
The base Retina will be more than enough, he can add up to 16Gb if he really needs, for the additional $400 he will get SSD, better cooling, far less likely hood of throttling, IPS display, greater portability and more. The 7200rpm drive i would skip, go for higher density 1Tb as it will run quieter and cooler, or better still SSD for the standard MBP.
By the time 16Gb is a "must" the entire system will be close to replacement, there are many running OS X on 2Gb - 4Gb and they are getting by ok, no need for these drama posts exaggerating the need to max out systems. For the average user 8Gb of RAM is a huge number. There is a vast difference between casual audio/video editing and professional use. The high end Mac`s & upgrades are aimed at those who can and do monetization the difference as they are basically redundant at the end of each cycle, buying them solely for personal use is fine, however it`s an expensive way to own a Mac.
It is GDDR5, but a little bit lower clocked than the rMBP's 650M (790/1000Mhz vs. 900/1254).
A very detailed test can be found here.