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750M better for driving external displays?

C

commac

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 1, 2013
117
0
I have returned my 13" 2.4/8/256 due to the screen size and UI stuttering under heavy load.

People always talk about how the dgpu is only good for gaming and video rendering but wouldn't the 2gigs of GDDR5 on the 750M take a load off the system and let everything run smoother? Also, I think I read somewhere that the Iris pros Crystelwell 128mb of L4 cache can be utilized when the dgpu kicks in but I haven't heard what real world benefits that would provide.

Will the dgpu of the 15" improve driving the retina display and an external display while multitasking Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Dreamweaver, VMs and browser tabs galore? No gaming or 3D rendering needed.
 
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Oh, a more powerful GPU will definitely speed up intensive image processing and 3D rendering, but it sounded like you were asking specifically about driving displays. If a GPU can’t keep up with all the pixels it has to push, it will start dropping frames. But most of the time, dropped frames don’t matter and you won’t notice a difference. It’s only with high-framerate games that a few dropped frames would matter.

And for most people, the Iris Pro graphics are more than capable of driving any external display they hook up, for any task they throw at it. It sounds like you are not most people though, and your workflow may require substantial graphics processing power. Only you can make the determination of how much you need, and how much it is worth to spend.
 
Oh, a more powerful GPU will definitely speed up intensive image processing and 3D rendering, but it sounded like you were asking specifically about driving displays. If a GPU can’t keep up with all the pixels it has to push, it will start dropping frames. But most of the time, dropped frames don’t matter and you won’t notice a difference. It’s only with high-framerate games that a few dropped frames would matter.

And for most people, the Iris Pro graphics are more than capable of driving any external display they hook up, for any task they throw at it. It sounds like you are not most people though, and your workflow may require substantial graphics processing power. Only you can make the determination of how much you need, and how much it is worth to spend.
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Thanks for the reply. The 13" stuttered considerably in Photoshop connected to a ATD. Less so in clamshell mode. I fear that the 15" will do the same with or without the dgpu. The retina screen+Mavericks seems to be a UI killer no matter what the specs. If the dgpu made the UI seamless it would be worth the extra 600$ for sure.
 
commac said:
Thanks for the reply. The 13" stuttered considerably in Photoshop connected to a ATD. Less so in clamshell mode. I fear that the 15" will do the same with or without the dgpu. The retina screen+Mavericks seems to be a UI killer no matter what the specs. If the dgpu made the UI seamless it would be worth the extra 600$ for sure.
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Are you earning money with your computer? If so, it’s probably worth the upgrade, since $600 is just a few days’ pay. If not, think of all the other things you could do with the money.
 
Are you earning money with your computer? If so, it’s probably worth the upgrade, since $600 is just a few days’ pay. If not, think of all the other things you could do with the money.
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My main money maker is a windows desktop.
This was to be a competent traveling companion but the UI issues have left me having to consider spending way more than I had originally expected.
600$ is almost a referbed ATD but not worth it if the comp without dgpu can't handle the resolutions and HiDPI without noticable drops in frame rates.
 
I expect it should do just fine, but I cannot say for sure. I have the base 15.4″ non-dGPU model and is absolutely phenomenal for me. However, I am not doing super-intensive tasks nor driving multiple high-res displays.

I expect that the dGPU model should be fully sufficient for your purposes, but I cannot guarantee it. There is the nice extended holiday return period in effect now, so you might consider buying one, testing it out with your display setup, and seeing how it goes.
 
I expect it should do just fine, but I cannot say for sure. I have the base 15.4″ non-dGPU model and is absolutely phenomenal for me. However, I am not doing super-intensive tasks nor driving multiple high-res displays.

I expect that the dGPU model should be fully sufficient for your purposes, but I cannot guarantee it. There is the nice extended holiday return period in effect now, so you might consider buying one, testing it out with your display setup, and seeing how it goes.
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Thanks for the info and suggestion. I guess I'll just have to test and see for myself.
 
The ui doesn't require 2GB of vram. The first thing you should do if you experience stuttering is open activity monitor. It's not perfect, but it gives you some idea. Since no one else has any idea what they're talking about, I will tell you to check activity monitor for ram and cpu use. You are talking about a lot of things that eat ram. With the Adobe applications and vms, you might need to adjust how much memory each can consume. It's in their preferences, and you can probably do the same thing for the vms. The vram won't have anything to do with this. I can't believe how much bad information comes up every time another of these threads opens. Your gpu has a subtle effect on some things, but refreshing windows is not as big a deal as you guys make it sound. OpenGL culls occluded windows and those that are blocked by the alpha of another.

I don't know about external displays. It should have enough power. What I don't know is whether any bugs compromise this. I simply haven't tested it, so I have no opinion on that.
 
commac said:
I have returned my 13" 2.4/8/256 due to the screen size and UI stuttering under heavy load.
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The problem with UI stuttering IS Mavericks in itself... Even with the Iris Pro on the 15" rMBP, you can try notice the Desktop zoom in effect once you login. It stutters...
 
Eithanius said:
The problem with UI stuttering IS Mavericks in itself... Even with the Iris Pro on the 15" rMBP, you can try notice the Desktop zoom in effect once you login. It stutters...
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Owning a 750M rMBP I can attest to the fact that UI stuttering on the HiDPI screen is very prevalent. The 750M doesn't fix it. It is obviously some bug (because it isn't always there, sometimes everything is fine). My old non retina 2010 with its much much slower 330M had no such stutter issues in Mavericks. It isn't a performance problem.
When there is no external screen the ui (scrolling) stuttering sometimes happens too but much less often. Almost always with external only rarely with only the main stream. Which GPU is active never matters.
Iris Pro does quite well with high res textures in games I tried. I doubt the 2GB GDDR5 will help anything with extra display. Iris Pro has enough bandwidth for most desktop stuff and the RAM it uses is 1024MB. Ergo plenty for a couple of framebuffers.
 
dusk007 said:
Owning a 750M rMBP I can attest to the fact that UI stuttering on the HiDPI screen is very prevalent. The 750M doesn't fix it. It is obviously some bug (because it isn't always there, sometimes everything is fine). My old non retina 2010 with its much much slower 330M had no such stutter issues in Mavericks. It isn't a performance problem.
When there is no external screen the ui (scrolling) stuttering sometimes happens too but much less often. Almost always with external only rarely with only the main stream. Which GPU is active never matters.
Iris Pro does quite well with high res textures in games I tried. I doubt the 2GB GDDR5 will help anything with extra display. Iris Pro has enough bandwidth for most desktop stuff and the RAM it uses is 1024MB. Ergo plenty for a couple of framebuffers.
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I have a 330M as well, though the UI stuttering is not as bad as an integrated graphics, overall UI frame rates is still below that of Mountain Lion. I can see some stuttering at times.
 
Eithanius said:
I have a 330M as well, though the UI stuttering is not as bad as an integrated graphics, overall UI frame rates is still below that of Mountain Lion. I can see some stuttering at times.
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It's not a good idea to just say "integrated graphics" when the integrated graphics on a 2013 model are probably slightly faster than that 330m. There's still a gap between iris pro and iris. Iris pro is definitely faster. The 330m is old. Even when it was new, it wasn't a very good gpu.


dusk007 said:
Which GPU is active never matters.
Iris Pro does quite well with high res textures in games I tried. I doubt the 2GB GDDR5 will help anything with extra display. Iris Pro has enough bandwidth for most desktop stuff and the RAM it uses is 1024MB. Ergo plenty for a couple of framebuffers.
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There are applications where VRAM really does make a difference, but they don't involve basic OpenGL functions required to refresh a few windows. That's because OpenGL culls most of the non - visible areas. Things that require it are things like 3d paint work if you want to preview high res textures in real time. Even then you can exceed what is available, but it gives you more wiggle room. GPGPU computation that deals with larger data sets sometimes has to load everything into the framebuffer. That's another valid use case.
 
When you don't need the dGPU you don't notice much but when you need it...you need it. 2880x1800 pixels after being oversampled to 3840x2400...No matter the GPU that is ALLOT of work and I would rather roll the dice with a company that specializes in GPU's that are built to perform. Also Adobe programs just run amazing with my 650M which is pretty much the same as the 750M albeit 1GB less of vRAM and rebranded as "new" with a few extra features.
 
slo-climber said:
Can someone tell me if 750M graphics is capable to run 4K display or it doesn't matter at all?
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All late-2013 rMBPs can drive 4K displays, regardless of whether Iris or Iris+750M.

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commac said:
Thanks for the info and suggestion. I guess I'll just have to test and see for myself.
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Why not just settle for the model with 750M straight away? If your specs are at least 2.3GHz, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD, both Iris-only and Iris+750M models are priced exactly the same, so it's a no-brainer to get the model with the 750M, considering that the dGPU's a freebie.
 
I don't own any MBPs at the moment (got a rMBP 13" for my wife though) but you seem to require quite a bit of horsepower for the things you are running. While everyone is talking about the dGPU, let me highlight that on the 15" rMBP, you are getting a quad i7, compared to the 13" i5 dual core.

That should help to relieve quite a bit of processing needs for the programs you are running. As for the stuttering, if it's really a Mavericks with late rMBPs issue, we can only wait for Apple to fix it.

Just my 2 cents. :)
 
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