Clearing up my confusion on Iris Pro's potential

[lJoSquaredl]

Looking to upgrade, but with the exception of like 2 or 3 big YouTube vids the info and reviews are far and few between...and a little confusing at times. Just wondering if anyone can clear these questions up for me before I decide on a purchase.

1. My rMBP will go from the 650m (which has given me issues, but slightly less as i've upgraded OSX) and 8gb of RAM to the Iris Pro and 16gb of RAM. The RAM I hear will be a big help when it comes to more involved and complex FCPX projects, especially longer ones with more layers. Will the loss of a dedicated video card negate any extra value I get out of more RAM? I know the RAM is supposed to help editing more stuff, but i've also seen Iris Pro run slower than the 650m in a Gaussian Blur test. I've seen IP beat the 650m in tons of benchmarks, so I was confused by it being worse in this test. Is encoding with more and more layers where Iris Pro can fall short in terms of performance?

2. I know the Iris Pro graphics are pretty good about handling external monitors, even 2-3 if you aren't doing extremely heavy work or using all 4k monitors. Does anyone know if Iris can handle editing FCPX with 1 external monitor without much issue? Haven't really found many reviews or information regarding this situation. I've tested FCPX using my Intel HD 4000 graphics and it didn't seem too bad, but couldn't test using an external monitor just for reference since the rMBP won't allow it.

3. If I get the May 2015 refurb, will this still be the Iris Pro 5200 or is there an updated Iris Pro model in that update? I think i've seen Iris Pro 6200 somewhere, does the May model have that updated version, and does anyone know what it has improved upon?

4. Should I really be looking at waiting for the next meaningful upgrade to Intel's CPU/iGPU in the rMBP line before I get a baseline model. I do enjoy complex editing projects with many efx and layers. Will it most likely be a struggle until the next big upgrade arrives?

 

[0983275]

To answer question 3 - it's still 5200 (Haswell), they only refreshed the model with AMD GPU for higher end model, everything else is basically the same as 2013 model (I think they also upped the base CPU speed from 2.0GHz to 2.2GHz, not sure if this happened with this year's refresh or last year's where they also upped base RAM from 8GB to 16GB)

Iris Pro 5200 still peforms well, it's the best iGPU you can get (on Macs at least until Apple upgrades the lineup)

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Looking to upgrade, but with the exception of like 2 or 3 big YouTube vids the info and reviews are far and few between...and a little confusing at times. Just wondering if anyone can clear these questions up for me before I decide on a purchase.

1. My rMBP will go from the 650m (which has given me issues, but slightly less as i've upgraded OSX) and 8gb of RAM to the Iris Pro and 16gb of RAM. The RAM I hear will be a big help when it comes to more involved and complex FCPX projects, especially longer ones with more layers. Will the loss of a dedicated video card negate any extra value I get out of more RAM? I know the RAM is supposed to help editing more stuff, but i've also seen Iris Pro run slower than the 650m in a Gaussian Blur test. I've seen IP beat the 650m in tons of benchmarks, so I was confused by it being worse in this test. Is encoding with more and more layers where Iris Pro can fall short in terms of performance?

2. I know the Iris Pro graphics are pretty good about handling external monitors, even 2-3 if you aren't doing extremely heavy work or using all 4k monitors. Does anyone know if Iris can handle editing FCPX with 1 external monitor without much issue? Haven't really found many reviews or information regarding this situation. I've tested FCPX using my Intel HD 4000 graphics and it didn't seem too bad, but couldn't test using an external monitor just for reference since the rMBP won't allow it.

3. If I get the May 2015 refurb, will this still be the Iris Pro 5200 or is there an updated Iris Pro model in that update? I think i've seen Iris Pro 6200 somewhere, does the May model have that updated version, and does anyone know what it has improved upon?

4. Should I really be looking at waiting for the next meaningful upgrade to Intel's CPU/iGPU in the rMBP line before I get a baseline model. I do enjoy complex editing projects with many efx and layers. Will it most likely be a struggle until the next big upgrade arrives?

Skylake will bring a fairly good iGPU upgrade by all reports, thats about it but it could be just what you are looking for so waiting if you can may be best, looking at march /april next year though when taking into account what intel have published of their roadmap.

To be honest if that is what you want to do a specced out PC or a 27 inch iMac would be a much better prospect than a mobile computer.

 

[alexmarchuk]

Yeah I realized recently that my mid 2015 rMBP has the 5200. Nice little sucker, of course the AMD dGPU isn't shabby either.