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ConscienceNL

macrumors newbie
Original poster
I'm about to buy the base cMBP with 8GB RAM and the High Res screen. It also has the dedicated NVIDIA card with 512MB of VRAM. I wonder, does the Intel 4000 HD card power the higher resolution, or the NVIDIA card? If it's the last one, will 512MB be enough for everything to be smooth on 1680 x 1050?
 
HD 4000 is used by default, the dedicated card only jumps in when performance is needed. A full 1680 x 1050 display framebuffer takes less then 7MB of video RAM. Think again if 512MB VRAM is enough in this case 🙄
 
The HD 3000 in my 17 inch powers it's native 1920 x 1200 just fine, play Unreal 2004 using just the 3000 a couple times and manage to squeeze out 200+ FPS.

Yea using a 8 year old game isn't a super great test but it's the only game I have on here.
 
2 years old HD Graphics with first gen Core i5/i7 mobile already handle 1680x1050 and even 1920x1200. BTW, ten years ago my Thinkpad A21p already have a 1600x1200 screen with dedicated GPU. So nowadays, driving this kind of screen is easy.
 
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