Gaming on retina MBPs?

[Yixian]

I'm a bit out of the loop, I used to be a MBP user for many years but I bought an Air for work and it was so convenient it eventually replaced my Pro.

The one thing my Air can't do is game, but for the years I was an MBP user... neither could they. Yeah maybe the odd game would run alright if you bootcamped, but by and large each update was a massive disappointment with the graphics card a distant afterthought.. Sometimes even seemed like an insult when you're paying top dollar and getting the cheapest option when better cards were available at the same wattage and size.

Now that we have retina Pros, I can only imagine that gaming (current games) in native resolution is essentially a joke, so how do they look scaled down, and have the Pros caught up a little in terms of GPUs? In other words, are the cards in the Pros these days relatively better than the 8600M and 9600M were for their time?

 

[B...]

The 950M is a very good card, unless you want to play Crysis 3 at 2880x1800. They work well at 1440x900 on medium-high settings for the most part. The chip is a high-end mid-range to low-end enthusiast range GPU.

 

[Yixian]

The 950M is a very good card, unless you want to play Crysis 3 at 2880x1800. They work well at 1440x900 on medium-high settings for the most part. The chip is a high-end mid-range to low-end enthusiast range GPU.

What's the current thinking on the GPUs in the coming updates?

 

[jeblis]

What's the current thinking on the GPUs in the coming updates?

Much better integrated gpu performance. Discrete about the same (nvidia 750 is essentially a rebranded 650). Since the discrete is the powerhouse for games, expect similar 3D performance this year.

 

[Erasmus]

The 650M draws around twice the power as the 8600M/9600M, at ~45-50W, rather than ~23W. So yes, it is vastly better, even relative to other GPUs of their respective generations.

If the new MBP gets the 750M, it will probably be a modest update of ~15%. If Apple try and put a 8870M in it (which has a comparable TDP) the performance improvement may be more like 30%.

 

[rockyroad55]

I played BF3 without overclocking at medium settings with an average of about 45-50fps on the 15 base retina.

 

[swerve147]

Now that we have retina Pros, I can only imagine that gaming (current games) in native resolution is essentially a joke, so how do they look scaled down, and have the Pros caught up a little in terms of GPUs? In other words, are the cards in the Pros these days relatively better than the 8600M and 9600M were for their time?

You'd be surprised at how decent games look scaled down on a Retina display. It must be the extra pixels. It's definitely not something like scaling resolution down to 1440x900 on a 1920x1200 panel, i.e. it's a lot better than what you've seen in the past.

I played BF3 without overclocking at medium settings with an average of about 45-50fps on the 15 base retina.

At what resolution?