Iris Pro only 4K video performance question

[Boomhowler]

Hey!

Looking for reasons for my boss to let me buy the 15" mbp WITH 750m so I'd like to know what the 4K capabilities of the Iris Pro only mbp is. Have anyone tried playing some 4K video content with more than 30 fps (preferably on a monitor that have 60 Hz capabilities)?

 

[maflynn]

Personally, I think at this point the Iris Pro is a great GPU.

Are you doing 4k editing or just viewing 4K videos. What tasks will this computer be used for? I think from what I've read here, most of the tasks that need a dGPU are games and video editing.

 

[leman]

AFAIK, Intel IGPs (with QuickSync) are better at decoding and playing video than Nvidia ones.

 

[Boomhowler]

It will be used both to render encoded video from a lot of different sources but the most important thing is that it should be able to watch "raw format" 4K video without any stuttering whatsoever, which can be taxing for some computers. Storage I/O is probably the most limiting factor but the pci-ssd included in both should be enough.

 

[leman]

... the most important thing is that it should be able to watch "raw format" 4K video without any stuttering whatsoever, which can be taxing for some computers. Storage I/O is probably the most limiting factor but the pci-ssd included in both should be enough.

This essentially boils down to a simple copy operation. A 4K video frame takes somewhere around 32Mb. If you have 60fps in your stream (which I doubt), you'd need a bandwidth somewhere around 2Gbs, which is a joke for the RAM/Iris Pro, but will be quite tough for the storage, even with the PCI-e SSD. Something like 24 frames per second should't be a problem at all though.

BTW, integrated graphics are arguable a better choice for these kinds of things, because they directly use the system RAM. With a dGPU, you would need to stream the contents into the vRAM first, which is an extra step and could, under certain circumstances, impact the performance.