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Iris Pro vs. GT 750M in the 21.5" iMac?

N

nelsonammo

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 9, 2011
158
179
Is it worth upgrading to the GT 750M graphics for the 21.5" iMac? I'm not a heavy gamer or video/photo editor but I do some gaming and would like to reserve the potential to do editing at some point in the future if I need/want to. I will also probably keep this computer for at least a couple years as well.

There was a review of the 21.5" iMac at Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/09/new-cpus-faster-wi-fi-same-flaws-apples-2013-imac-reviewed/2/ and they showed that the Iris Pro Graphics are improved over the discrete graphics from last years iMac but have no stats or info about the GT 750M in the higher-end 21.5" model. Couldn't find any stats or benchmarks from it on other sites. What kind of graphics performance bump are we looking at here in the GT 750M model vs. the Iris Pro graphics model? 10%? 25%?

Thanks in advance
 
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The 750m is a re-branded 650m. Look for comparisons between 5200 and 650m. There are quite a lot of those.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6993/intel-iris-pro-5200-graphics-review-core-i74950hq-tested

For the past few years Intel has been threatening to make discrete GPUs obsolete with its march towards higher performing integrated GPUs. Given what we know about Iris Pro today, I'd say NVIDIA is fairly safe. The highest performing implementation of NVIDIA's GeForce GT 650M remains appreciably quicker than Iris Pro 5200 on average. Intel does catch up in some areas, but that's by no means the norm. NVIDIA's recently announced GT 750M should increase the margin a bit as well. Haswell doesn't pose any imminent threat to NVIDIA's position in traditional gaming notebooks. OpenCL performance is excellent, which is surprising given how little public attention Intel has given to the standard from a GPU perspective.
 
yea it is worth
you get 750M with 1G vRAM and more core speed and bandwidth so for OpenGL is 30% better
 
Also, that test was a 47W part and a 55W part from the article. The imac iris pro 5200 is a 65W part. Should have better performance than what was tested. Around %10.

Iris pro scales better within a better thermal envelope. So that should it put almost on par with 650M with the 10 percent increase.
 
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iamthedudeman said:
Also, that test was a 47W part and a 55W part from the article. The imac iris pro 5200 is a 65W part. Should have better performance than what was tested. Around %10.

Iris pro scales better within a better thermal envelope. So that should it put almost on par with 650M with the 10 percent increase.
Click to expand...

The i5-4570R tested IS a 65W part. They tested an imac. How is an imac going to get better performance?.

nelsonammo said:
Is it worth upgrading to the GT 750M graphics for the 21.5" iMac? I'm not a heavy gamer or video/photo editor but I do some gaming and would like to reserve the potential to do editing at some point in the future if I need/want to. I will also probably keep this computer for at least a couple years as well.

There was a review of the 21.5" iMac at Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/09/new-cpus-faster-wi-fi-same-flaws-apples-2013-imac-reviewed/2/ and they showed that the Iris Pro Graphics are improved over the discrete graphics from last years iMac but have no stats or info about the GT 750M in the higher-end 21.5" model. Couldn't find any stats or benchmarks from it on other sites. What kind of graphics performance bump are we looking at here in the GT 750M model vs. the Iris Pro graphics model? 10%? 25%?

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

So the Iris Pro 5200 is just above the 640m used in last years imac (the 512 MB vram might be holding it back).

640m generally runs at 625-645mhz core (not sure if apple overclocked it) with 128 bit GDDR5 (not sure about speed of vram but I'd guess around 1000 mhz).

750m runs at 967/1250 + boost to 1058/1250. Its massively faster. For games I would not be surprised to see 50%+.

The other reason to the the 750m is drivers. Intel drivers < Nvidia Drivers. You can see this already as intel seems to be dropping support for HD 3000 in their newer driver releases.
 
I read somewhere that the 750m can come with either GDDR3 or GDDR5. Does anyone know if the iMacs come with either the GDDR3 or GDDR5? Is there any way to tell? Is there a big gain with GDDR5?
 
tbolt11 said:
I read somewhere that the 750m can come with either GDDR3 or GDDR5. Does anyone know if the iMacs come with either the GDDR3 or GDDR5? Is there any way to tell? Is there a big gain with GDDR5?
Click to expand...

Of course, iMacs use the gDDR5 version. Teardowns of the last two generations (2012 and 2013) reveal the Hynix 5GHz gDDR5 chips inside.
 
Does anyone have any links to benchmarks of the GT 750m with GDDR5? All the benchmarks I can find are generally DDR3.
 
pcfarrar said:
Does anyone have any links to benchmarks of the GT 750m with GDDR5? All the benchmarks I can find are generally DDR3.
Click to expand...

Its the same chip so just add about 10-15% on top of the 660m.

Yeah generally the 750m with DDR3 is slower than the 660m despite clocks of 1058 vs 950 mhz. 1 step forward two steps back nvidia.
 
This might be a stretch but do you think the 750m will be able to run Elder Scrolls Online when its released?
 
guys can the iris pro handle games such as minecraft, CS:GO and L4D2 at highest resolution with a 50+ fps?
 
Just tried Rome 2 Total War on bootcamp on my iMac with GT 750m. Runs great in high detail 1080p. In the benchmark it was averaging over 50fps.
 
cirus said:
So the Iris Pro 5200 is just above the 640m used in last years imac (the 512 MB vram might be holding it back).


750m runs at 967/1250 + boost to 1058/1250. Its massively faster. For games I would not be surprised to see 50%+.
Click to expand...

I agree with both of them!

My choice? a new 21.5'' full BTO i7 iMac...
 
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