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Is everyone's rMBP as smooth as this guy's?

No and yes. For the things he's doing on screen there - couple of windows open, scrolling Safari, watching a movie - sure, it's as smooth. You'd expect a £2000 laptop to be.

But, try resizing windows full of content. Or opening a folder on the dock. Or toggling expose with more than a couple of windows open. Lag. Stutters. It's pretty disappointing. If I plug in my external display and drag the windows onto that, suddenly no lag or stuttering - so the machine/graphics card is powerful enough, it's just working very badly on the retina display.

I solved it by switching my resolution to an eye-searing 2880x1800 (full res without scaling). Everything is a little too small, but it is super smooth and behaves how an expensive laptop should!
 
rikbrown said:
No and yes. For the things he's doing on screen there - couple of windows open, scrolling Safari, watching a movie - sure, it's as smooth. You'd expect a £2000 laptop to be.

But, try resizing windows full of content. Or opening a folder on the dock. Or toggling expose with more than a couple of windows open. Lag. Stutters. It's pretty disappointing. If I plug in my external display and drag the windows onto that, suddenly no lag or stuttering - so the machine/graphics card is powerful enough, it's just working very badly on the retina display.

I solved it by switching my resolution to an eye-searing 2880x1800 (full res without scaling). Everything is a little too small, but it is super smooth and behaves how an expensive laptop should!
Click to expand...

No way, full res no scaling is actually smoother? I would have thought it would have made it laggier haha. I have never tried using it on an external monitor yet, but atm ,my 1650x1080 monitor resolution looks so horrible in my eyes LOL
 
Mine's that smooth on the highest resolution setting. And, by the way, once you've used this setting for a while and gotten used to it, there is no going back :)
 
I disagreed with Anandtech's response that the hardware wasn't ready for the retina. That's completely not true and at this time our modern GPU's especially the one in the Retina can handle refreshing millions of pixels. It's the software that's causing the lag and not the hardware.
 
Cassadian said:
I disagreed with Anandtech's response that the hardware wasn't ready for the retina. That's completely not true and at this time our modern GPU's especially the one in the Retina can handle refreshing millions of pixels. It's the software that's causing the lag and not the hardware.
Click to expand...

I completely agree. The only issues I have is very very slight browsing lag here and there and the annoying black screen if I don't use auto login.
 
Mine is smooth at any resolution while the discrete gpu is activated. While in 1920x1200 and integrated on, it lags, I fixed this by going into a 2d dock. Smooth in every single way.

And I really love the 1920x1200 resolution on this machine.
 
I wonder if it would be noticebly faster compared to the cMBP, using it in clamshell mode with an external monitor because of the oc'd graphics-card?
 
the rmbp is quite obviously slower in general UI slickness compared to non-retina machines. thats just how it is. anyone who actually owns one and any other semi-modern macbook can tell the difference.
 
I played with the $2,199 model at an Apple Store recently, running 10.8.1 - and the lag was terrible. Scrolling the Projects window in Aperture was laggy, opening photos was slow, and scrolling in Mail actually caused the whole application to freeze mid-scroll for ten seconds. The machine was running at "best for retina display". It felt like I was running my five year old MacBook Pro, which has me wondering why I'd pay to replace my computer with one that feels just as slow.
 
Cory Bauer said:
I played with the $2,199 model at an Apple Store recently, running 10.8.1 - and the lag was terrible. Scrolling the Projects window in Aperture was laggy, opening photos was slow, and scrolling in Mail actually caused the whole application to freeze mid-scroll for ten seconds. The machine was running at "best for retina display". It felt like I was running my five year old MacBook Pro, which has me wondering why I'd pay to replace my computer with one that feels just as slow.
Click to expand...

just to be clear, in apple retail stores theres apparently some software on the machines that causes extra slowdown.

but you're right about working with large images in aperture and other applications. panning them is definitely jerky and annoying.
 
Cory Bauer said:
I played with the $2,199 model at an Apple Store recently, running 10.8.1 - and the lag was terrible. Scrolling the Projects window in Aperture was laggy, opening photos was slow, and scrolling in Mail actually caused the whole application to freeze mid-scroll for ten seconds. The machine was running at "best for retina display". It felt like I was running my five year old MacBook Pro, which has me wondering why I'd pay to replace my computer with one that feels just as slow.
Click to expand...

My experience with it in store is that it was the same as running my MBA 2011 with a Thunderbolt display. Nothing big, fairly smooth. Did not run Aperture though.
 
Cassadian said:
I disagreed with Anandtech's response that the hardware wasn't ready for the retina. That's completely not true and at this time our modern GPU's especially the one in the Retina can handle refreshing millions of pixels. It's the software that's causing the lag and not the hardware.
Click to expand...

I believe its software as well, because I hid the dock and transitioned windowed and I notice no lag. Doesn't make sense for dock to create as much lag, unless my lack of software knowledge is wrong LOL
 
One thing with that video:

It's at 30fps, which makes everything look smoother than it actually is
 
I would say after the update to Mountain Lion mine was very smooth on the "Best for Retina" but i run it at the higest scale option, so i upgraded it to 10.8.1 and it became more smoother! :) But now i upgraded it to 10.8.2 and now it runs smooth, i dont see any lag anymore i just love it! :D
 
My rMBP is as smooth as any other computer I have used. Yes, there is lag on websites like The Verge (but this is by no means exclusive to the rMBP) and resizing applications like App Store is very sluggish (but its the same on any other Mac I tried this). As far as UI responsiveness goes, I can't tell any difference from either my 2009 MBP or my former 2011 iMac.
 
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