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MacBook Pro 750m performance

Lord Flashheart

Lord Flashheart

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 10, 2007
238
36
Cardiff by the Sea, CA
I am in the market for a new MacBook Pro and in my research I am noticing that the 650m is doing better than the new 750m in a lot of areas. For example, in laptopmags review, the MacBook Pro with the 650m got 41 fps at 2880x1800 with ultra settings on WoW vs 25 fps on the new MacBook Pro with the 750m. Is this a driver issue? Heat? Throttling? Can anyone chime in if you have either? Any gaming benchmarks would be greatly appreciated. I do a lot of gaming, but I do work on my rigs too, that is why I have been getting MacBook pros as opposed to gaming PC
 
The 750 is a simply a re-badged 650. Apple binned the best 650s for the rMBP 15" so the difference between them is marginal.

It seems that is using the best 650s and standard 750s, they minimized any improvements. Most benchmarks put the 750 ahead by 4-5%. Certainly not worth upgrading if your main concern is graphics performance.
 
There definitely is a difference for some reason. Seems like a driver issue to me though.
 
klover said:
The 750 is a simply a re-badged 650. Apple binned the best 650s for the rMBP 15" so the difference between them is marginal.

It seems that is using the best 650s and standard 750s, they minimized any improvements. Most benchmarks put the 750 ahead by 4-5%. Certainly not worth upgrading if your main concern is graphics performance.
Click to expand...

Wow, I thought there was a bigger difference between the dGPU on the newer Haswell rMBP

How loud are the fans on last years version vs the newer Haswell's?
 
klover said:
The 750 is a simply a re-badged 650. Apple binned the best 650s for the rMBP 15" so the difference between them is marginal.

It seems that is using the best 650s and standard 750s, they minimized any improvements. Most benchmarks put the 750 ahead by 4-5%. Certainly not worth upgrading if your main concern is graphics performance.
Click to expand...

I realize the 750m is a rebadged 650m. I am concerned that the 750m is not performing as well as the 650m and am trying to decide if I should get a new maxed mbp or a refurb early 2013. I hope it is just driver issues that is causing the lower fps in the newer card, and that Apple updates it soon.
 
There's definitely a driver problem on some games. The quickest place to see this is running Minecraft, where the 750m gets half the performance of the Iris Pro. The telltale sign that there's a driver problem here is that the 750m doesn't even heat up (+ fans stay near idle), nor does it hit more than like 1.3A (it gets to about 3.05A while running Unigine Heaven by comparison).

That will explain situations like the one you describe where the 750m is getting half the performance of the 650m. Basically the drivers are not correctly telling the 750m that it's time to wake up and get to work, to put it in non-technical terms, which is a thing we've seen with driver issues on Kepler at the desktop level in the past.

As far as only seeing a 10% advantage of 750m over 650m in other tests... that's probably just how things are. Apple's 650m chips were already massively over clocked last year, there's just no more clock headroom on these things without significantly more cooling (even then it'd probably be unstable).
 
Atomic Walrus said:
There's definitely a driver problem on some games. The quickest place to see this is running Minecraft, where the 750m gets half the performance of the Iris Pro. The telltale sign that there's a driver problem here is that the 750m doesn't even heat up (+ fans stay near idle), nor does it hit more than like 1.3A (it gets to about 3.05A while running Unigine Heaven by comparison).

That will explain situations like the one you describe where the 750m is getting half the performance of the 650m. Basically the drivers are not correctly telling the 750m that it's time to wake up and get to work, to put it in non-technical terms, which is a thing we've seen with driver issues on Kepler at the desktop level in the past.

As far as only seeing a 10% advantage of 750m over 650m in other tests... that's probably just how things are. Apple's 650m chips were already massively over clocked last year, there's just no more clock headroom on these things without significantly more cooling (even then it'd probably be unstable).
Click to expand...

the 650m fans get loud when gaming ? how about general use?
 
Lord Flashheart said:
I realize the 750m is a rebadged 650m.
Click to expand...

If there are driver issues, a 750m is likely not a rebadged 650m. I believe I read the 750m is actually a rebadged 660m.

(And indeed, the specs verify that a 750m is NOT a 650m. For one, the base clock is higher.)

From Anandtech:
"Compared to the previous generation GTX 660M, GT 650M, GT645M, and GT 640M (not to mention the GT 640M LE), the new chips all have the same core set of features but now with GPU Boost 2.0 and higher memory clocks."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6873/nvidias-geforce-700m-family-full-details-and-specs/2

Maybe something is up with the new GPU Boost?
 
will this issue be resolved? how will we know if it's a driver issue? I have 9 days to return this and possibly get something else...Is a driver issue even fixable?
 
goMac said:
If there are driver issues, a 750m is likely not a rebadged 650m. I believe I read the 750m is actually a rebadged 660m.

(And indeed, the specs verify that a 750m is NOT a 650m. For one, the base clock is higher.)

From Anandtech:
"Compared to the previous generation GTX 660M, GT 650M, GT645M, and GT 640M (not to mention the GT 640M LE), the new chips all have the same core set of features but now with GPU Boost 2.0 and higher memory clocks."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6873/nvidias-geforce-700m-family-full-details-and-specs/2

Maybe something is up with the new GPU Boost?
Click to expand...

750m is definitely a 650m, it's just hugely overclocked. In the world of Kepler that doesn't mean you can't have driver issues. Nvidia's boost clock system is very complex, more so than any previous GPU generation. It's very easy for a driver problem to cause it to fail to clock up or draw power when it should be.

But yeah, basically I'm saying this likely is a problem with Nvidia's GPU Boost 2.0 drivers on OS X. My Minecraft results (and those WoW results) basically show the card running without any boost functionality (which controls power draw in addition to actual clock speeds).

Meanwhile I can load up CS:GO and it performs quite well. In Unigine Heaven it's very close to Iris Pro performance but I believe that's simply how it should be on that kind of synthetic.

Danlevm said:
will this issue be resolved? how will we know if it's a driver issue? I have 9 days to return this and possibly get something else...Is a driver issue even fixable?
Click to expand...

Driver issues are fixable (basically it's a software issue more or less). Nvidia's usually not as quick to get fixes out for OS X (they also have to go through Apple, where they tend to be packaged into larger OS X bigfix/update downloads).
 
Atomic Walrus said:
750m is definitely a 650m, it's just hugely overclocked. In the world of Kepler that doesn't mean you can't have driver issues. Nvidia's boost clock system is very complex, more so than any previous GPU generation. It's very easy for a driver problem to cause it to fail to clock up or draw power when it should be.

But yeah, basically I'm saying this likely is a problem with Nvidia's GPU Boost 2.0 drivers on OS X. My Minecraft results (and those WoW results) basically show the card running without any boost functionality (which controls power draw in addition to actual clock speeds).

Meanwhile I can load up CS:GO and it performs quite well. In Unigine Heaven it's very close to Iris Pro performance but I believe that's simply how it should be on that kind of synthetic.



Driver issues are fixable (basically it's a software issue more or less). Nvidia's usually not as quick to get fixes out for OS X (they also have to go through Apple, where they tend to be packaged into larger OS X bigfix/update downloads).
Click to expand...

Do you think apple/nvidia are aware of the problem? I find it odd that they didn't test these 2600 $ machines... pretty sad that last year's model is preforming better...
 
I would be upgrading from the MacBook Pro in my sig. It's battery is completely shot and only runs plugged in. I am concerned that the new macs are running slower in many gaming benchmarks. If it would be fixed soon, no problem. But I am torn between getting a top of the line refurb or the new one and this isn't helping.
 
Lord Flashheart said:
I would be upgrading from the MacBook Pro in my sig. It's battery is completely shot and only runs plugged in. I am concerned that the new macs are running slower in many gaming benchmarks. If it would be fixed soon, no problem. But I am torn between getting a top of the line refurb or the new one and this isn't helping.
Click to expand...

The GPU on your current MBP is 3.5-4 times slower then the 750m. You will get a huge gaming boost either way.

I can't see the 750m being slower then the 650m (if it is I'm sure it will be fixed). With higher texture settings the 750m has one nice advantage over the 650m by having double the VRAM.
 
Last edited:
simon48 said:
The GPU your current MBP is 3.5-4 times slower then the 750m. You will get a huge gaming boost either way.

I can't see the 750m being slower then the 650m (if it is I'm sure it will be fixed). With higher texture settings the 750m has one nice advantage over the 650m by having double the VRAM.
Click to expand...

That is what I am thinking. Anyone with a late 2013 with 750m care to post any benchmarks, especially gaming under OSX or Windows.
 
Did anybody check clock speeds. It doesn't appear to boost in windows 8.1 (efi). In MW3 at very high settings it stays at 925Mhz. Tough it should boost to some 1200 in theory.
 
How are your temps after some extended gaming period. My GPU is quite hot. 80C could be a problem although all I have installed is MW3 and that isn't exactly the most demanding game on the cpu side. Should be plenty left for the 750M to run high clock rates.

The GPU is also set to 926Mhz. Shouldn't 750M default be 967MHz?
 
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