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Nvidia GT 650M on rMBP actually better than Nvidia GTX 660M!
- Thread starter luigi.lauro
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in your opinion... I find pretty much every game looks fine at lower resolutions than native. Its noticeable on many monitors, but less noticeable on the Retina since the pixels are so small anyways. I think saying it looks like "crap" is a complete over-exaggeration. I can usually only tell the difference if I sit two side by side and look.
I wonder why they didn't just call it the 660M or even 655M... The 650 and 660 do have the same number of shader processors, right?
Could this have more to Nvidia? While the 650 and 660 have the same core they might not have the same bulk price to get the chips certified at the higher clock speed. Knowing that this is distinction without a difference, Apple pays for the 650 (and enters into a contract to label it as so) fully expecting as the OEM to be able to clock is they please because they are providing the warranty.
What kind of games are you playing? I've tried a bunch of Call of Duty games and GTA IV/EFLC and they all look fine at 1920 or even 1680 resolution. There's a very small difference in clarity- nowhere near as major as 'crap'.
Never liked the look running a non native resolution on a LCD. I know there's plenty of people here who can't notice or don't care, but it's quite noticeable for me. OTOH, d3 runs super smooth and looks great on my rMBP hooked up to a 24 inch 1900x1200 LCD.
Running an OS on a non-native resolution and a game are two different things. Change the resolution of the display on the desktop and I can easily tell the difference, but in a game it's very different.
I have Windows 7 set to 2880x1800- anything less and it's awful to my eyes. But the few games I have, I've set them to 1920 and there's little difference, even in a direct comparison.
They are redesigned to fit the slim form factor and to provide good cooling despite the slim design.
No it doesn't .. 1080P gaming looks super crisp, i've checked with my friends laptop.. Hell, even 1680x1050 looks just as good as the older macbook pros.
Nvdia 650M is no match against Flight Simulator X. On high settings busy airport like KLAX. 1680x1050 res.still gives me into a teen or even single digit Frame rate.
How does EFLC perform - what settings/FPS? Barely get by on my 13" with everything low but look forward to this game on the retina when I get it.
It appears to run cooler since the rMBP apparently does not throttle nearly as much as the cMBP. Not sure if that's in comparison with the 2011 or 2012 models though.
With the resolution set to 1920x1200, I just used auto-configure to set the distances and densities, then manually set all of the texture/shadow/reflection/night settings to High and Water to Low (because I don't particularly care about how the water looks, and I found that it improved FPS quite a bit when in areas around the water).
Benchmark tells me I'm getting 25-35 FPS with a +135 overclock in MSi Afterburner... it doesn't sound like much but gameplay is smooth to my eyes.
I couldn't see a major improvement in graphical quality between 2880 and 1920 (the only difference I could see was that the text in the menu was a bit crisper), but there was a big FPS improvement, so 1920 is perfectly fine imo.
If ever rMBP throttle down their speed it would be a whole lot of a drop frame rate.
I have yet to find a use for the card. Every graphics task I throw at my RMBP is handled just as well by the integrated card as by the dedicated one. As far as I'm concerned Apple should sell two versions of the RMBP, one for heavy gamers and one for everybody else. Seems like 90% of people will never need the nvidia card and would be better served by a computer that doesn't have it.
Does it dip down a lot when a lot is happening on screen, or is 25 fps like rock bottom? Im sure I can compromise anyway. Its good to know it can run high details.
It does go down to 20 or so occasionally, but it's only in intense shoot outs in missions. It's never unplayable.
It's all subjective and depends what is acceptable. Just like many here who state non-retina ready Office 2011 and CS6 look 'fine' with retina scaling (it looks horrible to me) 1080P IMHO is even worse than 1440x900 as you're not running a properly 2:1 scaled resolution. Are you playing Java games or what? Try running the game at full 2880x1800 vs 1080p, anything other than full res will look 'fuzzy' in comparison.
The key word is in 'comparison'. Of course it will look bad in comparison to 2880x1800. But will it look bad in comparison to a native 1080p panel? I don't think so. The pixels are small enough for the interpolation to be very close to emulating a native display.
well, it looks exactly as it looks on low res screens...so if you think that is crap, then I guess the retina screen is great!
Most games that won't run fluidly at 2880x1800 run at 1920x1200...and many even run at 2048x1536. Everything looks amazing.
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While I agree that games look perfectly fine at 1920x1200...they do not, in any way, look the same as 2880x1800! 2880 is twice the resolution and it looks vastly superior! So, the games that run smoothly at that res are a treat! For all else, it looks great...but the clarity at 2880x1800 is just unbelievable! It makes Call of Duty 4 look like a brand new title!! If they had a high res texture pack it would compete with Battlefield 3!
Your previous experience won't apply here. Everything on the Retina display looks smooth and solid in all of the different scaled modes. You have to see it to fully appreciate it. The reason is that even when you choose a lower resolution display mode, your UI elements and fonts are still rendered at the high Retina resolution. Fonts and UI elements are larger at the lower resolution settings, but those elements are still rendered using 2880x1800 screen pixels.
You just have to see it to believe it - previous experience doesn't apply here.