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Replacing Mid 2012 15" rMBP

redshovel

redshovel

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 19, 2007
516
111
My Mid 2012 2.6/16/512 rMBP with dedicated graphics had an 'accident' with some stairs and needs replaced.

I used it mainly at home with a cinema display for general Web surfing, movies, pages/numbers and probably the most stressful task it performed was running the game EVE Online. When I did carry it around I did sort of wish it was a bit lighter.

I now find myself torn between the stock 15" 2.3/16/512 with dedicated graphics or just getting a 13" BTO with 2.8/16/512

Would EVE (low settings) run on my cinema display ok without dedicated graphics now that Haswell/Iris is on board.

Any advice/guidance?
 
Well you should consider that the Iris graphics in the 13'' is much weaker than the Iris Pro in the 15'' - and that is still weaker than the 650M in your 2012 model.

Diablo 3 runs better on my 2011 (15'' with 6750M on 1650x1050) than on my 13'' rMBP (with 2.6 GHz, Iris and 1440x900). As far as I remember EVE is quite resource intensive.
 
Yes EVE is power hungry! Temps often hit the hight 90s on my last rMBP. Just have read so many conflicting reports, which some saying Iris is league with the 650M I had. Clearly you think not!
 
Leaning towards the 15" again. Scared the 13" will crap itself at the little gaming I do. Shame the 15" spec ain't in the same on the 13" - as I do like the portability.
 
redshovel said:
Yes EVE is power hungry! Temps often hit the hight 90s on my last rMBP. Just have read so many conflicting reports, which some saying Iris is league with the 650M I had. Clearly you think not!
Click to expand...

Well there is Iris and Iris Pro. The 13'' has Iris (HD 5100), while the 15'' gets Iris Pro (HD 5200). The main difference is that the HD 5200 has 128 MB of eDRAM on the CPU, which compensates some of the disadvantage of not having fast video RAM. The HD 5100 in the 13'' doesn't have this. This and a slightly lower clock rate makes the HD 5100 perform about 40% slower than the HD 5200, although this can vary from game to game.

So you have the HD 5200 which, depending on the game, is 20%-30% slower than the 650M (with GDDR5, like in the Macs). This would be fine. But then you have another say 30%-40% that the HD 5100 performs below the HD 5200, so in total you can expect to loose 50% gaming performance.

I would also like the 13'' with Iris Pro and quad core...


PS: The Iris Pro can beat the 650M in certain computing tasks, as yjchua95 said already. Also I believe that if you compare the Iris Pro to a 650M with DDR3 video ram, they might perform about equal for gaming.
 
yjchua95 said:
Note that Apple only uses GDDR5 variants of discrete GPUs. GDDR5 variants tend to perform far faster than the regular DDR3 variants.
Click to expand...

I believe I already mention this in my post. Intel of course prefers to compare to the slowest variant of the 650M, and the DDR3 version can indeed be found in many non-apple laptops.

A different question is whether the Iris or Iris Pro are good enough for casual gaming - I feel they are not quite there yet, but getting close.
 
If it's primarily for gaming go with the 15".

My 13" plays older games just fine (really only tried Portal2 so far but it runs like a champ). But it's mostly for work and portability was the main reason I went with it over the 15".
 
It's only for occasional gaming but reading previous replies I am now concerned, as good as Iris maybe is, it's still not gonna be good enough even on low settings.
 
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