rMBP, Resolutions, and Performance/Quality

[chaoscarrot]

Hey guys,

I picked up a rMBP last week and while I'm still in the 2 week return window I wanted to make sure I made the best purchase.

So the best for retina resolution is just way too big for me. 1680 x 1050 hidpi was nice, but I felt it should be even smaller so I used switchres to add in a 1920x1200 hidpi resolution.

Now I can definitely state that I like the way OSX handles this better than Windows (on windows with these sorts of high res screens lots of text looks very blurry). However, if I have this right, the higher resolution you push in hidpi, the bigger the performance and battery hit. Will this change as the software evolves? It definitely will with Windows, but I'm not sure if it will with OSX.

My other question is, has anyone actually tested and quantified how big the performance and battery hits are by using these higher resolutions? I also know that through switchres I can set it at its native display and there won't be any scaling. If I do this, will that mitigate or even eliminate the performance/battery issues? I know everything will look very small in this case.

 

[leman]

Now I can definitely state that I like the way OSX handles this better than Windows (on windows with these sorts of high res screens lots of text looks very blurry). However, if I have this right, the higher resolution you push in hidpi, the bigger the performance and battery hit. Will this change as the software evolves? It definitely will with Windows, but I'm not sure if it will with OSX.

What about your experience? Did you notice any degradation in performance and/or battery life? I certainly didn't on my 2012 machine.

It is clear that there is some penalty for using higher resolution, simply because the CPU/GPU need to perform more work. This penalty will always be there, no matter how efficient the software gets. But I am very sceptical about the claim that this penalty is that substantial to begin with. In the end, it is your experience that determines whether the laptop is good enough for you or not.