RMBP what res?

[J273]

Ive had my RMBP since launch and love the thing. I know there was a thread on here when they first came out with regards what res to use.

Now the machines been out a while what res have you all settled on?

Im using scaled inbetween retina and more space.


Whats everyone else using?

 

[dusk007]

Look for the thread. I think a fair few switched often and most settled either on the more space or the max space. That is largely because nobody goes lower than retina and the people that bother to post in such a thread usually are the ones who run higher than "best for retina". The majority of people probably run best for retina but they don't post in these threads.

 

[Yahooligan]

It's an interesting question from the aspect of who uses what, but if you're asking for advice on what you should run then that is a personal preference and should be dictated by what you need and want.

There is no "best" resolution, IMO, other than the one that you like the best.

 

[Vanilla35]

Isn't the "Best for Retina" the only true 1400x900 resolution (doubled) and anything above that (more space) would be less crisp?

 

[Yahooligan]

Isn't the "Best for Retina" the only true 1400x900 resolution (doubled) and anything above that (more space) would be less crisp?

It's all about scaling, yes, but the 1440x900 "Best for Retina" is actually quadruple the pixels, not double. Even running scaled to be like 1920x1200 there are still more physical pixels on the display than at that scaled resolution so, in theory, it should still be crisper than a display that's 1920x1200 native.

 

[dusk007]

Isn't the "Best for Retina" the only true 1400x900 resolution (doubled) and anything above that (more space) would be less crisp?

At the resolutions that you run this on you really won't notice a difference from any reasonable viewing distance.
It is a matter of how big you want your icons, status bar, the general gui. I would consider 1440x900 at 15" just unacceptable for the size most gui elements in programs are designed for. Just bloated. Once you are used to smaller you will see little point going back.
Stuff like browser content can be zoomed any way one wants and is always crisp.

 

[Vanilla35]

At the resolutions that you run this on you really won't notice a difference from any reasonable viewing distance.
It is a matter of how big you want your icons, status bar, the general gui. I would consider 1440x900 at 15" just unacceptable for the size most gui elements in programs are designed for. Just bloated. Once you are used to smaller you will see little point going back.
Stuff like browser content can be zoomed any way one wants and is always crisp.

See I don't do that kind of thinking. I want the most crisp of options for my display, regardless of what's "noticeable". I personally don't need 1080p screen real estate, but I also don't use said programs that you speak of.

It's all about scaling, yes, but the 1440x900 "Best for Retina" is actually quadruple the pixels, not double. Even running scaled to be like 1920x1200 there are still more physical pixels on the display than at that scaled resolution so, in theory, it should still be crisper than a display that's 1920x1200 native.

Hm, something about that just sounds sketch. In theory, the display is 1440x900, scaled twice the density. That is native. So anything above native, would be more blurry. If it's losing quality in some way shape or form, I doubt it could be better than a native 1080p screen

 

[Yahooligan]

Hm, something about that just sounds sketch. In theory, the display is 1440x900, scaled twice the density. That is native. So anything above native, would be more blurry. If it's losing quality in some way shape or form, I doubt it could be better than a native 1080p screen

Sorry, no. Do the math.

2880 is double 1440, yes.
1800 is double 900, yes.

2880x1800 is not double 1440x900, it's quadruple the pixels.

2880x1800 = 5,184,000 pixels
1440x900 = 1,296,000 pixels

Running an rMBP at "Best for Retina" is 4x the pixel density.

Which is why I said that even running at 1920x1200 is still a higher pixel density on the Retina than a native 1920x1200 display.

1920x1200 = 2,304,000 pixels or a little more than half of the Retina's pixels, which is why the Retina will still look better scaled to 1920x1200 than a native 1920x1200 display.

 

[robvas]

Which is why I said that even running at 1920x1200 is still a higher pixel density on the Retina than a native 1920x1200 display.

While that's technically true, you are then using 'blurry' pixels. You'll see artifacts, so you will not have as good a picture. You're seeing a more accurate representation of the image on a 1920x1200 native screen.

 

[Vanilla35]

Sorry, no. Do the math.

2880 is double 1440, yes.
1800 is double 900, yes.

2880x1800 is not double 1440x900, it's quadruple the pixels.

2880x1800 = 5,184,000 pixels
1440x900 = 1,296,000 pixels

Running an rMBP at "Best for Retina" is 4x the pixel density.

Which is why I said that even running at 1920x1200 is still a higher pixel density on the Retina than a native 1920x1200 display.

1920x1200 = 2,304,000 pixels or a little more than half of the Retina's pixels, which is why the Retina will still look better scaled to 1920x1200 than a native 1920x1200 display.

Okay yeah sorry I definitely messed up there lol. I'm not trying to prove anything though, just curious. So if you can say that there are more pixels, does that automatically mean it's more crisp, regardless of the scaling? I understand that the scaling may take out some pixels used, which is what scaling is (for other resolutions) but does that not hinder crispness at all? There's got to be some funky performance issues at least with the whole pixel quadrupling and what not. That's probably where all the lag in the retina line comes from. It's not just browser smoothness, it appears to be inherent.

 

[Yahooligan]

While that's technically true, you are then using 'blurry' pixels.

If you are running a full-screen app at a RESOLUTION of 1920x1200 then yes, blurry. We're not talking about that here, we're talking about UI scaling and scaled to 1920x1200 is not blurry.

Changing the UI scaling doesn't change the screen resolution.

 

[Vanilla35]

While that's technically true, you are then using 'blurry' pixels. You'll see artifacts, so you will not have as good a picture. You're seeing a more accurate representation of the image on a 1920x1200 native screen.

Yeah this is kinda what I was thinking. Cus if you're using more pixels than 1920x1200, but your resolution is only 1920x1200, there has to be some blur there, from the downsizing. Just like when you try to play a 1080p video on a 720p screen on youtube. It's compressed, right?

 

[Yahooligan]

Yeah this is kinda what I was thinking. Cus if you're using more pixels than 1920x1200, but your resolution is only 1920x1200, there has to be some blur there, from the downsizing. Just like when you try to play a 1080p video on a 720p screen on youtube. It's compressed, right?

See post above, the resolution is not changing, the display is still running at a native resolution regardless of the UI scaling. People are confusing changing the scaling and changing the resolution.

 

[Yahooligan]

If you guys don't believe me, take screen shots (cmd-shift-3) and look at the resulting image sizes for the following when done on the desktop...

Best for Retina
Looks like 1680x1050
Looks like 1920x1200

Also note that it's "Looks like" since it's not changing the resolution of the display, it's changing the scale of the elements on the display while the resolution stays the same.

So as I said, UI scaling and resolution are two different things.

Watching a 1080p movie full-screen on a Retina is not the same as if you could set the UI scaling to 1080p.

Does it make sense yet?

 

[jav6454]

Ive had my RMBP since launch and love the thing. I know there was a thread on here when they first came out with regards what res to use.

Now the machines been out a while what res have you all settled on?

Im using scaled inbetween retina and more space.


Whats everyone else using?

If I were to get a retina, it would be for the Retina quality itself. For space, I have Apple's elegant solution released back in 2007... OS X Spaces feature. Multiple desktops. Just swipe left or right.

 

[vseera]

Actually, I switched to the most space option (1920) the day I got it. Couldn't stand the default best for retina UI. Looks like a Fisher Price UI when its at that settings, everything is so big!

But then, I got a stand for my laptop and external mouse and keyboard. Having the notebook a bit away from me made me realise that I was squinting sometimes to see text.

Hence, I am now at the one in between (1680x1050) and I find that to be the optimal resolution for this thing.

Of course, everyone has different needs and will set it up differently.

 

[leman]

See post above, the resolution is not changing, the display is still running at a native resolution regardless of the UI scaling. People are confusing changing the scaling and changing the resolution.

What changes is the sampling (rendering) resolution, i.e. the mapping of logical to physical pixels. Its not just scaling, its the actual resolution of the rendered desktop. E.g. at 1440x900 (retina) OS X renders a 2880x1800 desktop image and at 1920x1200 (retina) it renders a 3840x2400 image. The 'physical' resolution always stays the same of course, but that is a very trivial truth which applies to ALL LCD monitors

 

[Yahooligan]

What changes is the sampling (rendering) resolution, i.e. the mapping of logical to physical pixels. Its not just scaling, its the actual resolution of the rendered desktop. E.g. at 1440x900 (retina) OS X renders a 2880x1800 desktop image and at 1920x1200 (retina) it renders a 3840x2400 image. The 'physical' resolution always stays the same of course, but that is a very trivial truth which applies to ALL LCD monitors

Yes, but you're still comparing changing the display resolution to UI scaling and you can't interchange them here because that's not what's happening.

UI scaling changes the scaling of the desktop elements (Icons, text, dock, menu bar, etc) without the display itself having to render the image or process the non-native resolution signal, in this case the larger image is scaled to fit the native Retina resolution. When you change the actual input resolution sent to a display it is up to the display to render the lower-resolution image and blow it up to the higher resolution display and this causes the blurry image. On the other hand, most displays can't process a signal that has a higher resolution than the native display supports.

What's happening with the more space scaling is as you said, OS X is taking a larger image and scaling it down to the Retina's native resolution. The display is still processing a 2880x1800 signal. This seems to be what people are missing.

Will the more space scaling options be as sharp as the "Best for Retina?" No, but they won't be "blurry" either because the display is not processing anything other than the signal for its native resolution, the more space scaling is, as you said, taking a larger image and scaling it down to fit on a 2880x1800 display. Again, the display is still processing a signal for its native resolution and not having to do any conversion.

Retina scaling in OS X is like DPI scaling in Windows, it is not comparable to changing the actual resolution sent from the GPU to the display.

 

[leman]

Yes, but you're still comparing changing the display resolution to UI scaling and you can't interchange them here because that's not what's happening.

...


Again, the display is still processing a signal for its native resolution and not having to do any conversion.

Aren't we just arguing semantics? With a non-native resolution input, the display has to perform the signal rescaling itself, in the rMBP case it is performed by the OS. I don't see the principal difference. In both cases, the OS renders image of resolution different from the physical one (except the 1440x900 HiDPI mode of course). How does it matter where exactly the image rescaling takes place?

Retina scaling in OS X is like DPI scaling in Windows, it is not comparable to changing the actual resolution sent from the GPU to the display.

Nope, its an entirely different thing! With Windows DPI scaling you tell the system (now I want each pixel be drawn X times of its actual size). OS X HiDPI modes always treat a logical pixel as a cluster of 2x2 physical pixels. Basically, Windows always draws a desktop image of the same resolution, just the size of the UI chances. With OS X, the logical size of the UI does not change, what changes is the resolution of the rendered desktop image. E.g. the same button will occupy 100 logical pixels with both the 1400x900 HiDPI mode and the 1920x1200 HiDPI mode, but because the later is rendering a much bigger image overall, the button will appear smaller. Very different logic.

 

[dusk007]

Yes Windows DPI scaling is different. The thing though is that scaling a huge image down doesn't result in any blurriness scaling up does done by the display. And at the resolution we are talking about I doubt anybody would ever notice any artifacts. Nobody has eyes that good. You need to sit with your nose touching the screen and look for stuff.

BTW displays never scale down. They always only support scaling up.