Scaled 1920x1200 vs. 2880 native on RMBP

[Zorn]

Anyone compared performance between the scaled 1920x1200 mode and the native 2880? It's my understanding that the 1920 mode is actually scaled up 3 times higher then scaled down to 1920 equivalent. Is the performance hit less when using a hack to use the native res since theres no scaling?

 

[Zorn]

Bump, still curious about this

 

[Stetrain]

"Looks Like 1920x1200 mode" is actually 3840x2400, with HiDPI (2x) mode enabled, meaning that retina-enabled apps use double-res artwork and non-retina-enabled apps get scaled up to double their size.

The final image is then scaled down to 2880x1800 to display on screen.


Running in "native" 2880x1800 mode without HiDPI ('Looks like 1440x900' mode is also 2880x1800, just with HiDPI mode enabled) renders directly to 2880x1800. No double-resolution artwork is used.

So running at unscaled 2880x1800 should perform a bit better than the "looks like 1920x1200" mode.

 

[NathanA]

In my experience on a 2.3GHz machine, yes: scrolling is noticeably more choppy to me in 1920x1200 HiDPI (which is rendered at 3840x2400 off-screen and then scaled down to fit 2880x1800) than it is at 2880x1800 native/non-HiDPI. 2880 native scrolling performs much like 1440 HiDPI/"Best for Retina" does after installing the updates to bring the Lion 10.7.4 system build number up to 11E2620.

You could always use 1920x1200 non-HiDPI which feels very fluid, but it definitely does not look as nice.

-- Nathan