To Discrete or not to Discrete (GPU)

[northernmunky]

I had a play with the new 13" and 15" MacBook Pro today with touch bar and am considering an upgrade. I currently have a 15" MacBook Pro Late-2013 with GeForce 750M. I'm thinking of going slimmer with the 13" version as when I'm editing in FCPX, or doing tasks that require a bit more screen room I usually connect to my 4k external monitor anyway.

But then it occurred to me that the 13" doesn't have the discrete GPU, although I don't game at all on my MacBook or anything 3D oriented at all, so I'm wondering if there is any real benefit to having the discrete GPU for FCP editing over the Iris 550?

Whats been your experience?

The most I'll be doing is editing and compressing in 4K in FCPX, and of course playing back 4k video.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

I had a play with the new 13" and 15" MacBook Pro today with touch bar and am considering an upgrade. I currently have a 15" MacBook Pro Late-2013 with GeForce 750M. I'm thinking of going slimmer with the 13" version as when I'm editing in FCPX, or doing tasks that require a bit more screen room I usually connect to my 4k external monitor anyway.

But then it occurred to me that the 13" doesn't have the discrete GPU, although I don't game at all on my MacBook or anything 3D oriented at all, so I'm wondering if there is any real benefit to having the discrete GPU for FCP editing over the Iris 550?

Whats been your experience?

The most I'll be doing is editing and compressing in 4K in FCPX, and of course playing back 4k video.

Well the 15 inch will be a lot faster for fcpx over two times as fast in rendering etc if that matters to you (i.e. Time is money in these processes) then the 15 inch is a no brainier, if they don't mattter then the 13 inch will do what you want just a bit slower.

 

[kohlson]

Other sites, such as barefeats, regularly run benchmarks. All seem to show that Apple has addressed the "CPU ceiling" by leveraging the GPU in FCPX. It seems to make a significant difference in many parts of the workflow, and faster that competitive NLEs. FWIW my 2013 with GPU has no trouble when connected to a Dell 2715Q, but my (work) 2014 w/o GPU is sluggish in updating the screen. I think the Intel integrated GPU is more capable now, but ...

 

[maflynn]

I personally like the 15" form factor as you'll get more screen real estate, the iGPU is better and you have a quad core processor. Just my $.02