Understanding MBP Graphics - Iris Pro vs NVIDIA GT 750M

[yjchua95]

im a college student and im already bought mbp mid 2012 and i lost it now since the new rmbp late 2013 is out im willing to buy it for my college daily such as photoshop, final cut, after effect etc. im a gamer too i installed my lost mbp with bootcamp and im playing a hard gaming such as bf3, cod bo 2, crysis 3. but its not a ultra setting i use. i dont usethe AA, FXXA and anything except the texture, shadow and resolution im putting on high.
my question is should i buy mbpr or other gaming laptop or mbpr high end that comes with 750m nvidia GPU.
im sorry for my typo. im indonesian
thanks in advance

Okay, if you're going for games, pergi beli ngan GT750M, jangan sesal nanti.

PS I've been living in Malaysia for a long time, so some of my Malay may seem a bit funny to you.

 

[maartendc]

Hello there,

I have been reading the discussion with much interest. It is interesting to see that Iris Pro might be faster in some cases than the GT 750m.

I have a different question though: because of the price, the top-end model with GT 750m is no option for me. So I am on the fence between these two models, one new, one refurbished:

Macbook pro 15 inch (haswell)
2.0GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.2GHz (Haswell)
16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
256GB PCIe-based Flash Storage
Intel Iris pro graphics
$2199

Refurbished Macbook pro 15 inch (Ivy Bridge)
Originally released February 2013
2.7GHz Quad-core Intel i7 (Turbo Boost up to 3.7GHz)
16GB of 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
512GB Flash Storage
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
$2169

They are similarly priced, but the refurbished one has a higher clocked Ivy Bridge and GT 650m, the new one has a lower clocked Haswell and Iris Pro.

I will be using the laptop mainly for CAD architecture work: Vectorworks, Photoshop CS6, Illustrator, SketchUp, V-ray rendering with Sketchup, maybe some movie editing. I would also like to play some games. Which one would be better for my needs? Should I go for the extra battery life of the Haswell one? Or will the refurbished one be much faster?

I would greatly appreciate any guidance. Thanks a lot!

Maarten

 

[dspmac]

Hello (and sorry for any inconvenience caused, I am brand new in this forum)

maarten, I have the exact same question. During the last days I have been questioning these two models and the importance of the dedicated graphics card when it comes to rendering. I am an architecture student as well so I would like VRay and Adobe Suite perform at their best.

I would be happy to hear what you came to think is best.

Thank you,
Deb

 

[bill-p]

Go 650M or 750M if you ever intend to make full use of the high resolution display of the rMBP for 3D graphics.

For those who want to see how Iris Pro stacks up against the older 650M, Anand already benchmarked it on the iMac.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7399/...review-iris-pro-driving-an-accurate-display/3

650M is literally twice as fast in some cases, like this one:

The only time when Iris Pro is faster than 650M or 750M is with OpenCL, but as far as I know, OpenCL is used in a very limited number of applications, and certainly (as of this time) no CAD software supports it. You're still far better served by a GPU that can push higher resolutions.

 

[kwokaaron]

Hello there,

I have been reading the discussion with much interest. It is interesting to see that Iris Pro might be faster in some cases than the GT 750m.

I have a different question though: because of the price, the top-end model with GT 750m is no option for me. So I am on the fence between these two models, one new, one refurbished:

Macbook pro 15 inch (haswell)
2.0GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.2GHz (Haswell)
16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
256GB PCIe-based Flash Storage
Intel Iris pro graphics
$2199

Refurbished Macbook pro 15 inch (Ivy Bridge)
Originally released February 2013
2.7GHz Quad-core Intel i7 (Turbo Boost up to 3.7GHz)
16GB of 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
512GB Flash Storage
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
$2169

They are similarly priced, but the refurbished one has a higher clocked Ivy Bridge and GT 650m, the new one has a lower clocked Haswell and Iris Pro.

I will be using the laptop mainly for CAD architecture work: Vectorworks, Photoshop CS6, Illustrator, SketchUp, V-ray rendering with Sketchup, maybe some movie editing. I would also like to play some games. Which one would be better for my needs? Should I go for the extra battery life of the Haswell one? Or will the refurbished one be much faster?

I would greatly appreciate any guidance. Thanks a lot!

Maarten

Based on your application usage and the fact you want to play games, I would say get the refurbished one. Games at high quality will lag behind for the Iris Pro as shown in this anandtech article: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6993/intel-iris-pro-5200-graphics-review-core-i74950hq-tested. Also, I'm seeing battery improvements on my Ivy Bridge rMBP running Mavericks so that should be fine. The refurbished cpu will definitely be faster than the Haswell one. The flash storage on the Haswell one is slightly faster but the Ivy bridge Flash is already fast enough so don't worry about that either.

 

[aquablue]

Excuse me, i'm a pretty clueless student and I'm interested in this computer, but I am facing the same dilemma on which graphics option to get. I'm targeting the 15 inch 2.3ghz. I'm confused with the different opinions I've read.

I will be primarily using it for music production, adobe suite, a little video and some cad/3d modeling and rendering mainly for architectural renderings. I may play the odd game, but I'm not a big gamer and i'm not buying this thing for games.

Is the iris pro good enough for my needs or will the 750m be helpful to improve 3d rendering and modeling apps and other graphics apps? If so, i may spring for the 750m. Which option is best for me?

Thanks for your help!!

 

[fs454]

Yes, with gfxCardStatus, you can. I think doing so would be crazy, since the dynamic switching works reasonably well, but you could certainly do this.

Too many people are getting caught up by some small anecdotal complaints about dynamic switching not being optimal and losing sight of the big picture.

Dynamic switching is NOT optimal. There's no reason for me to have to drain my battery 3x faster because I have Photoshop or Dreamweaver open. By using the above utility I've been able to do actual work while flying or wherever else I've been without an outlet without losing my laptop after under three hours. There's no need for PS, and even more so Dreamweaver, to need the dedicated GPU while on battery. I'm not doing anything crazy, and if I was, I'd opt for the dGPU myself.

I almost returned my rMBP before I figured out it was possible to manually control it.

 

[john123]

Dynamic switching is NOT optimal.

Yes, that is what I said. The real question is why Apple doesn't let users control this via a preference in Energy Saver. They added an "automatic graphics switching" button, but why they haven't incorporated better options, including one to disable the GPU while on battery power, is beyond me.

 

[aquablue]

Hello (and sorry for any inconvenience caused, I am brand new in this forum)

maarten, I have the exact same question. During the last days I have been questioning these two models and the importance of the dedicated graphics card when it comes to rendering. I am an architecture student as well so I would like VRay and Adobe Suite perform at their best.

I would be happy to hear what you came to think is best.

Thank you,
Deb

Go 650M or 750M if you ever intend to make full use of the high resolution display of the rMBP for 3D graphics.

For those who want to see how Iris Pro stacks up against the older 650M, Anand already benchmarked it on the iMac.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7399/...review-iris-pro-driving-an-accurate-display/3

650M is literally twice as fast in some cases, like this one:

Image

The only time when Iris Pro is faster than 650M or 750M is with OpenCL, but as far as I know, OpenCL is used in a very limited number of applications, and certainly (as of this time) no CAD software supports it. You're still far better served by a GPU that can push higher resolutions.

So does this mean that photoshop will be faster with the iris pro version since it uses open cl, while apps like cad, after effects, 3d modeling and rendering, etc, will benefit from the integrated Gpu?

I posted above what I'll be using it for.


I'll be using all of the above software, but ill be using photoshop and video more than 3d rendering. Best option for me?
Thx,
Adam

 

[smoking monkey]

Yes, that is what I said. The real question is why Apple doesn't let users control this via a preference in Energy Saver. They added an "automatic graphics switching" button, but why they haven't incorporated better options, including one to disable the GPU while on battery power, is beyond me.

My 2009 17" has that - you can choose which card to use in the energy saving prefs. Now that I got the latest machine I'm going to try out that program you and others have recommended - GFX card status.

 

[dusk007]

Yes, that is what I said. The real question is why Apple doesn't let users control this via a preference in Energy Saver. They added an "automatic graphics switching" button, but why they haven't incorporated better options, including one to disable the GPU while on battery power, is beyond me.

It is because of the way they load frameworks. They never seemed to manage to unload the dGPU ones and switch back to the Intel while an app is loaded. They were never interested in fixing it or it was too difficult and they didn't have the confidence or they tried and failed, who knows.
I assume that the implemented API for Intel is a subset of the nvidia one. So while you can always switch to nvidia, you must reinitialize the graphics frameworks when nvidia is used so the program doesn't use api calls only supported on nvidia hardware.
They never managed to implement enough features in the drivers to reach equality or never managed to allow for a simple enough way for programmers to get all the necessary code inplace to switch while running.
The downside to this whole thing is that if an app needs the dGPU and only runs in the background doing nothing like Photoshop (that you didn't close) it always keeps the dGPU active. I think the mentality at Apple was it is good enough and we won't bother until iGPUs come around that allow us to dump the dGPU completely.
That is I think one reason why some assumed the dGPU would go this time already. Apple probably wants it gone. They aren't interested in spending time and money getting a better solution when ultimately dropping the dGPU is just a matter of time.

 

[maartendc]

Based on your application usage and the fact you want to play games, I would say get the refurbished one. (...)
Also, I'm seeing battery improvements on my Ivy Bridge rMBP running Mavericks so that should be fine. The refurbished cpu will definitely be faster than the Haswell one. The flash storage on the Haswell one is slightly faster but the Ivy bridge Flash is already fast enough so don't worry about that either.

Thank you very much for your response. I agree, I think the CPU is faster, and the flash storage will not make that much of a difference, except when writing large files perhaps. It is good to know that your laptop has improved battery on Mavericks as well!

Hello (and sorry for any inconvenience caused, I am brand new in this forum)

maarten, I have the exact same question. During the last days I have been questioning these two models and the importance of the dedicated graphics card when it comes to rendering. I am an architecture student as well so I would like VRay and Adobe Suite perform at their best.

I would be happy to hear what you came to think is best.

Thank you,
Deb

Hello Deb,

I think I will buy the refurbished Ivy Bridge with 2.6 ghz and Geforce 650m (mid-2012 model) because:

- The 2.6 ghz Ivy Bridge processor will be about 5-11% faster than the 2.0 ghz haswell one. I think for actual scene rendering, the CPU is the most important part of the laptop, so the extra CPU power is important.
For real-time 3d modeling (like rotating your 3D model on screen), the graphics card will be more important. I think for most tasks, the 650M is probably still faster than the Iris Pro. The 650m is on average not much slower than even the 750m in the high-end Haswell mbp, an average of maybe 5%.

- The 2.6 ghz in the mid-2012 refurbished is only about 2% slower than the 2.7 ghz early-2013 refurbished model, but it is almost $100 cheaper. Otherwise both laptops are identical.

- The increased battery life on Haswell is only about 1 hour (7 hours -> 8 hours)

- You get much better value on the refurbished ones with bigger SSD and more RAM for the same amount of money. This will matter more in the long run than than the battery life or the slight performance increases.


Here is a good benchmark website for the processors: http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks


Good luck with your decision!
Maarten

 

[mr.bee]

I'm getting a bit annoyed about this 'get a refurbished one' advise. I'm not saying it's a bad advise I appreciate it. But refurbished outside of the US is rare. At least it is here in Belgium. Never saw a refurb in the official apple store.

I get the feeling that the dgpu is mainly used for games and high end loads of pixel driving processing. I extensively read and search this forum. But I never saw one thread saying: I like my rmbp with iris pro only. It can take a heavy workload and you won't notice it in the ui'
Or 'I only notice it when doing this or this'.

 

[ipodlover77]

Dynamic switching is NOT optimal. There's no reason for me to have to drain my battery 3x faster because I have Photoshop or Dreamweaver open. By using the above utility I've been able to do actual work while flying or wherever else I've been without an outlet without losing my laptop after under three hours. There's no need for PS, and even more so Dreamweaver, to need the dedicated GPU while on battery. I'm not doing anything crazy, and if I was, I'd opt for the dGPU myself.

I almost returned my rMBP before I figured out it was possible to manually control it.

Is dynamic switching smart enough to realize not to switch during daily usage tasks such as youtube, word processing, etc etc? I ask because Im contemplating on downloading gfxCardStatus and just switching it off to prolong battery life but if dynamic switching already is turning off the gpu for the tasks im doing then there isn't really a point in downloading it.

 

[dusk007]

It depends on the apps you use. If you stick entirely to Apple's own apps, it behaves somewhat reasonably. Having iPhoto open and managing your library will call the dGPU to action for absolutely no understandable reason. Safari and Quicktime player keep with the Iris Pro even when Flash shows up.

Chrome, Opera, or just about any other browser will trigger the dGPU as soon as any Flash shows up (some sooner) and the dGPU will never turn off again once the Flash tab is closed. You have to shut down Chrome completely CMD+Q.
VLC triggers the dGPU.
Also keep in mind the dGPU is active even if one offending app is only open, maybe in the background like vlc because you clicked a movie two hours ago. VLC doesn't shut down on its own like most Mac apps don't. It stays there open even if no video is playing all the time preventing the dGPU from turning off.

Not using gfxCardStatus just limits the apps you can use quite a lot to pretty much all Apple stuff. If you run any external screen, gfxCardStatus is useless and you will need to restart all these apps in order to force Iris Pro again after disconnecting the external(more annoying this is with projectors).

Download it, even if just to see which GPU is active.

 

[bill-p]

^ that's probably behavior for an older MacBook (I don't have one so I can't verify).

On my Retina MacBook, only 2 application forces the dGPU to be on: Photoshop and AutoCAD.

The rest runs on the iGPU all the time.

And I get on average around 7-8 hours of battery life out of random mixed coding/debugging usage.

 

[thekev]

Hello there,

I have been reading the discussion with much interest. It is interesting to see that Iris Pro might be faster in some cases than the GT 750m.

I have a different question though: because of the price, the top-end model with GT 750m is no option for me. So I am on the fence between these two models, one new, one refurbished:

Macbook pro 15 inch (haswell)
2.0GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.2GHz (Haswell)
16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
256GB PCIe-based Flash Storage
Intel Iris pro graphics
$2199

Refurbished Macbook pro 15 inch (Ivy Bridge)
Originally released February 2013
2.7GHz Quad-core Intel i7 (Turbo Boost up to 3.7GHz)
16GB of 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
512GB Flash Storage
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
$2169

They are similarly priced, but the refurbished one has a higher clocked Ivy Bridge and GT 650m, the new one has a lower clocked Haswell and Iris Pro.

I will be using the laptop mainly for CAD architecture work: Vectorworks, Photoshop CS6, Illustrator, SketchUp, V-ray rendering with Sketchup, maybe some movie editing. I would also like to play some games. Which one would be better for my needs? Should I go for the extra battery life of the Haswell one? Or will the refurbished one be much faster?

I would greatly appreciate any guidance. Thanks a lot!

Maarten

Battery life isn't that great a difference. Some of those things are going to be terrible without being plugged in no matter what. Vray will put everything to work, as well any CAD that highly tessellates parametric surfaces. The 650m would be better for games. Its advantage is variable though. I also like the extra storage capacity offered by the refurbished model. The ivy bridge cpu is going to be marginally faster than the 2.0 haswell. To me the 2012s seem like a better value at the moment. The 650m also seems to have been a decent gpu implementation. The 6750m from 2011 was not.

 

[fs454]

Is dynamic switching smart enough to realize not to switch during daily usage tasks such as youtube, word processing, etc etc? I ask because Im contemplating on downloading gfxCardStatus and just switching it off to prolong battery life but if dynamic switching already is turning off the gpu for the tasks im doing then there isn't really a point in downloading it.

Sort of. It stays away from the dGPU for the most part, but I've caught it switching on some sites while in Safari.

Check it out for yourself, though. gfxCardStatus gives you notifications every time it switches, and also has a top bar icon that switches from an "i" for integrated to an "n" for nvidia whenever each one is active. It's a good way to check what's getting used during your daily workflow. If you find that it switches more often than you'd like, you can keep it on integrated by closing the app, forcing Integrated Only via gfxcardstatus, and then relaunching. From the point that you tell it you want integrated only, any apps you launch after that which may want to call for the dGPU won't do it.

 

[dusk007]

^ that's probably behavior for an older MacBook (I don't have one so I can't verify).

No it is the behavior of a 2013 rMBP with Iris Pro and the 750M. Which is what I am running right now.
I updated VLC and they did fix it now. As far as iPhoto and Chrome go I got the latest updates and everything is as I said.

 

[bill-p]

No it is the behavior of a 2013 rMBP with Iris Pro and the 750M. Which is what I am running right now.
I updated VLC and they did fix it now. As far as iPhoto and Chrome go I got the latest updates and everything is as I said.

That's interesting. I wonder if Apple changed anything for the 2013 rMBP.

Because my 2012 still only fires up the 650M when either AutoCAD or Photoshop CS6 are running. Nothing else (VLC, iPhoto, Chrome or Safari or otherwise...) can get the dGPU going. Except for maybe when I try to experiment with WebGL.

 

[dusk007]

Weird. The only reasonable thing I can think of is that I don't have a clean install on the new one. Every part is updated but I did a time machine backup from my old when I got it. It didn't copy everything over. I had to redo lots of preferences and some installed stuff like Maven and Macports wasn't saved by time machine for some reason. Obviously update some apps that wouldn't work anymore.
Any flash stuff like youtube triggers the dGPU. Sometimes Chrome shuts down the helper thread again but not always. Still flash really shouldn't require a dGPU. It would still leave iphoto which I must say, I dislike on the retina. If you have any lower res pictures in your library the default and max zoom levels are annoying.

I don't have AutoCAD or Photoshop and it would never need the dGPU for anything other than Starcraft 2 in OSX.
It may just be Apple. I did some testing and while the difference in battery life is fairly big in low load scenarios (5-8h battery life range) in the higher load scenarios (<4h) I measured the exact same power draw (which was 30W for the load I tried).

 

[UBS28]

The 750m beats the Iris Pro significantly in games under OS X (I forced the GPU to Intel Iris Pro and then back to the 750m). Only in Counterstrike source was the performance difference not significantly large.

If there are some cases where the Iris Pro is faster and the automatic GPU goes to the 750m, just force it back to the Intel Pro if the algorithm chooses the wrong GPU. You're only limiting yourself by going for the low-end model.

With the 2.3 ghz / 16 gb/ 750m, you easily get 11 hours of battery life doing light work. So there are no battery life concerns with the 750m model.

And with the low-end model, you can't use CUDA which can be a deal breaker. You're restricted to OpenCL with the low-end model.

 

[Vanilla35]

So who else thinks the dGPU is gone next year?

 

[thunng8]

So does this mean that photoshop will be faster with the iris pro version since it uses open cl, while apps like cad, after effects, 3d modeling and rendering, etc, will benefit from the integrated Gpu?

I posted above what I'll be using it for.


I'll be using all of the above software, but ill be using photoshop and video more than 3d rendering. Best option for me?
Thx,
Adam

Photoshop CC uses opencl in 3 filters:

Field Blur, Iris Blur, and Tilt-Shift

Source:http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cs6-gpu-faq1.html

if you are not using those filters, then there will be no benefit.

----------

So who else thinks the dGPU is gone next year?

Doubt it .. according to Nvidia, there will be major gain in their graphics card performance once Maxwell is released mid next year. If you believe Nvidia's hype, the gain will be huge.

My prediction -> the gap in performance between integrated and discrete late next year will be similar to what it is now. In that case, Apple will still likely keep the discrete for higher end models.

 

[thekev]

Yes, that is what I said. The real question is why Apple doesn't let users control this via a preference in Energy Saver. They added an "automatic graphics switching" button, but why they haven't incorporated better options, including one to disable the GPU while on battery power, is beyond me.

I don't understand it either. They used to do this with cpu use where you could actually set it to "reduced" in preferences. I don't remember how long ago that ended. I think it was pre-Snow Leopard. A manual override would make a lot of sense though for times when battery is the only option.

Photoshop CC uses opencl in 3 filters:

Field Blur, Iris Blur, and Tilt-Shift

It works with liquify too, and warp IIRC. In actual use, the difference is trivial as both are supported. Saying one is better in actual use is splitting hairs.