Was Retina a FAIL idea? Bring back normal resolution.

[leman]

Fine, go ahead and load 8k textures on a 3milion poly model in mudbox on a retina mpb. Or some heavy after effects compositions. I have tons of projects done on a 2012 cmbp that simply craps out on the 2013 rmbp because the vram is not enough and in the case it does manage to load, just rotating the model or painting on it its an awesome slideshow experience, just what i wanted for precision work

I have difficulty buying this. The 2013 rMBP has a faster GPU and double (or quadruple) the VRAM — so how VRAM can be an issue? I am not familiar with mudbox, but the only reason I can imagine for it performing worse on the rMBP is that they have messed up the programming and are actually rendering to a HiDPI framebuffer. Which would be quite a silly thing to do, given the GPU speed...

 

[DubelBoom]

This may have been true a year or two ago. Now, Windows Ultrabooks have 3200x1800 displays, that is higher than the 15" rMBP (well, technically the same but a different aspect ration), and 4K monitor's prices are getting lower, so soon these will be common to.
The change has to come sometime, and now seems to be a pretty good timing, computers haven't changed for a long time.

My point is, now and in the very near future there will be MUCH more screens with high resolution, so things should get better. Better support by web pages and apps, CPUs and GPUs are getting better and more power efficient so they will be able to power all these pixels more easily and with better battery life.

 

[leman]

If you understand it, you would actually realize that basically ALL sites use pixel doubling to display on retina. They actually display at a resolution 2x less than you see on the screen, and then retina doubles the pixels. How is that efficient and how does that make sense?

Sorry, I missed this bit earlier in my reply.

Generally, what you wrote here is not true. It only applies to images. It is quite efficient and it makes a lot of sense. FYI, there is a lot of image resizing going on in web browsers even with normal displays.

 

[librarian]

I have difficulty buying this. The 2013 rMBP has a faster GPU and double (or quadruple) the VRAM — so how VRAM can be an issue? I am not familiar with mudbox, but the only reason I can imagine for it performing worse on the rMBP is that they have messed up the programming and are actually rendering to a HiDPI framebuffer. Which would be quite a silly thing to do, given the GPU speed...

Yeah, I wondered that too, but that's what i have experienced so far.
I personally do not own a 2013 rmbp but I had to use one for a couple of months for a project, so i had enough time to test and work with it in parallel with my units: a late 2012 i7 iMac and a 2012 classic mbp.
Based on specifications, the 750m is about 10%-15% faster compared to the 650m and have one extra GB of VRAM. That of course, if both cards are running stuff at same resolution, OS and software.

But here's what happened to me.
When running a 2013 rMBP Mac OS 10.9 tend to keep busy around 800mb-1,5gb out of 2gb of vram, this greatly depends on wich resolution is set up and how many monitors you're using.
When working with a Cintiq connected to the rMBP it goes out of memory quite fast and get a lot of out of memory errors when using multiple retina enabled applications such as After effects and photoshop. Multitasking Maya, Mudbox, Mari and Photoshop was simply impossibile in a multi monitor environment, i was forced to either work in clamshell mode or give up the cintiq.

just for comparison, when using the imac with the 680MX (2 GB) and 10.8 you usually have 1,7 gb available, and on a cmbp with the hires screen, mac os 10.8 and the 650M (1 GB) you have about 900 MB free. Connecting a Cintiq have a minimal impact on performance.

It is logical to me that gpu memory problems are also tied to the mac OS 10.9 improvements(!) and additions. If I'm not mistaken apple did increase the memory reserved on integrated gpus with mavericks and upcoming yosemite, probably to keep up the bigger OS vram needs.

The results for my workflow is that I cannot do production quality 3d and compositing work without compromises on the retina line, and I probably won't upgrade until we see adequate hardware for it. I rely a lot also on CUDA wich is vram dependant.

 

[stevemiller]

I can only speak for myself but I've had no issues with my rmbp for either work or play. After Effects, Premiere, Photoshop dont have updated icons, but the canvases all display retina, which means I can get 1:1 previews taking up much less screen real estate. Win.

I can't think of any problematic websites that I've encountered. Text is crisp and lots have high resolution image assets. High dpi displays have been around on phones and tablets for a while now, retina content is already prevalent.

I don't game heavily, but what I have tried looks fine

Also, with the retina upgrade came a move to much better colour fidelity with ips screens, which is a great benefit for both graphic work as well as general viewing angles.

I have plenty of beefs with apple, but pushing screen tech has been a good move in my opinion. We already having people crying out for 4k laptop screens; it's not going to be long before massive resolutions are ubiquitous

 

[xmichaelp]

I think 1080p is the superior resolution for modern computers for the next 10 years.

Yuck. Please no.

My current screens look like complete crap compared to retina ones. Can't wait to upgrade my MBP and won't get an iMac until it's retina.

I don't see the problem with most of your issues. You don't need to play games in retina resolution, retina is mostly needed for text and UI elements. If you play a game in a quarter of the res it would look just as good if it were native in that res. And isn't Windows scalable? Why wouldn't that work with the screen?

 

[laurihoefs]

-Windows 7 & 8 in the bootcamp is broken. This goes back to the prior point but I had used the bootcamp feature to play PC games on the Mac when I needed to, now they just won't even load most of the time because Windows can't read the retina resolution, especially in Steam.

I have not encountered a single game, that would not run on a 2012 rMBP because of the screen resolution.

A short list of games that I've tried, and have been running perfectly well:
Batman: Archam City
Bioshock Infinite
Borderlands 2
Dead Space 2
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Portal 2
RAGE
XCOM: Enemy Unknown

There are just few of the games I've played within the last year and a half, and all on Steam.

I've set up 1440*900 as custom resolution in Nvidia control panel, but I've also tried some older titles, like Neverwinter Nights 2, at 2880*1800. No issues.


What titles were you having issues with?
What kind of issues are you having?


Edit: forgot to mention, I've used Windows 7 and 8, both of which have their own quirks with high resolutions, but games were actually the only thing that worked perfectly on both.

 

[Freyqq]

A lot of computers are coming out with retina-class resolution on the PC side as well. Things have gotten significantly better over the past year, and it will continue to improve over time.

 

[Boneheadxan]

The 'Wheel' was ahead of it's time! Our ancestors should have just stuck to rolling Square Blocks down the hill!