I'm thinking about getting a MacBook Pro retina after they refresh them this March and I'm wondering if the 13 inch model will get an actual graphics card like the 15 inch model. I'm going to be learning to develop iOS apps but sometime in the future I may install Windows through BootCamp or learn video editing and the graphics card would help keep the MBP longer. Do you guys think the Intel Iris graphics are enough for these tasks if they don't add a graphics card?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Will next MacBook Pro 13in have graphics card
- Thread starter Aditya_S
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Nothing points towards the 13 inch model ever having a dedicated video card to be honest, so the 15 inch would probably be more suited to you if you really want a dedicated GPU in your laptop.
No. The 13" rMBP doesn't have enough cooling capability to keep a CPU and GPU within acceptable ranges.
They're fine. I mean, would a GPU help speed things up? Sure. Would it cut into the battery life? Yes.
I would love to see that as well, but intel doesnt have any chips that are in the TDP range for the 13 model.
As for dGPU, that probably seems slim to none considering they are focusing on keeping the 13 as low powered as possible.
In a word no.
However the skylake chips slated for the 13 inch have a small very fast eDRAM cache (64mb) on the iGPU and should provide a significant graphics performance boost.
Your intended use case won't see much benefit from a dGPU anyway.
However the skylake chips slated for the 13 inch have a small very fast eDRAM cache (64mb) on the iGPU and should provide a significant graphics performance boost.
Your intended use case won't see much benefit from a dGPU anyway.
If you look at Apple and Intel's overall strategy, it seems to be their goal to reduce the requirement of dGPUs on even high end equipment and have been able to get integrated graphics that push a Retina, 4K without much issue. The integrated graphics in the Skylake line compete with the dGPU of a MacBook Pro from 2014 and there's a lot of speculation that they may pass on dGPU in the high end versions of rMBPs as they did with the lower.
Essentially, I think it's fair to say that Iris is really good and unless there is a need that you actively know of for requiring a dGPU, you're more than well off - I would assume very few 13" Macbook Pro purchasers would need those specific requirements.
Essentially, I think it's fair to say that Iris is really good and unless there is a need that you actively know of for requiring a dGPU, you're more than well off - I would assume very few 13" Macbook Pro purchasers would need those specific requirements.
It really needs a graphics card because it is terrible at running videos full screen on 4k displays. Or really anything at full screen.