Will rMBP 13'' ever have discrete graphics? [RANT]

[Saladinos]

Honestly, if you want to game get a desktop but I know ppl like having the portability like myself. How many would be seriously playing a hardcore game on the go, probably unlikely, most likely you would be playing on a desk/table somewhere at home or at a friends place. But having the convenience of taking your laptop with is a plus.

The best setup for a macbook is an eGPU setup.
I'm currently running a GTX 670 via thunderbolt with a 13" retina. So far I'm only able to use it via an external monitor. Hopefully though I can get it running on the internal display.

I can tell you though, I've run crysis 2, borderlands 2, dead island, diablo 2 and starcraft 2 all running and max setting and full HD 1080 all games run pretty much perfect.

You can say it's a very expensive setup but I just sold my desktop and have no need for one now.

Seriously?!

Very nice if you're getting good results. Do you mind putting up some benchmarks? It'd be interesting to compare to the 15" RMBP. Thunderbolt only has 4 PCIe lanes, and there's debate as if and how they're divided up between devices. By comparison, the GT650M has 8 PCIe lanes just for it.

External PCIe boxes for Thunderbolt tend to be pretty expensive, too (OWC Helios goes for $380). Then you need to add the cost of the GPU to that. After all of that, you're likely to hit a bottleneck on the PCIe bus, so performance compared to the 15" RMBP is a bit of a toss-up. Value-for-money even more so.

 

[nostylez]

Seriously?!

Very nice if you're getting good results. Do you mind putting up some benchmarks? It'd be interesting to compare to the 15" RMBP. Thunderbolt only has 4 PCIe lanes, and there's debate as if and how they're divided up between devices. By comparison, the GT650M has 8 PCIe lanes just for it.

External PCIe boxes for Thunderbolt tend to be pretty expensive, too (OWC Helios goes for $380). Then you need to add the cost of the GPU to that. After all of that, you're likely to hit a bottleneck on the PCIe bus, so performance compared to the 15" RMBP is a bit of a toss-up. Value-for-money even more so.

It does add up for sure, I suggest you go here that is where you'll find the results, I will try and provide more performance details when I get a chance.

I'm hitting around 6k to low 6k mark on 3dmark11 and mostly due to the CPU.
Reason I went this route, I rarely used my desktop as much as I should which was pretty good gaming rig.

 

[Saladinos]

It does add up for sure, I suggest you go here that is where you'll find the results, I will try and provide more performance details when I get a chance.

I'm hitting around 6k to low 6k mark on 3dmark11 and mostly due to the CPU.
Reason I went this route, I rarely used my desktop as much as I should which was pretty good gaming rig.

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/3dm11/4923234/3dm11/4849811

Comparing your results to one I found on 3DMark's site (which appears to be a 15" RMBP), it looks like your external GPU still readily trounces the GT650M.

Those are some pretty good results, overall. The 15" gets some pride back in the CPU/physics tests (as expected) to win the combined test, but there's no doubt the external GPU performs well.

EDIT: Oh, and although the 3DMark and system versions appear slightly older on the 15" result, the GPU driver versions are the same. Just to rule that out.

 

[Erasmus]

Based on the benchmarks I've seen (maybe a year old now) only the most powerful desktop graphics cards actually use the bandwidth of 16x PCIE 2.0. And even they only suffer a small performance penalty of from memory around 10% on average when limited to x4 PCIE 2.0.

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Disagree in some extent. For instance, I travel a lot across the home country and sometimes go overseas so portability is of great importance for me and 13" is very suitable for my purposes. However during the trip I use several applications which are hardware greedy and it is necessary for me to have at least 16GB RAM as well as GPU. At the same time for those who would recommend 15" as an alternative I can say that dimension of the device is an issue. So now I have 2 variants: portability +low performance or performance+no portability and it's quite a task to make a choice in favor of the 1st or the 2nd variant because both are not for me.

The problem is that Apple have to draw the line somewhere. If Apple put a 650M in the 13" MBP, there would be a small number of people (I'm guessing very short people) still complaining that Apple don't make a 11" MacBook with a discrete GPU, because the 13" isn't portable enough. It starts to fall in the area of technically possible but not practical.

Also, if Apple put a discrete GPU in the 13", it would make it heavier, and impact battery life, which would make people cranky. I don't think Apple would go down the path of separating the 13" into an iGPU and dGPU models for technical reasons.

Finally, my personal opinion is that as Apple have just shaved 20% of the weight and volume off their 15" computer, the portability issue is now a non-issue. If the classic 13" MBP is portable enough for arbitrary person, the 15" RMBP will be portable enough for them too.

 

[throAU]

2 things to add:

- no it won't
- the discrete GPU market itself is not going to be around for ever. it is going to become a very small niche within a few years.


Don't believe me?

Look at what happened to the need to buy a network card for your PC (they're built in now). Look at what happened to the sound card market (onboard audio is good enough). Look what happened to crypto accelerators (built in AES instructions). If you go back even further, look at what happened to aftermarket FPU co-processors.


Intel's GPU performance is getting better at a rate faster than new software requirements are growing. HD5000 or HD6000 will be plenty for even the vast majority of gamers, I will bet. Hence, ATi and AMD merging, and Nvidia trying to get into other markets. They both know the writing is on the wall.

The days of people outside of the workstation market paying hundreds of dollars or more for a GPU are extremely numbered.

I'd MUCH rather they fit a quad core CPU in there than a GPU, to be honest.


And as far as thunderbolt GPUs go - this is why GPUs have dedicated/onboard memory. Whether the bus is PCIe 4x or 16x, if the GPU has to go to the bus for rendering because it ran out of local memory, performance takes a nose-dive.

So. Thunderbolt is probably good enough - assuming that the external GPU has been given plenty of video memory to cache what it needs to access locally.

 

[0x000000]

Honestly, if you want to game get a desktop but I know ppl like having the portability like myself. How many would be seriously playing a hardcore game on the go, probably unlikely, most likely you would be playing on a desk/table somewhere at home or at a friends place. But having the convenience of taking your laptop with is a plus.

The best setup for a macbook is an eGPU setup.
I'm currently running a GTX 670 via thunderbolt with a 13" retina. So far I'm only able to use it via an external monitor. Hopefully though I can get it running on the internal display.

I can tell you though, I've run crysis 2, borderlands 2, dead island, diablo 2 and starcraft 2 all running and max setting and full HD 1080 all games run pretty much perfect.

You can say it's a very expensive setup but I just sold my desktop and have no need for one now.

Whut, this is the first time I've even heard about thunderbolt GPUs.... Could you please go into some more detail? That'd be awesome!

 

[Mr MM]

Whut, this is the first time I've even heard about thunderbolt GPUs.... Could you please go into some more detail? That'd be awesome!

you can buy those already, look into the sonnet echo express, its mainly plug and play.

 

[Saladinos]

Intel's GPU performance is getting better at a rate faster than new software requirements are growing. HD5000 or HD6000 will be plenty for even the vast majority of gamers, I will bet. Hence, ATi and AMD merging, and Nvidia trying to get into other markets. They both know the writing is on the wall.

I'd rather the software requirements just grew faster. Come on, ray-tracing!

 

[reery]

I'd like to see a discrete in the 13" MBPs again. They just disappeared after the very nice 320M 2 years ago.

I think it's not possible to fit a 650M with 45W TDP into a 13" case because of 2 reasons:

- Power consumption would be far higher, resulting in 4-5 hours with mixed mode instead of 7 (Apple standard). It's also because of the smaller battery. I have a rMBP and while on iGPU I get 6-12 hours, and on the 650M I'm on 4-6 hours. So subtract 30% and this is how long the 13" would last.

- Thermal problems may occur because of the smaller case. The temperature on load is right now very high even without dGPU.

Maybe they could have fitted a 30W TDP discrete GPU inside the 13", this would have given me a minute to reconsider buying one.

 

[Mr MM]

I'd like to see a discrete in the 13" MBPs again. They just disappeared after the very nice 320M 2 years ago.

they never had, it was a igpu.

Maybe they could have fitted a 30W TDP discrete GPU inside the 13", this would have given me a minute to reconsider buying one.

they actually can, the thermal budget for the 13 rmbp is very high, actually that is one cold notebook on load just almost hitting 60c, its almost it doesnt, is just short of great, no 13 notebook does that

 

[pgiguere1]

So, moral of the story: "Discrete" is the new buzzword and uninformed customers will want that no matter what the actual performance is?

Oh, actually, no, it can also be integrated as long as there is "Nvidia" in the name. Then people assume it's better, like a Nvidia 9400M is better than an Intel HD 4000 right?

Then maybe Intel should consider licensing the use of the "Nvidia" name to put on its integrated graphics.

"The new 3rd-generation Intel Core processors with Nvidia HD 4000 graphics" would sell much better to uninformed customers right?

I'm sure OP would feel much better about its purchase and think it's so much better than crappy Intel integrated graphics.

Seriously though, do some research before posting this bull. We could have a serious discussion about the feasibility of putting discrete graphics in such a form factor, but it's hard to take you seriously when you start by making a bunch of bogus statements.

 

[Erasmus]

Someone needs a coffee....

But as others have said, the 13" MBP has never had a discrete graphics card. It did used to have an NVIDIA integrated card, back when NVIDIA could make chipsets for Intel CPUs, but they haven't had the licensing to do so for a year or so now.

As far as marketing is concerned, as far as I'm aware laptops are mostly advertised with the amount of graphics memory they have. e.g., "... with 512MB graphics." So Apple just have to put in the slowest discrete GPU they can find with like a GB of VRAM, and watch their sales soar, lol!

I have no doubt that Apple COULD put a decent dGPU in the 13", but considering they aren't even willing to put a quad CPU in it yet...

The 13" cMBP will remain the budget notebook, and the 13" rMBP will remain in limbo of budget specs with a low end pro price.

 

[reery]

I think it's about gaming regarding the discrete GPU.

I bought my rMBP not just for the high performance of the SSD/CPU in my work time, but also to use it in my little spare time to play games/emulators with a decent resolution and details. The 650M performs really great here for its 45W TDP. It outperforms my old 8800GT with over 105W by factor 2.

The 4000 is just too slow for a decent resolution and for upcoming games.

 

[nostylez]

I think it's about gaming regarding the discrete GPU.

I bought my rMBP not just for the high performance of the SSD/CPU in my work time, but also to use it in my little spare time to play games/emulators with a decent resolution and details. The 650M performs really great here for its 45W TDP. It outperforms my old 8800GT with over 105W by factor 2.

The 4000 is just too slow for a decent resolution and for upcoming games.

Which is a very small number.
Not worth the battery loss and heat on top of that.

 

[clyde2801]

Someone needs a coffee....

But as others have said, the 13" MBP has never had a discrete graphics card. It did used to have an NVIDIA integrated card, back when NVIDIA could make chipsets for Intel CPUs, but they haven't had the licensing to do so for a year or so now.

As far as marketing is concerned, as far as I'm aware laptops are mostly advertised with the amount of graphics memory they have. e.g., "... with 512MB graphics." So Apple just have to put in the slowest discrete GPU they can find with like a GB of VRAM, and watch their sales soar, lol!

I have no doubt that Apple COULD put a decent dGPU in the 13", but considering they aren't even willing to put a quad CPU in it yet...

The 13" cMBP will remain the budget notebook, and the 13" rMBP will remain in limbo of budget specs with a low end pro price.

I agree with you. What we're dancing around is that Apple is a positively evil genius when it comes to upselling: "Oh, you want more CPU and GPU power? You need a real-uh, I mean more capable-MacBook Pro. Let's walk around to the other side of the table and look at the 15's. Say, doesn't that big retina model look sharp?"

And I DON'T consider the 13" rMBP to have a 'low end pro price'.

 

[reery]

Which is a very small number.
Not worth the battery loss and heat on top of that.

I don't know how many want to play games. I'm one of them.
I know some people who don't play much but want a good GPU just for the occasion they got the desire to play a game. Therefore prefer a decent GPU in their iMacs or MacBooks.