New Retina Display Macbook Pro 2012 Lacks in Graphics Performance: Analysis
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July 1, 2012 •
AnandTech has posted the first short review of Apple’s recently released Retina Display Macbook Pro earlier this month, in which the site examined the machine’s display performance, and compared its color and contrast to other notebooks available in the market.
Now, the site posted a full review of RD Macbook Pro 2012 after spending more time and energies for analyzing the machines performance. The new report enriched with technically-detailed perspective is definitely worth a read, and its part that concerns to graphic performance of the new Macbook Pro requires special attention to explore some new ideas about the machine.
The report describes that With the integrated Intel HD 4000 and distinct NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M graphics units capable for pushing 2880×1800 pixels in standard Retina mode and as many as 3840×2400 pixels before downscaling to display 1920×1200 at its highest non-Retina resolution, Apple is evidently pushing the limits of the Macbook Pro’s graphics capabilities.
Retina MacBook Pro at 21 fps while scrolling (meter smiling at top left)
At the default setting, either Intel’s HD 4000 or NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 650M already have to render and display far more pixels than either GPU was ever intended to. At the 1680 and 1920 settings however the GPUs are doing more work than even their high-end desktop counterparts are used to.
AnandTech also reveals that the graphics performance of the machine is inconsistent, and notes that the Retina Display MacBook Pro sometimes struggles to maintain a “consistently smooth experience”.
At 2880 x 1800 most interactions are smooth but things like zooming windows or scrolling on certain web pages is clearly sub-30fps. At the higher scaled resolutions, since the GPU has to render as much as 9.2MP, even UI performance can be sluggish. There’s simply nothing that can be done at this point – Apple is pushing the limits of the hardware we have available today, far beyond what any other OEM has done.
Coming to the browser scrolling behavior, which also engages considerable CPU load, AnandTech notes that the resource-intensive Facebook news feed pages can display at over 50 fps on a 2011 MacBook Pro, but that the new Retina MacBook Pro hardly hits 20 fps as it delivers so many more pixels.
The report claims that though new OS X Mountain Lion will help to resolve majority of these issues by leveraging Core Animation, but it will still only able be able to hit 20-30 fps under Mountain Lion.
The site expects that Apple will soon address the entire issues by bringing improvements in performance of Macbook Pro 2012 when the lovers of demands new ultra-high resolution displays will impose their opinion to the company.
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