MacBook Pro Graphics

mathiasbmathiasb
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014

I have a question concerning the graphics in a mid 2012 MacBook Pro.

This MacBook Pro has two graphic cards:

- Intel HD 4000 with 1GB vram

- GeForce GT 650M with 512MB

 

The Intel HD has more ram than the GeForco, so will the Intel HD be better for some tasks?

?Or is this just a stupid statement?

 

(My main use is Aperture)

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    cristian florezcristian florez Posts: 6member

    the nvidea card out performs the intel HD in every single scenario possible. go on notebookcheck.com and see the difference is so big. the gt 650m can run battlefield 3 and other big games on medium settings with over 30 fps. the intel one will not run it even on lowest settings. the only advantage is less power so more battery. video ram can only be compared in similar models like the g650 vs AMD counterpart 

  • Reply 2 of 3
    mathiasbmathiasb Posts: 14member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Cristian Florez View Post

     

    the nvidea card out performs the intel HD in every single scenario possible. go on notebookcheck.com and see the difference is so big. the gt 650m can run battlefield 3 and other big games on medium settings with over 30 fps. the intel one will not run it even on lowest settings. the only advantage is less power so more battery. video ram can only be compared in similar models like the g650 vs AMD counterpart 


    Thanks!

    So I shouldn't worry about running out of video ram...

  • Reply 3 of 3
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    Well first; technically the machine has tow GPUs not cards.

    Second; The Intel GPU has access to system RAM which Mavericks dynamically allocates to the GPU. This is rather a dramatic improvement to Mac OS and should make for far more flexible performance from the integrated GPU.

    mathiasb wrote: »
    I have a question concerning the graphics in a mid 2012 MacBook Pro.
    This MacBook Pro has two graphic cards:
    - Intel HD 4000 with 1GB vram
    - GeForce GT 650M with 512MB

    The Intel HD has more ram than the GeForco, so will the Intel HD be better for some tasks?
    This is actually a good question and the right answer is yes in some cases it can be an advantage. Maybe not so much because of more RAM but less overhead getting to that RAM. Some very interesting results are seen in OpenCL tests where the Internal GPU accelerates apps a lot more than maybe was expected. If you use OpenCL or apps that use it, the Haswell GPU, especially the Iris variants, may be a far better chip for acceleration.
    ?Or is this just a stupid statement?

    (My main use is Aperture)
    Well for Aperture right now it probably doesn't matter. Mainly because Aperture doesn't strike me as being extremely accelerated to begin with.

    Now that being said OpenCL acceleration of Aperture might work rather well on Haswell, I just don't have practical experience here to guide you one way or the other. Your best bet would be to find benchmarking sites that over these sorts of things.
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