We put the GPU to the test with Blizzard's Diablo III, running the new title at the MacBook Pro's native screen resolution of 2,880-by-1800 pixels and all settings on high. Anti-aliasing was turned off, because it's unnecessary with such a high resolution on the Retina display.
The Nvidia graphics card is put to good use in powering the high-resolution Retina display, which packs in the most pixels of any laptop screen ever.
Any debate over the validity of "Retina display" branding notwithstanding, this screen is in every way the best we've seen on a notebook, period. The extra pixels make text and images look fantastic, the colors on the LCD are bright and vivid, and viewing angles are also worthy of considerable praise.
It's Pro users that will get the most out of the new Retina display. With this many pixels available on the screen, native 1080p video will no longer take up your entire screen. That means you can see every single pixel of a video being edited while having adequate additional room to get work done. The same benefits can be seen for photographers editing super-high resolution images.
This change is understandable, as Apple obviously wants to move away from confusing resolution settings that might bewilder the average user. But having said that, this is a notebook with the word "Pro" in its name, and it's fair to assume that some professionals who work with a machine like this might want a greater degree of control over the display resolution.
Huh? how are you doing to do 1080p videos not taking up whole screen (unless you count black bars). The screen can only go up to 1200p on OSX.
I am going to trust anandtech with this much more than this site for reviews:
here you can see that the screen only goes up to 1200p on OSX. AND it comes at 1440x900. It is rendered down to whichever resolution you select which makes things sharper however .
So tell me again how much space you get with 1080p videos =.=
Also, Diablo III is only run-able early on in the game at high settings, once more here you can see that it runs decently, but it is not very far. Diablo becomes more demanding the farther you go (and higher difficulty). Sadly you cannot play in high later with 1800p. At least not smoothly
And than, well.... kinda sadly Windows can use the full resolution.... Although many games/etc do not work very well.
PS. i wish i could have one of these. Sadly, i do not have the money
I'll take that even further and say it obnoxious to suggest that Pro doesn't mean the user is a professional, which seems to apply to a notebook starting over $2k, but instead refers to the after-market upgradability of the machine. i can point out a highly customizable desktop PC that costs under $400 and yet I doubt those same people will call that a Pro machine. What it comes down to is elitist fuckery.
I love me some elitist fuckery. ;-)
Any pro worth his or her salt knows damn well that the best machine is the one that suits their need - monikers be damned. And like with everything else in life - different folks different strokes. I had a plumber who swore by the cheapest gear (drills, saws etc). Two reasons, he renewed them every year anyway and when his very beat up and and crappy - (but pro!) van got broken into it wasn't that expensive to replace all the gear. Ask the guy at the PRO plumber store and he'd shake his head at that - but to everybody else the only important question is - can my plumber plumb? Not many pro graphics designer do their main work on a laptop, but what if I design business cards? Am I a pro or not? An to token user ... sure, you are pro... with a $400.- Dell or NMBP retina fandango. It makes no difference. As I keep saying - its all perception and by extension, marketing.
Not to knock this machine too much (it really is an amazing notebook), but I would point out a couple of other items for the 'Bad' column:
~ The ram is not user upgradeable. In fact, it isn't upgradeable at all, with exception for the BTO option. Unless you opt for a built-to-order machine with maxed out ram (16gb), you're stuck with 8gb for life. Not terrible, but people working in motion graphics, video editing, etc., will want to take heed. So now it becomes a $2400 notebook, minimum.
~ Apple has doubled the price of battery replacement for this machine from $100 to $200. Not a huge deal since the kind of folks that will be dropping this kind of coin for a 'Pro' machine will likely upgrade before their 3rd year of AppleCare runs out. Still something to think about if you're the kind of person who thinks they'll be using the same machine in 5 years.
~ I'd reiterate that for graphics work (and particularly for the web) the retina screen might actually work against you until Adobe updates their suite to support it. I fired up Photoshop and Illustrator at the Apple Store on this thing the morning they had them on display. Aside from the obvious (UI elements), the output looked pretty bad and would be difficult to work with when trying to create 'pixel perfect' designs (vectors were jaggy, bitmaps were blurred a bit). I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that the entire rendering engine of Adobe's suite (and any other visual software) will have to be updated to support. This will likely take months at the minimum, and may depend on how fast Apple migrates this screen to the rest of their lineup. An obvious solution would be to output to a monitor (which many Pros already do), but this sort of defeats the purpose of paying extra for a retina display.
~ I'd reiterate that for graphics work (and particularly for the web) the retina screen might actually work against you until Adobe updates their suite to support it. I fired up Photoshop and Illustrator at the Apple Store on this thing the morning they had them on display. Aside from the obvious (UI elements), the output looked pretty bad and would be difficult to work with when trying to create 'pixel perfect' designs (vectors were jaggy, bitmaps were blurred a bit). I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that the entire rendering engine of Adobe's suite (and any other visual software) will have to be updated to support. This will likely take months at the minimum, and may depend on how fast Apple migrates this screen to the rest of their lineup. An obvious solution would be to output to a monitor (which many Pros already do), but this sort of defeats the purpose of paying extra for a retina display.
This is the second mention I have read about less than ideal image display with CS on MBP Retina. When I went to the Apple store to check them out I was more interested to see how they handled the the size and ratio of device pixels to image pixels. I really didn't focus on the image display quality at all and didn't even open Photoshop only inDesign and Illustrator. I did look at some typesetting and it seemed fine when viewed at 150% (which is close to 1:1 actual size).
Did you happen to notice if the image blurring and jaggies were present when viewed at 150%?
I even notice some of that on my Cinema Display when the Illustrator art is viewed at less than actual size. At actual size or greater it should view much better, at least I'm hoping that is the case.
Glossy screens are like tinnitus. Yes you can ignore it but it will consciously or subconsciously put a strain on your brain. Please Apple give us a screen without this awfull mirror reflection.
It only had a few apps that ran correctly on it. MacWrite and MacPaint.
The screen was not exactly "retina" scale. More like "dot matrix. And that Mac only came with 128K of memory. And no hard drive.
Do I think it was worth it? Sure.
Yeah and double that figure for inflation. But some things cost less now days, and some things cost more, relatively speaking. Computers have come way down is cost since then.
Not to knock this machine too much (it really is an amazing notebook), but I would point out a couple of other items for the 'Bad' column:
~ I'd reiterate that for graphics work (and particularly for the web) the retina screen might actually work against you until Adobe updates their suite to support it. I fired up Photoshop and Illustrator at the Apple Store on this thing the morning they had them on display. Aside from the obvious (UI elements), the output looked pretty bad and would be difficult to work with when trying to create 'pixel perfect' designs (vectors were jaggy, bitmaps were blurred a bit). I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that the entire rendering engine of Adobe's suite (and any other visual software) will have to be updated to support. This will likely take months at the minimum, and may depend on how fast Apple migrates this screen to the rest of their lineup. An obvious solution would be to output to a monitor (which many Pros already do), but this sort of defeats the purpose of paying extra for a retina display.
It only renders up to 1200p on OSX
Which still defeats the purpose of the retina display IMHO....
you can see my earlier post for the link to resolution info.
Glossy screens are like tinnitus. Yes you can ignore it but it will consciously or subconsciously put a strain on your brain. Please Apple give us a screen without this awfull mirror reflection.
I rather like the glossy screen. It seems more vibrant. Probably the colors are not as true but it is rich and beautiful. The problem with reflections is so easy to fix on a portable by just tilting or angling the screen ever so slightly. Perhaps it is less than ideal if you are trying to share the view with someone since you can't tell if they are getting a glare or not but for individual users it is a total non-issue. Glossy desktop screens can be a bit more of a challenge since the reflection angle is not as easily adjusted.
Not to knock this machine too much (it really is an amazing notebook), but I would point out a couple of other items for the 'Bad' column:
~ The ram is not user upgradeable. In fact, it isn't upgradeable at all, with exception for the BTO option. Unless you opt for a built-to-order machine with maxed out ram (16gb), you're stuck with 8gb for life. Not terrible, but people working in motion graphics, video editing, etc., will want to take heed. So now it becomes a $2400 notebook, minimum.
~ Apple has doubled the price of battery replacement for this machine from $100 to $200. Not a huge deal since the kind of folks that will be dropping this kind of coin for a 'Pro' machine will likely upgrade before their 3rd year of AppleCare runs out. Still something to think about if you're the kind of person who thinks they'll be using the same machine in 5 years.
~ I'd reiterate that for graphics work (and particularly for the web) the retina screen might actually work against you until Adobe updates their suite to support it. I fired up Photoshop and Illustrator at the Apple Store on this thing the morning they had them on display. Aside from the obvious (UI elements), the output looked pretty bad and would be difficult to work with when trying to create 'pixel perfect' designs (vectors were jaggy, bitmaps were blurred a bit). I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that the entire rendering engine of Adobe's suite (and any other visual software) will have to be updated to support. This will likely take months at the minimum, and may depend on how fast Apple migrates this screen to the rest of their lineup. An obvious solution would be to output to a monitor (which many Pros already do), but this sort of defeats the purpose of paying extra for a retina display.
Nothing personal, but this whole post just comes across as personal bitchyness to me.
Your complaints are all deeply hypothetical situations that most users simply don't care about and probably won't occur anyway.
I mean you're actually (seriously!), dissing the thing for having too good of a screen. And it comes with more stock RAM than any previous model, that can be upgraded to even more, and yet you criticise it for some hypothetical situation with not enough RAM that the user *might* get themselves into years down the road? That's just lame.
Glossy screens are like tinnitus. Yes you can ignore it but it will consciously or subconsciously put a strain on your brain. Please Apple give us a screen without this awfull mirror reflection.
Except this is not a glossy screen. I accidentally broke the glass on my work iMac last year and never replaced it; the bare LCD, like the new MBPwRD, definitely has less glare. You all should seriously consider trying the screen before you bash it.
I wish all the reviews of this wouldn't just have D3 as the exclusive game test, that is a very forgiving game. Even my three year old laptops 4570M can run 35FPS on 1920x1080. How about something like Skyrim in Boot Camp (even that's not that demanding, but I want to know if it can run at native on this) or Starcraft 2.
It irks me that the immediate assumption that the only people the "Pro" moniker applies to is graphics "professionals".
What about science professionals or data analyst professionals? Focus on the retina display by all means, but why does every single freeakin' review ignore the fact that this thing can be upgraded to a 2.7Ghz Quad Core i7 CPU, and the nVidia GPU runs at a CUDA 3.0 compute capability (hello? MatLab users?? Software engineers?)
Most of those would be using Quadros and maybe Firepros, would they not? The current Kepler chips actually have cut down DP performance compared to Fermi
Most of those would be using Quadros and maybe Firepros, would they not?
Not if they are mobile. I offload most of my processing to a high availability cluster ... but running code locally during development is vital too, and it is far more impressive to pop open a laptop running a simulation than showing a time lapse video or lugging in a desktop.
Quadros top out at 2.0 (compute capability), but they do have the advantage of being able to load multiple cards in a machine.
The power here isnt graphics. That is the visible tip of the iceberg. The power is the floating point processing and ability to pump large matrices of data through the GPU. I'm adapting code to run natural language processing through the GPU, other are doing FFT work through the GPU. That is the power. Running D3 at max settings is just a nice bonus.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider
We put the GPU to the test with Blizzard's Diablo III, running the new title at the MacBook Pro's native screen resolution of 2,880-by-1800 pixels and all settings on high. Anti-aliasing was turned off, because it's unnecessary with such a high resolution on the Retina display.
The Nvidia graphics card is put to good use in powering the high-resolution Retina display, which packs in the most pixels of any laptop screen ever.
Any debate over the validity of "Retina display" branding notwithstanding, this screen is in every way the best we've seen on a notebook, period. The extra pixels make text and images look fantastic, the colors on the LCD are bright and vivid, and viewing angles are also worthy of considerable praise.
It's Pro users that will get the most out of the new Retina display. With this many pixels available on the screen, native 1080p video will no longer take up your entire screen. That means you can see every single pixel of a video being edited while having adequate additional room to get work done. The same benefits can be seen for photographers editing super-high resolution images.
This change is understandable, as Apple obviously wants to move away from confusing resolution settings that might bewilder the average user. But having said that, this is a notebook with the word "Pro" in its name, and it's fair to assume that some professionals who work with a machine like this might want a greater degree of control over the display resolution.
Huh? how are you doing to do 1080p videos not taking up whole screen (unless you count black bars). The screen can only go up to 1200p on OSX.
I am going to trust anandtech with this much more than this site for reviews:
here you can see that the screen only goes up to 1200p on OSX. AND it comes at 1440x900. It is rendered down to whichever resolution you select which makes things sharper however
So tell me again how much space you get with 1080p videos =.=
Also, Diablo III is only run-able early on in the game at high settings, once more here you can see that it runs decently, but it is not very far. Diablo becomes more demanding the farther you go (and higher difficulty). Sadly you cannot play in high later with 1800p. At least not smoothly
And than, well.... kinda sadly Windows can use the full resolution.... Although many games/etc do not work very well.
PS. i wish i could have one of these. Sadly, i do not have the money
Hopefully they have more in stores soon... I really could use a new laptop before Google I/O
Quote:
Originally Posted by tokenuser
Yep. Pro is just a label on the computer, just as SS or GT is on a car.
It says nothing about the user or the driver or the intended purpose of the device.
The label is for the computer, not the person using the computer.
Just like GT 640s from nvidia.... although that is more an example of crappy naming lol
The first Mac I purchased cost $2495.
It only had a few apps that ran correctly on it. MacWrite and MacPaint.
The screen was not exactly "retina" scale. More like "dot matrix. And that Mac only came with 128K of memory. And no hard drive.
Do I think it was worth it? Sure.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
I'll take that even further and say it obnoxious to suggest that Pro doesn't mean the user is a professional, which seems to apply to a notebook starting over $2k, but instead refers to the after-market upgradability of the machine. i can point out a highly customizable desktop PC that costs under $400 and yet I doubt those same people will call that a Pro machine. What it comes down to is elitist fuckery.
I love me some elitist fuckery. ;-)
Any pro worth his or her salt knows damn well that the best machine is the one that suits their need - monikers be damned. And like with everything else in life - different folks different strokes. I had a plumber who swore by the cheapest gear (drills, saws etc). Two reasons, he renewed them every year anyway and when his very beat up and and crappy - (but pro!) van got broken into it wasn't that expensive to replace all the gear. Ask the guy at the PRO plumber store and he'd shake his head at that - but to everybody else the only important question is - can my plumber plumb? Not many pro graphics designer do their main work on a laptop, but what if I design business cards? Am I a pro or not? An to token user ... sure, you are pro... with a $400.- Dell or NMBP retina fandango. It makes no difference. As I keep saying - its all perception and by extension, marketing.
The difference between a Pro and Proseur.
Not to knock this machine too much (it really is an amazing notebook), but I would point out a couple of other items for the 'Bad' column:
~ The ram is not user upgradeable. In fact, it isn't upgradeable at all, with exception for the BTO option. Unless you opt for a built-to-order machine with maxed out ram (16gb), you're stuck with 8gb for life. Not terrible, but people working in motion graphics, video editing, etc., will want to take heed. So now it becomes a $2400 notebook, minimum.
~ Apple has doubled the price of battery replacement for this machine from $100 to $200. Not a huge deal since the kind of folks that will be dropping this kind of coin for a 'Pro' machine will likely upgrade before their 3rd year of AppleCare runs out. Still something to think about if you're the kind of person who thinks they'll be using the same machine in 5 years.
~ I'd reiterate that for graphics work (and particularly for the web) the retina screen might actually work against you until Adobe updates their suite to support it. I fired up Photoshop and Illustrator at the Apple Store on this thing the morning they had them on display. Aside from the obvious (UI elements), the output looked pretty bad and would be difficult to work with when trying to create 'pixel perfect' designs (vectors were jaggy, bitmaps were blurred a bit). I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that the entire rendering engine of Adobe's suite (and any other visual software) will have to be updated to support. This will likely take months at the minimum, and may depend on how fast Apple migrates this screen to the rest of their lineup. An obvious solution would be to output to a monitor (which many Pros already do), but this sort of defeats the purpose of paying extra for a retina display.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
The difference between a Pro and Proseur.
Which is why I DIY in a suit. I'm a PRO Proseur.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CPatterson
~ I'd reiterate that for graphics work (and particularly for the web) the retina screen might actually work against you until Adobe updates their suite to support it. I fired up Photoshop and Illustrator at the Apple Store on this thing the morning they had them on display. Aside from the obvious (UI elements), the output looked pretty bad and would be difficult to work with when trying to create 'pixel perfect' designs (vectors were jaggy, bitmaps were blurred a bit). I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that the entire rendering engine of Adobe's suite (and any other visual software) will have to be updated to support. This will likely take months at the minimum, and may depend on how fast Apple migrates this screen to the rest of their lineup. An obvious solution would be to output to a monitor (which many Pros already do), but this sort of defeats the purpose of paying extra for a retina display.
This is the second mention I have read about less than ideal image display with CS on MBP Retina. When I went to the Apple store to check them out I was more interested to see how they handled the the size and ratio of device pixels to image pixels. I really didn't focus on the image display quality at all and didn't even open Photoshop only inDesign and Illustrator. I did look at some typesetting and it seemed fine when viewed at 150% (which is close to 1:1 actual size).
Did you happen to notice if the image blurring and jaggies were present when viewed at 150%?
I even notice some of that on my Cinema Display when the Illustrator art is viewed at less than actual size. At actual size or greater it should view much better, at least I'm hoping that is the case.
Glossy screens are like tinnitus. Yes you can ignore it but it will consciously or subconsciously put a strain on your brain. Please Apple give us a screen without this awfull mirror reflection.
Quote:
Originally Posted by msimpson
The first Mac I purchased cost $2495.
It only had a few apps that ran correctly on it. MacWrite and MacPaint.
The screen was not exactly "retina" scale. More like "dot matrix. And that Mac only came with 128K of memory. And no hard drive.
Do I think it was worth it? Sure.
Yeah and double that figure for inflation. But some things cost less now days, and some things cost more, relatively speaking. Computers have come way down is cost since then.
I remember buying 1 meg stick of RAM for $1100
Quote:
Originally Posted by CPatterson
Not to knock this machine too much (it really is an amazing notebook), but I would point out a couple of other items for the 'Bad' column:
~ I'd reiterate that for graphics work (and particularly for the web) the retina screen might actually work against you until Adobe updates their suite to support it. I fired up Photoshop and Illustrator at the Apple Store on this thing the morning they had them on display. Aside from the obvious (UI elements), the output looked pretty bad and would be difficult to work with when trying to create 'pixel perfect' designs (vectors were jaggy, bitmaps were blurred a bit). I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that the entire rendering engine of Adobe's suite (and any other visual software) will have to be updated to support. This will likely take months at the minimum, and may depend on how fast Apple migrates this screen to the rest of their lineup. An obvious solution would be to output to a monitor (which many Pros already do), but this sort of defeats the purpose of paying extra for a retina display.
It only renders up to 1200p on OSX
Which still defeats the purpose of the retina display IMHO....
you can see my earlier post for the link to resolution info.
I was hoping for a haptic touch retina display and track pad with integrated cuticle groomer. Oh well, it's still an OK piece of hardware.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rune66
Glossy screens are like tinnitus. Yes you can ignore it but it will consciously or subconsciously put a strain on your brain. Please Apple give us a screen without this awfull mirror reflection.
I rather like the glossy screen. It seems more vibrant. Probably the colors are not as true but it is rich and beautiful. The problem with reflections is so easy to fix on a portable by just tilting or angling the screen ever so slightly. Perhaps it is less than ideal if you are trying to share the view with someone since you can't tell if they are getting a glare or not but for individual users it is a total non-issue. Glossy desktop screens can be a bit more of a challenge since the reflection angle is not as easily adjusted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CPatterson
Not to knock this machine too much (it really is an amazing notebook), but I would point out a couple of other items for the 'Bad' column:
~ The ram is not user upgradeable. In fact, it isn't upgradeable at all, with exception for the BTO option. Unless you opt for a built-to-order machine with maxed out ram (16gb), you're stuck with 8gb for life. Not terrible, but people working in motion graphics, video editing, etc., will want to take heed. So now it becomes a $2400 notebook, minimum.
~ Apple has doubled the price of battery replacement for this machine from $100 to $200. Not a huge deal since the kind of folks that will be dropping this kind of coin for a 'Pro' machine will likely upgrade before their 3rd year of AppleCare runs out. Still something to think about if you're the kind of person who thinks they'll be using the same machine in 5 years.
~ I'd reiterate that for graphics work (and particularly for the web) the retina screen might actually work against you until Adobe updates their suite to support it. I fired up Photoshop and Illustrator at the Apple Store on this thing the morning they had them on display. Aside from the obvious (UI elements), the output looked pretty bad and would be difficult to work with when trying to create 'pixel perfect' designs (vectors were jaggy, bitmaps were blurred a bit). I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that the entire rendering engine of Adobe's suite (and any other visual software) will have to be updated to support. This will likely take months at the minimum, and may depend on how fast Apple migrates this screen to the rest of their lineup. An obvious solution would be to output to a monitor (which many Pros already do), but this sort of defeats the purpose of paying extra for a retina display.
Nothing personal, but this whole post just comes across as personal bitchyness to me.
Your complaints are all deeply hypothetical situations that most users simply don't care about and probably won't occur anyway.
I mean you're actually (seriously!), dissing the thing for having too good of a screen. And it comes with more stock RAM than any previous model, that can be upgraded to even more, and yet you criticise it for some hypothetical situation with not enough RAM that the user *might* get themselves into years down the road? That's just lame.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rune66
Glossy screens are like tinnitus. Yes you can ignore it but it will consciously or subconsciously put a strain on your brain. Please Apple give us a screen without this awfull mirror reflection.
Except this is not a glossy screen. I accidentally broke the glass on my work iMac last year and never replaced it; the bare LCD, like the new MBPwRD, definitely has less glare. You all should seriously consider trying the screen before you bash it.
I wish all the reviews of this wouldn't just have D3 as the exclusive game test, that is a very forgiving game. Even my three year old laptops 4570M can run 35FPS on 1920x1080. How about something like Skyrim in Boot Camp (even that's not that demanding, but I want to know if it can run at native on this) or Starcraft 2.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tokenuser
It irks me that the immediate assumption that the only people the "Pro" moniker applies to is graphics "professionals".
What about science professionals or data analyst professionals? Focus on the retina display by all means, but why does every single freeakin' review ignore the fact that this thing can be upgraded to a 2.7Ghz Quad Core i7 CPU, and the nVidia GPU runs at a CUDA 3.0 compute capability (hello? MatLab users?? Software engineers?)
Most of those would be using Quadros and maybe Firepros, would they not? The current Kepler chips actually have cut down DP performance compared to Fermi
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5699/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-review/17
Quote:
Originally Posted by tipoo
Most of those would be using Quadros and maybe Firepros, would they not?
Not if they are mobile. I offload most of my processing to a high availability cluster ... but running code locally during development is vital too, and it is far more impressive to pop open a laptop running a simulation than showing a time lapse video or lugging in a desktop.
Quadros top out at 2.0 (compute capability), but they do have the advantage of being able to load multiple cards in a machine.
The power here isnt graphics. That is the visible tip of the iceberg. The power is the floating point processing and ability to pump large matrices of data through the GPU. I'm adapting code to run natural language processing through the GPU, other are doing FFT work through the GPU. That is the power. Running D3 at max settings is just a nice bonus.