Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

GMA 950 and 1680x1050 display

A

andrewheard

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 16, 2005
166
0
Ontario, Canada
Unfortunately the new MacBooks still have the GMA 950. I'm not a gamer by any means, I don't use pro apps and I don't have a 3D screensaver. All I want to know is if interface performance is decent when the MacBook is connected to a 20-inch 1680x1050 display.

Thanks for your time,

Andrew
 
andrewheard said:
Unfortunately the new MacBooks still have the GMA 950. I'm not a gamer by any means, I don't use pro apps and I don't have a 3D screensaver. All I want to know is if interface performance is decent when the MacBook is connected to a 20-inch 1680x1050 display.

Thanks for your time,

Andrew
Click to expand...

With 2GB of RAM in the system I have no complaints about performance on a 23" 1920 x 1200 LCD.

I was not happy with said performance with 1GB.
 
andrewheard said:
All I want to know is if interface performance is decent when the MacBook is connected to a 20-inch 1680x1050 display.
Click to expand...

Decent is about the only way to describe it. I have a MacBook running a 20" CRT at 1400x1050 + its internal display with 2 gigabytes of RAM and it works fairly well -- even with many less-than-intensive games -- except if I have a number of windows open and try to do Exposé. The animation can stutter pretty bad with a good number of windows (or a few active motion-based windows), and so do other animations such as Dashboard ripple/transition, etc. There are also some screensavers/Flash games/animations that stutter.

My monitor can run at 1600x1200 at 60 Hz, but I don't often run it at that so I'm not even running at the highest resolution. When running a secondary monitor, I'd stay away from intensive Quartz Composer-based screensavers as they seem to peg the CPU and you'll begin to hear the fan in short order.

I should point out, when running without a secondary monitor it works like a charm. And I should point out that lower resolutions seem to run exponentially better as you step down; not a real shocker, but...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back