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OS Neutral New 15 inch rMBP dedicated graphics card for gaming?

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Pineapples23

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 24, 2015
39
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Currently it is 750M now. How is that for gaming?

What is likely the new graphics card for the rMBP coming out later this year? Will it be a huge upgrade in terms of gaming? This includes gaming in bootcamp with windows.
 
Pineapples23 said:
Currently it is 750M now. How is that for gaming?
Click to expand...

Depends on what games you want to play, but overall, it's average at best.

Benchmarks

What is likely the new graphics card for the rMBP coming out later this year? Will it be a huge upgrade in terms of gaming? This includes gaming in bootcamp with windows.
Click to expand...

If Apple elects to put a discreet GPU into its next MacBook Pro line, it may be a variant of the AMD R9 M270X or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M. Don't be surprised, though, if they elect to drop the dGPU in its entirety with the introduction of Skylake. The Iris Pro 6200 is supposed to offer performance in the neighborhood of the current 750M.
 
saturnotaku said:
Depends on what games you want to play, but overall, it's average at best.

Benchmarks



If Apple elects to put a discreet GPU into its next MacBook Pro line, it may be a variant of the AMD R9 M270X or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M. Don't be surprised, though, if they elect to drop the dGPU in its entirety with the introduction of Skylake. The Iris Pro 6200 is supposed to offer performance in the neighborhood of the current 750M.
Click to expand...

I'd predict the high end model will have dedicated hardware and the lower models using the latest Iris Pro. That said I have no extra info just my guess on how I think things will go :)
 
Don't get me wrong, I hope Apple continues to use discreet GPUs in the MacBook Pro. I'm just saying to not be shocked if they decide to drop it.
 
Pineapples23 said:
Currently it is 750M now. How is that for gaming?

What is likely the new graphics card for the rMBP coming out later this year? Will it be a huge upgrade in terms of gaming? This includes gaming in bootcamp with windows.
Click to expand...

saturnotaku said:
Depends on what games you want to play, but overall, it's average at best.

Benchmarks

If Apple elects to put a discreet GPU into its next MacBook Pro line, it may be a variant of the AMD R9 M270X or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M. Don't be surprised, though, if they elect to drop the dGPU in its entirety with the introduction of Skylake. The Iris Pro 6200 is supposed to offer performance in the neighborhood of the current 750M.
Click to expand...

My experience with my 2011 MBR has been excellent for gaming. Of course, I'm playing games at med to low quality, but it does not matter. In World of Tanks I dont want to see tall grass, waving trees and tank tracks and I'm getting about 50-70 fps in a three year old laptop. I'm loving it. :) I would assume new Mac dedicated graphics would offer the same or better.
 
Currently the Iris Pro 5200 is quicker than the 2011 era AMD 6750...

The 750M is only 15-20% quicker overall. It's far from a night and day difference.
 
MagicBoy said:
The 750M is only 15-20% quicker overall. It's far from a night and day difference.
Click to expand...

It depends on the game and the options, if you push the resolution up to retina the Intel Iris Pro drops off in performance a lot quicker than the dedicated card.

That said the Iris Pro is a good performer for an integrated solution.
 
edddeduck said:
It depends on the game and the options, if you push the resolution up to retina the Intel Iris Pro drops off in performance a lot quicker than the dedicated card.

That said the Iris Pro is a good performer for an integrated solution.
Click to expand...

It does. Barefeats will have lots of benchmarks for those that like to look at graphs I expect.
 
From: http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-750M.90245.0.html

The very rare GDDR5 version even beats the GTX 660M. Most current games (as of 2013) can be played fluently in high settings. In older titles, there are also reserves for additional quality features like AA and AF. Detailed benchmarks can be found further down on this page.
Click to expand...

If you have the GDDR5 version which I have in my MacBook Pro it's a beast for sure. I can play games like DayZ and other top notch games at high or almost high settings.
 
Do you guys think the current MBP w/ 750M can play specific games well: far cry 4, battlefield hardline, dragon age inquisition, batman arkham knight?
 
Pineapples23 said:
Do you guys think the current MBP w/ 750M can play specific games well: far cry 4, battlefield hardline, dragon age inquisition, batman arkham knight?
Click to expand...

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-750M.90245.0.html

According to this site, you will be able to play well with medium settings and resolution (1366x768), but headroom to move towards higher resolutions or higher settings seems very limited.
There is only so much gaming performance one can expect from a Mac laptop. But the 750M is essentially a rebadged 650M, so it is 2012 technology. With an 850M the rMBP could be decent for casual gaming. Instead the current machine I wouldn't buy if I had any amount of gaming in mind.
 
If you game quite a bit, and at home, you'll get a better gaming rig than the MBP + a 13 inch MBA for the price of the MBP with dedicated graphics.

The Price difference between a 13 inch MBA and a 15 inch with 750M is a whopping $800. Which could build a decent gaming rig with an i5 and a GTX960.
 
If Apple is serious about OpenCL (and hey a dream of Metal on OS X) - wouldn't they want a serious OpenCL chip? Nvidia does seem to be dragging it's heels about OpenCL.

Maybe time for a change? (Or at least a non rebadged processor..).
 
t0mat0 said:
If Apple is serious about OpenCL (and hey a dream of Metal on OS X) - wouldn't they want a serious OpenCL chip? Nvidia does seem to be dragging it's heels about OpenCL.

Maybe time for a change? (Or at least a non rebadged processor..).
Click to expand...

All the card's from AMD, Intel and Nvidia have the same level of support (1.2) according to the links from Apple and I don't think there is any major bugs with Nvidia specifically when using OpenCL on Mac.

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202823
 
Pineapples23 said:
What is likely the new graphics card for the rMBP coming out later this year? Will it be a huge upgrade in terms of gaming? This includes gaming in bootcamp with windows.
Click to expand...

Are you saying that the next rMBP will skip Broadwell and go straight to Skylake? I get the feeling that the next release will be timed with the rMBA release, based on calendar history...at least, I hope so...(my MB is dying, and I don't want to purchase something on the tail end of the cycle)
 
I have no clue. I don't know too much about tech. ..I keep hearing about skylake...but I think it's going broadwell first.
 
the way graphic cards work is like this

650 < 750 < 850
670 < 770 < 870
680 < 780 < 880

the x50 cards are low end cards, you can get an msi gaming laptop with a 970m which is 2nd best tier for around 1800$ which is thinner and more storage than rmbp.

apple upgraded their 650m laptops to 750m rather than giving apple customers a better card, the upgrades from 650 to 750 to 850 to 950 are not much... sometimes there's barely any difference.

you can check wikipedia geforce card specs... the max gigaflops the 750m makes is around 740 gigaflops
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units

meanwhile the 870m has 2500+ gigaflops

970m is around 2500+ aswell

so if you want an apple computer, not only will your OS run a crappier version of whatever game, but it will also run on low graphics in low resolutions.

i used to buy apple laptops, but i couldn't take it anymore... i went with msi which is cheap and awesome, msi gaming laptops are better than alienware and asus rog.

i really miss OSX... but i can't bare having 750m, its 3 times worse than the card i have now 870m and i only paid 1850$ for this laptop... while the rmbp is 2650$ (canadian money)

i'm just being honest here, if you want to play games... dont bother getting the current model... hopefully the next model will be better... but if its a 850m or 950m ... its still ****. (i dont think 950m exists as of today)

ps: if you got that amount of money, spend it on 5K imac
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units#Radeon_Rx_M2xx_Series

the graphic card in the 5k is almost identical to the 970m, except 5K resolution requires more power, you'll have to downgrade your resolution in gaming to 1080p
 
Last edited:
t0mat0 said:
Would TB3 be enough for an external GPU card?
Click to expand...

earlier post you mentioned OpenCL... i dunno what CL is i think you mean OpenGL (and nvidia/amd support it)

not sure what TB3 is

also another thing you guys need to note is that each new generation of graphic cards runs hotter than the previous one... and on laptops this causes A LOT of heat and causes your games to encounter lag spikes that freeze the game for 1-3 seconds because the card is being "throttled" which basically means the card went from max speed to refreshed low speed and will work itself up again... the freezes happen all the time on laptops.

its better to get a desktop or all-in-one like imac where these freezes tend to happen a lot less, almost never.
 
I think TB3 is thunderbold 3 port.

Currently there is TB2.

Do you guys know of relatively easy ways of doing an external GPU to TB2? Can we just hook up a GPU to the TB2 port and thats it? do you have to do a lot of other things?
 
ah i'm not sure how external graphics card work on thunderbolt ports... no idea if its good or bad. i also never heard of a thunderbolt video card either... only pci express...

maybe im just completely noob about thunderbolt... never had a single device connect to those ports... couldn't find any at a decent price
 
Just buy a MacBook Air and get a desktop for $1000, will be more than enough to max out any game at 1080p.
 
soulsyphon said:
also another thing you guys need to note is that each new generation of graphic cards runs hotter than the previous one...
Click to expand...

This is not entirely true. The hottest Nvidia chips the last few years are the 400 series. Since that Nvidia has made cooler and cooler chips, except maybe 700 series are bit hotter than the 600 series.
 
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