Forget Anti Aliasing - Where is PPI

[Subyman]

I don't understand. Why are you guys debating over a pieced together, bargain-bin desktop compared to the highest end ultraportable laptop on the market?

I mean really? Refurb green HDD vs 256GB SSD. Generic TN panel vs highest PPI, color calibrated display on the market. Mobile, all aluminum chassis versus steel/plastic junker case.

The comparison is, like Arkaign said, apples to oranges. No one buys a RMBP to max out games on, well expect retarded college kids.

 

[Enigmoid]

Well it's apples to oranges, but yes, I can build a $500 desktop that will game better. I wouldn't include all the rMBP has due to much of it being pointless or unnecessary for good gaming performance (eg; SSD, nice to have but purely a luxury for gaming, much better to have superior GPU first, worry about SSD later).

Generic mATX Case 30
500W PSU 30
970 Mobo 55
8GB DDR3 35
FX 6300 140
1GB 7850 165
750GB HDD (refurb, but with warranty) 40

495. Granted, that assumes someone has an OS, monitor, and keyboard to re-use. But let's just say you needed an Asus 23" IPS screen for $250, and a keyboard/mouse set of respectable quality for $50, and an OS for $100. That brings us up well short of $1k, a far cry from the nearly $3k MBP. Hell you could add a 27" IPS 2560x1440 panel, i7-3770k, Z77 mobo, 512GB SSD, 5.1 Speakers, 750W PSU, and 7970 or 680 and STILL be way cheaper than a MBP.

The MBP is actually a great device for what it is, it's just not built for gaming, it's more of an afterthought that it can do it at all.

And a FX 6300 w/7850 will eat the 2.6ghz i7 w/650M alive in gaming. We're talking the difference between legit 1080p performance with high details and being severely crippled without turning a lot of stuff down in stuff like FC3/etc.

Edit : all prices above from newegg, piecing together w/used the whole thing can be done for $500 including display, and still be a better gaming setup. While the MBP is good at being portable and well balanced otherwise.

I never mentioned the mbp or said it was good for gaming. I meant that you could not build a comparable computer for $500. (I mean without making major concessions and leaving out parts). The post I quoted implies this and I apologize. My main point was that if you include all the frills (OS, monitor, etc) the gap between desktop and laptop shrinks.

Yes the 650m is nothing compared to desktop cards (roughly 1/4 as powerful as a 680) but for mobile devices its actually quite powerful (gt 450) and twice as powerful as its predecessor (gt 540m).

That build would work though but would honestly be pretty crappy ($30 psu?).

 

[Arkaign]

I never mentioned the mbp or said it was good for gaming. I meant that you could not build a comparable computer for $500. (I mean without making major concessions and leaving out parts). The post I quoted implies this and I apologize. My main point was that if you include all the frills (OS, monitor, etc) the gap between desktop and laptop shrinks.

Yes the 650m is nothing compared to desktop cards (roughly 1/4 as powerful as a 680) but for mobile devices its actually quite powerful (gt 450) and twice as powerful as its predecessor (gt 540m).

That build would work though but would honestly be pretty crappy ($30 psu?).

Yeah I think we're on the same page. My original post was in the context of gaming as a reply to earlier comments about the rMBP being good at gaming.

The MBP is a great great notebook. It's clearly not designed to be a gaming platform, which would entail a more stout GPU or SLI/CF setup, etc, which would ruin the slim form factor, great battery life, and low heat operation.

$500 is cutting it close with a budget gaming PC, but the build I posted is a decent starting point. $30AR power supplies can actually be pretty good, I just build a budget box for one of my buddie's sons which had a $35AR Antec 550W.

 

[Fx1]

Well it's apples to oranges, but yes, I can build a $500 desktop that will game better. I wouldn't include all the rMBP has due to much of it being pointless or unnecessary for good gaming performance (eg; SSD, nice to have but purely a luxury for gaming, much better to have superior GPU first, worry about SSD later).

Generic mATX Case 30
500W PSU 30
970 Mobo 55
8GB DDR3 35
FX 6300 140
1GB 7850 165
750GB HDD (refurb, but with warranty) 40

495. Granted, that assumes someone has an OS, monitor, and keyboard to re-use. But let's just say you needed an Asus 23" IPS screen for $250, and a keyboard/mouse set of respectable quality for $50, and an OS for $100. That brings us up well short of $1k, a far cry from the nearly $3k MBP. Hell you could add a 27" IPS 2560x1440 panel, i7-3770k, Z77 mobo, 512GB SSD, 5.1 Speakers, 750W PSU, and 7970 or 680 and STILL be way cheaper than a MBP.

The MBP is actually a great device for what it is, it's just not built for gaming, it's more of an afterthought that it can do it at all.

And a FX 6300 w/7850 will eat the 2.6ghz i7 w/650M alive in gaming. We're talking the difference between legit 1080p performance with high details and being severely crippled without turning a lot of stuff down in stuff like FC3/etc.

Edit : all prices above from newegg, piecing together w/used the whole thing can be done for $500 including display, and still be a better gaming setup. While the MBP is good at being portable and well balanced otherwise.

Your whole point is totally absurd.

That desktop is a piece of crap and I bet running bf3 would probably blow that crap up.

Booting up would take at least a minute. Game loading times would be shocking on a hdd. Not to mention the psu would probably go within a month or less. The case would cut you to ribbons like all POS cases that small and cheap. The motherboard would have to be some Chinese brand junk. The cpu would likely be slower than the mobile i7 in the retina.
Basically the only part is the gpu that will be better because your not tdp limited like a laptop less than 10mm is.

I'm really starting to think that your just trolling

 

[lehtv]

That desktop is a piece of crap and I bet running bf3 would probably blow that crap up.

Obviously you don't know what you're talking about. That desktop would run BF3 just fine.

 

[Fx1]

The experience I had with cheap PSUs says otherwise.

 

[kache]

What you're talking about is not possible. nVidia does not allow pixel doubling or tripling. Users have asked for that feature, and nVidia said they will not add it to their drivers. You can ONLY scale the image up with interpolation.

Gpu outputs at lower resolution, the doubling/tripling is done in the screen...

 

[SirPauly]

Imho,

Personally don't desire to forget anti-aliasing but desire more innovation and efficiency with anti-aliasing, specifically an ability that can offer some levels of super-sampled quality, while being very efficient.

Of course, more PPI is welcomed as well. The key is to have choice to meet the potential demands of the market's subjective tastes, tolerances and wallet size.

 

[blackened23]

Your whole point is totally absurd.

That desktop is a piece of crap and I bet running bf3 would probably blow that crap up.

Booting up would take at least a minute. Game loading times would be shocking on a hdd. Not to mention the psu would probably go within a month or less. The case would cut you to ribbons like all POS cases that small and cheap. The motherboard would have to be some Chinese brand junk. The cpu would likely be slower than the mobile i7 in the retina.
Basically the only part is the gpu that will be better because your not tdp limited like a laptop less than 10mm is.

I'm really starting to think that your just trolling

Sounds like you're reaching here. Not sure about the CPU but a 7850 is faster than the 650m used in the rMBP by a huge margin.

 

[Homeles]

The experience I had with cheap PSUs says otherwise.

Hooray for anecdotes!

 

[Avalon]

The experience I had with cheap PSUs says otherwise.

You can get really good Corsair/Antec Bronze certified PSUs in the 400-550w category routinely for $30-40AR.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139026
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139027
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817171060

The Antec Earthwatts line frequently goes on sale as well, I didn't see it this time but it happens once a month.

Sorry to go off topic, just wanted to point out that it's very possible to get good, cheap PSUs.

 

[Arkaign]

You can get really good Corsair/Antec Bronze certified PSUs in the 400-550w category routinely for $30-40AR.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139026
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139027
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817171060

The Antec Earthwatts line frequently goes on sale as well, I didn't see it this time but it happens once a month.

Sorry to go off topic, just wanted to point out that it's very possible to get good, cheap PSUs.

Yeap, exactly.

Game load times are okay, the hdd I was talking about is a 7200RPM 750GB (250GB platters) drive, so load times actually aren't that bad. An SSD is even better, and that's something that can be added later.

I've built many many hundreds of PCs for people in the past 5-6 years, and lately there's been more and more people getting into PC gaming. Not all of these people have heaps of cash to burn, but $500 gets you in the door with a solid start, and upgrades can be dropped in a bit at a time, SSD here, better case there, etc.

It's incredibly ignorant to claim that an entry-level unit can't have good quality, it's all about selecting decent parts, and doing the best job possible to configure good performance for the money.

It's an absurd comparison to compare a higher end MBP to an entry level PC, but yes, an FX6300 w/8GB + 7850 will blow the doors off a 2.6Ghz i7 mobile w/650M. The SSD makes load times nice and quick, but with the PC you wait an extra 10 seconds or so and you're in the game with dramatically better framerate and details.

If you really want an absurd comparison, compare the $2799 rMBP 15" w/650M to a $2799 gaming PC setup.

You can get :

Aluminum case
X850 Seasonic
i7-3770K w/Watercooling
Z77 Premium Mobo w/Intel Gigabit onboard
16GB DDR3-2133
7970 CF or 680 SLI w/Watercooling
RAID 512GB Samsung 840s (each one of these is HUGELY faster than the crap SSD they include in the MBP, check benches at the link at the end of this post)
27" 2560x1440 IPS
BluRay Burner
Laser Gaming Mouse + Mechanical KB
Wireless N600

and STILL have money left over

Nobody is saying that the MBP isn't a fantastic device for what it is, and the target market won't notice at all that it's not a blazing good gamer. The fact is that it's not as good a gamer as a smartly-built $500 gaming PC, and will get eaten alive by units $1k+. The unit above will destroy it in absolutely everything, period. And yes, you can run OSX should you want to (I prefer it to Win8 honestly).

MBP SSD benches, better than HDD, but still not great in the SSD world :

http://www.barefeats.com/mbpp19.html

 

[badb0y]

Why are we comparing MBPs to desktops again?

 

[boxleitnerb]

Gpu outputs at lower resolution, the doubling/tripling is done in the screen...

Nope, otherwise performance would be the same. The GPU can render at 3840x2160 (with the appropriate performance hit), then the signal is downscaled by the GPU and then sent over to the monitor.

 

[Homeles]

Why are we comparing MBPs to desktops again?

Context is a beautiful thing.

 

[Arkaign]

Nope, otherwise performance would be the same. The GPU can render at 3840x2160 (with the appropriate performance hit), then the signal is downscaled by the GPU and then sent over to the monitor.

I've used 1280x720 on a 2560x1440 display with the scaling turned off in the display, it worked without a hitch full screen with full 720p framerate. The screen simply displays 2x2 pixels to display every 720p pixel. The GPU had no idea at all that it was being fed to a 1440p screen.

I'm not sure if that's what you're talking about, but that's the easiest way to run things when you have a high res screen without the horsepower to truly game on it. Similar to the old days I ran some games on a Dell 2001FP at 800x600, which was a perfect halving of the native 1600x1200 resolution. No smearing/artifacts.

If you want an easy way to look at it, get some square box graph paper, measure 20x20 off, call 20x20 native resolution. Now fill four of them in at a time in boxes for a 10x10 resolution. You simply have to do them in the same pattern as what would be there with a lower resolution. Hence, you can't simulate a 12x12 resolution on a 20x20 grid without compromising. But with perfect ratios, you can. 2560x1440 = 1280x720 with no trouble. Ditto 1280x800 with a 2560x1600 panel. And ditto 1080p on a 4k panel. For that matter, running 720p just means every pixel sent by the GPU is displayed by 3x3 on a 4K screen when scaling is disabled on the panel.

Running with scaling enabled on the panel is hilarious though, you get the image all tiny in the middle of the screen, still 1:1 pixel, but with massive blank areas surrounding it.

 

[Arkaign]

Why are we comparing MBPs to desktops again?

Making the point that MBP's are a terrible gaming choice despite being fantastic machines overall. This is only because some have said they're good gaming options, which is laughable. The comparison is patently absurd to begin with. Anyone with money + brain that has a MBP that wants to really game has the money to do gaming justice with a build that truly works for that purpose anyway. Apple didn't try to make the MBP a gaming device, to do so would ruin the aesthetic and portability/elegance of the thing. High clocks + high powered GPU = thick, bulky, ugly laptops. Even the fastest gaming laptops on the planet are still annihilated by desktops a fraction of the price.

 

[boxleitnerb]

I've used 1280x720 on a 2560x1440 display with the scaling turned off in the display, it worked without a hitch full screen with full 720p framerate. The screen simply displays 2x2 pixels to display every 720p pixel. The GPU had no idea at all that it was being fed to a 1440p screen.

I'm not sure if that's what you're talking about, but that's the easiest way to run things when you have a high res screen without the horsepower to truly game on it. Similar to the old days I ran some games on a Dell 2001FP at 800x600, which was a perfect halving of the native 1600x1200 resolution. No smearing/artifacts.

If you want an easy way to look at it, get some square box graph paper, measure 20x20 off, call 20x20 native resolution. Now fill four of them in at a time in boxes for a 10x10 resolution. You simply have to do them in the same pattern as what would be there with a lower resolution. Hence, you can't simulate a 12x12 resolution on a 20x20 grid without compromising. But with perfect ratios, you can. 2560x1440 = 1280x720 with no trouble. Ditto 1280x800 with a 2560x1600 panel. And ditto 1080p on a 4k panel. For that matter, running 720p just means every pixel sent by the GPU is displayed by 3x3 on a 4K screen when scaling is disabled on the panel.

Running with scaling enabled on the panel is hilarious though, you get the image all tiny in the middle of the screen, still 1:1 pixel, but with massive blank areas surrounding it.

I'm talking about higher resolutions scaled down, not the other way around. For example 3840x2160 pixels rendered and displayed at 1920x1080 -> 2x2 OGSSAA (my display has a native resolution of 1080p):

Or 3360x2100@1680x1050 on any monitor being able to display the active resolution of (in this case) 1680x1050.

 

[Arkaign]

Ah, understood, totally different, and imho it looks great, I saw the comparison where they took ugly Blops2 and made it much nicer.

 

[twjr]

Game loading times would be shocking on a hdd.

Measurably slower? Yes.

Noticeably slower? Probably.

Shocking? That's a touch of hyperbole.

Having just switched to an SSD (Sandisk Extreme 480GB) from a 7200 RPM HDD for my Steam drive on my desktop I can honestly say I am not sure the increase in speed and cost justifies the reduction in capacity. And I am still happy to play games on my laptop where I have Steam installed on a 7200 RPM HDD.

 

[Pottuvoi]

Remembered a interesting little tweet from Carmack.

Reading a Byte from '89. Amidst 128k, 10lb laptops and such, see a 3300x2560 monitor. Mono CRT, but a res that is exotic 23 yrs later.

Would love to see one of those..

 

[Fx1]

Measurably slower? Yes.

Noticeably slower? Probably.

Shocking? That's a touch of hyperbole.

Having just switched to an SSD (Sandisk Extreme 480GB) from a 7200 RPM HDD for my Steam drive on my desktop I can honestly say I am not sure the increase in speed and cost justifies the reduction in capacity. And I am still happy to play games on my laptop where I have Steam installed on a 7200 RPM HDD.

shocking to me.

i only ever ran 2 Raptors in Raid 0 before SSD's

 

[nextJin]

Hilarious thread, people arguing over PPI having no idea what they are talking about over and over.

I agree with the general consensus though, get Microsoft to support 4k panels.

I want a 30" 4k (or higher) AMOLED, 120hz, and 5ms response time display w/ a .15 inch bezel. Glossy and Non glossy display options.

I'll settle for 30" 4k IPS 60hz panel this year however.

 

[Homeles]

shocking to me.

i only ever ran 2 Raptors in Raid 0 before SSD's

Most people haven't. There goes your point... not like you ever had one.

 

[SirPauly]

Imho,

More PPI is welcomed but desire more dimensional innovation to displays -- if one desires that eventual HoloDeck for that holy grail!

That's the key, there are so many desires, tastes and tolerances from individuals, where do the major players place their focus and resources?