New MBP GPU Benchmark vs. Old?

I have been trying to research what kind of "upgrade" the GPU actually received by getting a Geforce 330M 512MB card (in the 17 inch), compared to the 9600M GT.

Anyone got a good site that allows direct comparison of stats?
Everyone that I have looked at has the 330M pegged as a 1GB VRAM card... which is not the case this time around.

I'd also like to see how the 330M would compare to my current 8800M GTX card in my sager (although I know its not even close).

 

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

the STOCK 330 with 1gb and stock clocks ( we dont know if Apple has continued the trend of underclocking). ranks 54th in the chart. I would estimate it to be around the speed of a 320 or lower but cant say until I play with one.

the 9600 ranks 79th but with default underclock was a bit slower.

your 8800GTX shows up at number 24

by 3d Mark scores on the stock chips they say the 320 should be about 50% faster then the 9600. 4383 VS 6126.
your old 8800 is still about 50% faster then the stock 330

 

Memory amount really doesn't matter for these cards as 256MB is more than enough. In terms of gaming, you might see anywhere from 0-20% benefit compared to the 9600M GT, but the 128-bit buswidth is still the limiting factor (hence you will get poor scaling as you increase the resolution).

 

all I really need to know is whether or not it will be able to handle StarCraft II at default resolution with decent settings.

I already know it can't handle Crysis.

 

How do you define "handle?"

 

I dont think it will do SC2 that great, prob on lowest settings. many of the guys and gals beta testing seem to need a 240 or higher to get any sort of detail and decent frame rate ( 35+ )

now where did I put that SC2 thread.

 

@ tmac,

LOL

I know, I know.

I'm in the SCII Beta and my desktop handles it just fine. then again, it's an i7-920 and good desktop GPU with 9GB of ram...so good results are to be expected.

lack of quad options worry me. lack of better than "midrange" gpu worries me.

I wonder how far I'd have to drop the settings to get good frames at 1920x1200...

 

My biggest concern is not necessarily gaming with he GPU... but digital and 3D work.
I am a 3D Environment Artist and work in Maya, 3DS Max, Photoshop, zBrush... all that jazz... and want to make sure that by using a new MBP, I am not going to have delays while working. I will be able to work seamlessly and not have "lag", as you would experience in a videogame when trying to run it on too high of settings.

I play basically 1-2 video games on my laptop right now (Sager NP5793, what used to be the beast of all beasts in laptop gaming 2 years ago), and both of them require very minimal resources. I'll save my hardcore gaming for my PS3.

Any thoughts on this matter?

Sure I want *good* graphics processing still... but I don't want to play Crysis. Maybe things like Starcraft 2 though? If you see what I mean....

 

The 330 sucks, it will give you a few fps over the 9600m gt. Although its about 30% more power efficient. All in all however the new gpus suck, especially for 3D professional work and 3D CAD. I wish they would of gone ati but whatever. The macbook has never been a gaming computer, and I guess they still have thermal problems. The thing that disappoints me in that there's not quad core option, not even in the 17inch, and the 13inchers still have core 2s.

 

well...my 9600M GT supported me well in 3D Studio Max. but the amount of work I had to do with it probably doesn't compare to yours.

I suspect we both will have to wait for reviews from those who use these machines like we do.

 

OH BOY, well Dave I just had one of my major customers decide against buying over 1000 MBP's over the fact the GPU is completly inadaquate for GPGPU accelleration in high end photo, audio and video applications. that currently support it fully.

Over the last couple months we found something like the 360 would have given TWICE the performance in Maya with a full CUDA implimentation over the 330 or 335. I have graphics and Video pros jumping ship up here like rats with this update, and my whole staff is dealing with their IT dept and having a monumental nightmare.

why on earth they figured anyone who does rendering would be happy with a nutered GPU with a 128 bit memory bus is beyond me.

 

Bah... I hate the waiting game.
Waited so long for them to finally release, and now am skeptical if it will be sufficient for what I want...

 

Baahhhhh....
Really wanted this new MBP.

Where in Alberta ya workin?

 

oh snap.

second refresh in 3 months am confirmed?

 

Having a 128-bit bus and 256/512 mb of VRAM means that you will NOT be able to do any hardcore 3D work. (especially at higher res)

I was waiting for this update because I needed a laptop for college that could handle Matlab and ANSYS......that's not happening so I'm settling for the Envy 15 (despite its 2 hr battery life).

 

I am to very disappointed with the update. To update to the macbook pro 15 from my studio the gpu is not a very big jump. I want the envy but here in canada prices for it are 500$ more and it still includes the 4830. Im also very disappointed that they raised the price and the fact they only bumped the resolution slightly. Most 15-16 inch laptops these days come with 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 screen options. Apple should have at least included the 1600 standard

 

Envy 15 gets 4-5 hours, doesn't it?

 

Yea i believe it does with the slice battery addon

 

Ill PM you

 

damn you have to add a slice to get that?

Envy is dropping hard and fast on my list of options.

Why does no manufacturer do 5-6 hours with a respectable (but not top of the line) GPU?

I think most would have been happy with Apple offering 5-6 hours with a 360M GPU than 8 hours with 3-year old power.

 

a 360M in an Apple? Has hell frozen over yet?

 

Well even tho the 5830 has a tow TDP it is also a pretty strong gpu. With the standard battery people report it gets 2 hours with slice people say about 7.

 

ASUS Useries giver better than 5-6 hours but The screen isnt quite as nice ... I may have to see how hard it is to screen swap one for a better panel at some time to rectify that issue since a good panel can be found for under $150

 

@ Brendan

I understand. I just hate the idea of carrying an added battery around. it ads extra weight. I have a "slice" battery on my Elitebook tablet and it ads noticeable bulk and weight to the machine. It gives me about 6 hours on a charge, but then again, it depends on what I'm doing. I assume "7 hours" on the Envy is the high end as well. toss a video on it, and I'd presume battery life will drop precipitously.

no, it hasn't yet.

 

The slice adds 2 pounds to the computer and it looks seamless to the system you just snap it onto the bottom the other battery stays in as well. For a computer with a core i5/i7 and a 5830 the battery life on the envy is amazing. Im lucky to squeeze out 4 hours out of my Studio Xps although the RGBLED is just to beautiful to turn the brightness down on .

 

This may just be a misinformed mindset that I have from reading more things on the internet than a World of Warcraft Addict, but aren't a lot of 3D applications (at least in reference to Texturing/Painting, not necessarily modeling) more reliant on CPU power these days?

Can't remember where I read this...

 

It depends on a lot of things. Some engines are geared towards cpu power and others gpu but most are a mix of both. WoW is very cpu geared as a lot of things go on at once. You need a good cpu to match the gpu or else you get a bottleneck ala the Alienware m11x the CPU bottlenecks the gpu from reaching its full potential.

 

many stil are but 90% of them seem to be heading for Nvidias CUDA and ATI's Stream technologies for GPGPU accelleration, some programs have been implementing GPU accelleration heavily the last year or so especially in the professional applications.

 

Yeah that's what I figured...

Reference to WoW was just to poke fun at an old addiction, I was more concerned with the modeling/texturing stand point.

I am purchasing a PS3 in the next few months so think I will slowly shift to a console gamer, with a few RTS games still on the laptop here and there (SC2 if it can run it, HoN currently [a dota standalone remake])

 

I hear you. but +2 lbs makes a 6.6lbs laptop 8.6lbs.

that's on the unacceptable side for me and a big compromise.

 

No offence intended but unless your a little 16 year old girl 8.6 pounds should be nothing.

I carry around my Studio xps 1640 6.9 pounds plus a couple of textbooks and books easily i carry 12 pounds on my back. Im 15 5'11 160 lbs btw

 

It's not so much whether you *can* carry the laptop around... but whether you want to.

I have no problem carrying around my 9 lb Sager NP5793 17" gaming laptop, but it really is a pain in the to do so sometimes. I stopped bringing it to classes when I was in University because it was so damn heavy on my shoulder (and because the professor couldn't hear himself talk over the fan while I played Crysis at the back of the class).

In the grand scheme of things, lighter is better for multiple reasons.

 

I'm maxing at 210 on the bar, 315 squat. Crossfit Griffin FTW. (if you even know what that is)

that's not the point. the point is whether I *want to*. and whether I should have to.

let's not be dishonest in this discussion. First off, all of my laptops have been big and heavy desktop replacements. my first laptop was a 17", 10lbs Toshiba. my second was a 17" Dell E1705 @ ~9lbs. my third was a Sony Vaio AW 18.4", ~9lbs. my forth and most recent was a 12" HP Elitebook @ 4.5lbs that I bought purely for the tablet aspect. so you're not talking to a "desktop replacement noob" who doesn't know what time it is.

hidden in the fact that the machines were almost all around 10lbs is the fact that by the time you add on the weight of the bag, spare batteries, mouse, various cables, PSU, external HDDs, etc etc etc, you're closing in on 16-20lbs. easily. one time i weighted my Targus backpack and found it to be almost 30lbs. but you know this in general, so why pretend that the only weight involved is the laptop itself? that was rather dishonest, bro.

Now. Sorry if after 10 years I don't *want* to have to carry ~20lbs around, hanging off of one shoulder. just doesn't feel "modern" to do anymore. or reasonable.

say what you want, but the 8-hour battery in the MBP means not only shedding 3lbs on the machine relative to my old desktop replacements...but it also means shedding the weight of the backup battery and PSU. that generally means half the amount of weight. maybe even more.

 

LOL, he doesn't want to carry around a 9 pound notebook, so you call him a girl. Screw that, 9 pounds is heavy for a computer. I don't want that on my back. I already have enough stuff for school in my backpack.

 

Ok understandable. But your not going to wanting to be shedding the performance for the weight and battery life are you?

 

Processors and graphics cards don't weigh a whole lot these days...

Biggest things on weight are:
-Frame (ie. unibody)
-Battery
-Size of laptop

 

iI agree that t's not the processors and graphics cards in and of themselves that create the weight.

it's the power draw from the processors and graphics cards that forces bigger batteries (or acceptance of less battery life a-la Envy 15), bigger fans and heat sinks (which mean bigger casing unless designed with airflow in mind like the Envy 15), etc.

no?

 

envy 15 gets 2.5 hours, 3+ max.
with slice 6 hours, 7 max.
with slice laptop weighs 7 lbs

 

Actually you make a good point aj.

While the processor/gpu don't weigh barely anything in and of themselves, they do produce more energy being needed and thus a larger battery, creating more weight. I eat my words.

 

I assume the forthcoming 17" will weight a couple pounds more. thanks for the info. I'll definitely keep all that in mind for my deliberations.

I wish HP would release some info or specs regarding their 17" Envy. it's making my decision more difficult.

 

Been doing a bit of research and found this video of someone running Crysis on medium settings with a 2.13Ghz laptop, running a Geforce GT 330M GPU and 4GB of ram....

http://videos.apnicommunity.com/Video,Item,2080991483.html

they also test wow.

Their resolution is set to 1388xXXX or whatever that one is... so fairly low unfortunately. On medium settings he is getting some damn good fps, definitely playable. and keep in mind we are talking about crysis here.

Things are looking up for playing SC2 on medium in something like a 1680 resolution maybe?...

Edit: Unfortunately, his WoW test looks like it is on a private server, so won't get the testing of loading several hundred peoples models at once in a city.

 

at a low enough resolution and settings, I could get decent frames on my 9600M GT. but it wasn't the optimal scenario.

most games ran very well at 1600x900. stuff like Arkham Asylum, Team Fortress 2 and other Valve games all ran above 30fps.

I just worry about how well it will run newer games like...StarCraft II. lol.

edit: oh, and since Crysis 2 was developed with consoles in mind, I expect it will run at 60fps or more on any mainstream laptop GPU.

 

If ported right, and still could be pretty hard to run on something like a 9600 (330 is very close). Take GTA IV for example, or Bad Company Two.

 

I seem to be getting confused when trying to benchmark and compare this new 330M card to different things.

Everything else that I read that has it installed (laptops) are listing it as a 1GB Card... did apple just downclock it to 512MB... because they can?

Enlighten me.

 

Because lowering it to 512MB doesn't detract from its aesthetics but still lowers production cost and raises profit margins.

 

I can't speak for BC2, but GTA4 is cpu limited. runs quite well on quads. AFAIK.

that's a lot of speculation, right there. maybe there's more to it.

 

standard the 330 is 1 GB in any machine OTHER than Apple, they decided to do the 256/512MB bit for some reason and it is possible they also underclocked it as well ( they have been known to do it especially on the 9600 to kill off some heat )

 

Ladner, did that client really cancel that order of 1000 MBP's? Damn. Quick, make a mad dash for the Elitebooks!!!

 

that's the stock 330M. Moreover, crysis on dx9 is not hardware demanding at all, even my old laptop with MR 1600 could play it well. It looks like crap on dx9 though, it's the dx10 crysis that looks great and is hardware demanding.

For SC2, after playing it on max settings, I won't ever play it in any other settings lower than high. Before I got my current laptop, I played it on my old laptop with MR1600, could only play it in low settings, and it looks like crap so I thought SC2 is crap, until I played it at max settings. Blizzard made it such that the graphics of SC2 on max settings and low settings is like heaven and earth, it's like 2 completely different game.

 

The reason is simple space constraints. Apple only has room on the motherboard for 4 memory chips and the highest density chips are 1Gb (128MB) for 512MB max. Apple adopted 512MB when 1Gb chips became available. 2Gb GDDR3 and GDDR5 chips won't be available in mass production until the later half of this year so VRAM will probably double with the next MacBook Pro refresh. 1GB RAM is largely irrelevant for mid-range mobile GPUs anyways. On desktop it's only something with the power of the HD4870 that starts seeing definite benefit of 1GB over 512MB of VRAM, even the HD4850 is not so much. It's much better that Apple always uses higher clocking GDDR3 than lower clocking cheap DDR2 or DDR3, which is available in 2Gb sizes for VRAM.

My major disappointment is that the HD5650 wasn't used since it's generally faster yet uses less power and has better thermals at 15-19W TDP compared to 23W TDP of the GT330M. I'm guessing Apple went to all the effort to make their own GPU dynamically switching mechanism in order to make it GPU agnostic and not be tied to nVidia and Optimus, so I'm thinking going ATI would not have prevent dynamic switching as a feature. Admittedly, the GT330M probably does have better OpenCL performance even if OpenGL performance should be behind. The problem is that the new 1680x1050 screen option is tempting, but it's probably more of a nuisance since I'm uncertain the GT330M has can power that resolution well enough in modern games while maintaining decent settings.