I am a Mac user. Can the "Intel Iris Graphics" run on SL?

[Dorzo Aeon]

I have been a Mac user for over seven years. I am in the process of purchasing the new Mac Book Pro with 13-inch screen. The Following specs: 2.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 ,Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz, 8GB 1600MHz memory, 512GB PCIe-based flash storage1.

The Intel Iris can run the latest games on medium settings. As a Photographer, would you recommend it? Does it work? 

 

 

[Lindal Kidd]

Comparing the specs of the Intel Iris integrated graphics to the previous generation, Intel HD Graphics 4000, I would guess that yes, it would run SL on low or possibly medium settings.

However, if you're buying a new computer, and one of your main goals is to be able to run SL, I would still recommend a machine with a discrete graphics card rather than any form of integrated graphics.  Given a choice, I would also pick an NVidia GeForce card for SL.

[Madelaine McMasters]

Hi Dorzo,

Here's a searchable table of benchmark data for various graphics systems...

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

The Iris 5100 scores 707. The dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M graphics chip in the top-end 15 inch MacBook Pro scores 1524. These numbers are probably just rough indications of SL performance, as they're generated on Windows machines, using benchmark routines that may not reflect the way SL uses OpenGL to draw everything. I was a little surprised to see the integrated Iris getting halfway to the NVIDIA scores. Intel's Haswell is clearly an improvement. The previous generation 4000 graphics scored 457.

For comparison, my 1.5 year old iMac has the NVIDIA GT 680MX, which scores 4339. I get 20-30FPS on Ultra in most places. I don't expect you'll want to run Ultra, except briefly when shooting photographs.

I don't believe the SL viewer is Retina aware, so it may not take advantage of that beautiful display.

This page has a video of someone running SL on a MacBook Pro, though it's not clear which model...

http://www.firstpost.com/topic/product/macbook-pro-second-life-on-a-macbook-pro-video-yHkYcviKzJE-51428-8.html

Good luck!

[sven Homewood]

As photographer, I wouldn't recommend Intel graphics.  You need to be aware, that you will probably also double your resolution to get the most of the pictures! Thats how good pictures are done too. Intel graphics will have to fight a lot for that.

[Tomos Halsey]

Yes Intel Iris will run fine on sl and at a massive resolution too!. If you plan on using sl on windows through bootcamp you will need to modify the gpu_table.txt file for your viewer to recognize the iris card. I wrote a guide on doing this here. I actually wrote this post from my intel iris mac on the bootcamp side so thats how often I use the iris mac for sl stuff I get about 80 FPS on ultra on firestorm 64 bit edition using an intel Iris 5100 so its great for development on the go. If you are using the mac version make sure to set your resolution for the window at login under debug prefrences for window resolution.