In recent years, Apple has oscillated between the two major GPU designers Nvidia and AMD. Recently, AMD has been scoring the majority of the deals, getting their graphics cards into the MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro. For the rumoured upcoming MacBook Pro refresh, the latest suggestions are pointing to Apple choosing AMD to supply the graphics card using a Polaris based GPU.
Right now Apple is already using the R9 M370X in the MacBook Pro Retina so a new Polaris GPU to replace it makes a lot of sense. AMD is also probably offering a better deal than Nvidia so that’s a bonus as well. Polaris has also brought a large number of power savings and improvements, essential for improving battery life and performance in the mobile form factor.
The R9 M370X offers 640 GCN shaders running at 800 Mhz at about 35 to 40 TDP. With Polaris 11, AMD might be able to cram about 896 GCN 4.0 shaders at about the same clock speed and same power target. Polaris 11 will also bring 4Gb of GDDR5 VRAM, doubling memory over the same 128bit bus.
While Macs are a relatively small portion of Apple’s portfolio, they are still a large segment. If AMD does end up getting the deal, it will provide a much-needed boost to their finances. We won’t have long to wait if the rumoured Apple event in September pans out with a MacBook Pro refresh.
“Right now Apple is already suing the R9 M370X”
I know Apple is litigation-happy, but you might be using the wrong word in that sentence. : P
Spell check works at least ! I wonder if Apple will be first with a Zen HBM2-Polaris APU ?
We can neither confirm nor deny that Apple is suing the R9 M370X. We can confirm that they are using the R9 M370X.
Article has been updated to reflect this, thanks for the catch