Yes. Actually my understanding is that this is the actual deal breaker and why we have AMD in the nMP. Along with lower power consumption on the AMD chips in general.
I hadn't heard this, but it wouldn't surprise me. Apple would probably like GPGPU on all their product lines, which means sticking to their OpenCL guns. CUDA optimization is nice and great, but it doesn't work on a Mac with an Iris Pro. A Mac with an Iris Pro and an OpenCL program can actually be a pretty formidable machine. I'd expect Mac Minis with an Iris Pro and FCPX to actually be very powerful.
I won't be surprised if new AMD mainstream GPUs come in March-June '14 ( this current round just seems to be a stopgap till TSMC gets their new process together.... and I'll believe Feb 2014 when TSMC finally demonstrate they can hit a deadline. ) and new FirePro updates come in July-September '14 ( which is close to the time to catch the end of prep for new Mac Pro ... which won't be surprising if Intel E5's pragmatically slides to Q1 '15 even if the "announce release" it in early Q4 '14 )
Here are the two questions that interest me... With Apple's main focus now on the Mac Pro's GPUs...
- Will AMD prepare drivers for new cards earlier because of their prominent position on the Mac Pro?
- Will Apple ship new GPUs quicker because of concern about performance competitiveness on what's now the main aspect of the Mac Pro?
I'm hoping yes to both, but we'll see.
Traditionally, yes, Apple has only done GPU updates if the rest of the machine is updated. But I wonder if this will light a fire under Apple.
I highly doubt they are going to do that. One 2.5 bay a decent change. ( the iMac doesn't have two), but two is a bit loopy. Photostream still lands on the user's home system... which means need capacity. Complete entire audio library .... capacity
My gut feeling is next year will be the end of hard disks in Macs. Prices have come down, speeds are insanely high, and they're smaller and quieter. Apple seems perfectly content to send larger storage needs to external devices.
The Mini far, far, far, far more needs a desktop CPU to be more competitive than any hopped up GPU budget. With a much smaller increment and some lower Intel Iris pricing the Mini could have some very decent GPU without such a large leap. The Mini is and will probably continue to be an iGPU system. It is just far more space/volume efficient. Next gen Iris Pro, if can fit within the Mini BTO price zone, probably is reasonably close to the 780m range on general usage.
I think, looking at the patterns of what Apple is doing, Apple is going to care much more about the GPU than the CPU. Of course with an Iris Pro they might be able to squeeze a better CPU in there as well.
The question more so is whether the 21.5" iMac is going to keep dGPU rather than the Mini get one. The 21.5" iMac and Mini sharing more common components is a somewhat likely path. There is no good reason for the Mini to follow the laptops into the soldered RAM zone. If the Mini needs a dance partner the iMac makes more sense it the whole laptop lineup is going anorexic.
I could see the 21.5" iMac going to a Iris Pro.
The are plenty of folks pounding the table for Iris Pro in the Mini forums already. The problem with the Iris Pro is more so price in this current generation than fit. Intel charges dGPU+VRAM prices for the Pro version.
First generation that makes sense as they feel out the market.
I brought up the Iris Pro because the power constraints on it are much more workable. I think an 775m like the iMac has would be better for performance, but fitting it in the power envelope could be a little more of a challenge. Of course if they can do it in the iMac's package, maybe it wouldn't be too bad...
