Do you think Apple will release a M1 Mac with a dedicated GPU

[RobGwy]

I had to replace my laptop this year and almost went to for a MacBook Air as I already have a iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. What put me off is the absence of a dedicated GPU as I am a light/medium gamer. In the end I went for a HP Omen 15 w/ Ryzen 7 and GTX2060.


Honestly I think the MacBook M1 would have suited me better in almost every area except gaming so hoping a GPU version will release soon. Does anyone know if that's on the cards at all?

 

[robotica]

I think the gpu cores in the m1 are dedicated. They are just located on the same die.

 

[Aggedor]

They are dedicated, but I would still call them integrated, as they share the system RAM (I think?).

I think Apple will develop dedicated GPU "cards" only for high-end machines, like an Apple Silicon Mac Pro. For higher-performance iMacs, etc, I'd say it'll still be the GPU cores on the system-on-a-chip, but they'll be very powerful.

Un-upgradable/swappable, but powerful!

 

[Abazigal]

I had to replace my laptop this year and almost went to for a MacBook Air as I already have a iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. What put me off is the absence of a dedicated GPU as I am a light/medium gamer. In the end I went for a HP Omen 15 w/ Ryzen 7 and GTX2060.


Honestly I think the MacBook M1 would have suited me better in almost every area except gaming so hoping a GPU version will release soon. Does anyone know if that's on the cards at all?

I doubt it. The absence of a GPU is what allows the M1 Macs to be as slim as they are, both in terms of space savings, and because there is less need for heat dissipation.

 

[UBS28]

Nope, just an integrated GPU with more cores.

 

[velocityg4]

Maybe the 16” will get a dedicated Apple Silicon GPU. But the design may just be a bunch of GPU and CPU cores on a larger chip.

 

[jerryk]

I think Apple will add additional GPU cores to their SOC instead of going to some 3rd party component. Also, if they ever did go to a 3rd party it would not be Nvidia. Too much bad blood between the companies.

 

[robco74]

With Nvidia it's not really bad blood, but incompatible business models. Apple also has competing frameworks. Apple wants to standardize on Metal and CoreML, Nvidia wants to push its own frameworks. Nvidia also wants to write the drivers to make sure its technologies are supported. AMD OTOH, is perfectly happy to sell chips and give Apple the specs so Apple can write the drivers themselves.

I think we will see beefier GPUs from Apple, but they'll still be from Apple.

 

[jerryk]

With Nvidia it's not really bad blood, but incompatible business models. Apple also has competing frameworks. Apple wants to standardize on Metal and CoreML, Nvidia wants to push its own frameworks. Nvidia also wants to write the drivers to make sure its technologies are supported. AMD OTOH, is perfectly happy to sell chips and give Apple the specs so Apple can write the drivers themselves.

I think we will see beefier GPUs from Apple, but they'll still be from Apple.

Nope, there is bad blood between the companies. Nvidia cost Apple a bundle in RadeonGate and sort of walked away. And people in the Valley have long memories.

 

[mi7chy]

Even if it had a dGPU there are like three native M1 games and no Windows x64 bootcamp so it'll be wasted.

Have you seen the new Omen 16?

https://www.omen.com/us/en/laptops/2021-omen-16-amd.html

 

[robco74]

Even if it had a dGPU there are like three native games and no Windows x64 bootcamp so it'll be wasted.

Have you seen the new Omen 16?

https://www.omen.com/us/en/laptops/2021-omen-16-amd.html

JFC, buy your AMD machine, and go post on Windows gaming forums and quit wasting everyone's time here.

That laptop is larger, thicker, louder, more expensive, oh, and not even available yet. FFS, just order one, be happy, and let those who prefer different systems to do the same. I know this will be difficult to fathom, but not everyone uses gaming performance as the primary criteria for choosing a computer.

 

[mi7chy]

Reading fundamental is key. He mentioned he got the Omen 15 and may not be aware of the new Omen 16.

 

[thenewperson]

No.

 

[LeeW]

JFC, buy your AMD machine, and go post on Windows gaming forums and quit wasting everyone's time here.

To be fair, the OP is asking a question but notes he bought a Windows laptop, so nothing wrong with the blended discussion. It's also reasonable to note people are still on the fence when it comes to Apple Silicon and many are considering Windows-based options as a result.

 

[leman]

Based on information Apple has released so far, I’m fairly confident that there won’t be any traditional dGPU system in any of the new Macs. Apples approach is more flexible and more efficient, so there is really no reason for them to use dGPUs. Looking at the performance projections, I‘d expect high-end Apple laptops to have GPU performance roughly comparable to a mobile RTX 3060.

 

[mi7chy]

I think the gpu cores in the m1 are dedicated. They are just located on the same die.

One of the major differences between dGPU and iGPU is dedicated high speed VRAM like HBM/GDDR6X that isn't bottlenecked by slower shared DDR4 between CPU and iGPU. The move to DDR5 will hopefully offer some improvement but doubt you'll get anything close to 3060.

 

[Fishrrman]

leman wrote:
"Based on information Apple has released so far, I’m fairly confident that there won’t be any traditional dGPU system in any of the new Macs"

Would you include the eventual Mac Pro models in your assessment?

Seems to me that "somewhere up" the computing chain, there will actually be a need for "external processing" under extremely heavy loads...

 

[cmaier]

They are dedicated, but I would still call them integrated, as they share the system RAM (I think?).

I think Apple will develop dedicated GPU "cards" only for high-end machines, like an Apple Silicon Mac Pro. For higher-performance iMacs, etc, I'd say it'll still be the GPU cores on the system-on-a-chip, but they'll be very powerful.

Un-upgradable/swappable, but powerful!

Pretty sure all apple silicon systems for the foreseeable future will share RAM - that’s inherent in their UMA architecture. Even when they come out with their separate GPU die with many dozens of cores, it will share the same memory as the CPU, for performance reasons.

 

[mi7chy]

leman wrote:
"Based on information Apple has released so far, I’m fairly confident that there won’t be any traditional dGPU system in any of the new Macs"

Would you include the eventual Mac Pro models in your assessment?

Seems to me that "somewhere up" the computing chain, there will actually be a need for "external processing" under extremely heavy loads...

What's the likelihood of getting dGPU drivers from Nvidia/AMD for different CPU architecture when it was like pulling teeth getting it for shared x64 Macs/Macbooks? Highly unlikely. You'll probably see Apple making their own dGPU like Intel before that happens.

 

[Bug-Creator]

Well I'd say it is out of the question for anything M1 (including the M1x if that will be a thing) as anything really big and strong will be on the 2nd or 3rd gen of M-chips.

1st they gonna grow the die to have more core of every kind.
Then they may add a 2nd (GPU only) die to the package (we are talking big iMac or top of the line 16" MBP)
For the MacPro they might actually go beyond (doubt it) and put in 2 packages.

 

[leman]

leman wrote:
"Based on information Apple has released so far, I’m fairly confident that there won’t be any traditional dGPU system in any of the new Macs"

Would you include the eventual Mac Pro models in your assessment?

Yes, this also includes the Mac Pro. Apple is building a powerful heterogeneous computing platform with Apple Silicon, something that has so far been exclusively reserved for supercomputers and gaming consoles. I just don’t see a possibility where they cripple this paradigm on their most powerful desktop workstation. If anything, Mac Pro should embrace its capabilities more than any other Mac.

Seems to me that "somewhere up" the computing chain, there will actually be a need for "external processing" under extremely heavy loads...

Im fairly certain that the Mac Pro will offer GPUs that will compare very favorably with the top Nvidia and AMD offerings. The leaks so far seem to corroborate this. Personally, I also speculate that the Mac Pro will offer support for multiple modular compute boards (each with own CPU/GPU/memory).

Now, talking about external processing under extremely heavy loads (by which I assume you mean petascale computing), I doubt that the Mac Pro will aim to fulfill that niche. If Apple goes modular compute board route, we might see Mac Pros with 100-150 TFLOPS (40TFLOP per GPU). But if you need more, that’s already a supercomputer territory.

 

[leman]

One of the major differences between dGPU and iGPU is dedicated high speed VRAM like HBM/GDDR6X that isn't bottlenecked by slower shared DDR4 between CPU and iGPU. The move to DDR5 will hopefully offer some improvement but doubt you'll get anything close to 3060.

With enough cache and technologies that optimize bandwidth, you can build a fairly fast GPU without requiring ultra fast RAM. AMD has recently demonstrated this with Navi2 and infinity cache. Apple uses a similar approach, plus their GPUs are inherently more bandwidth-efficient.

 

[Homy]

I had to replace my laptop this year and almost went to for a MacBook Air as I already have a iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. What put me off is the absence of a dedicated GPU as I am a light/medium gamer. In the end I went for a HP Omen 15 w/ Ryzen 7 and GTX2060.


Honestly I think the MacBook M1 would have suited me better in almost every area except gaming so hoping a GPU version will release soon. Does anyone know if that's on the cards at all?

The thing is that a dGPU is not necessary to reach good performance in Apple's case, at least regarding MBP and iMac. You should have waited if you could for the new MacBooks with 16-32 GPU cores. M1 with 8 GPU cores manages ca 22 fps at 1080 Ultra in BL3. A 32-core M2 GPU doing 60 fps at 1440p Ultra in Borderlands 3 (via Rosetta 2) will be on par with Radeon 5700 XT, RTX 2070 Super, 2080 or 1080 Ti.

 

[sunny5]

Then what about Mac Pro with multiple GPU?

 

[leman]

Then what about Mac Pro with multiple GPU?

What about them? An upcoming Apple Silicon Mac Pro might or might not be modular and it might or might not support multiple GPUs.