I will be flabbergasted if they pull this off.There's hope?
"Apple sees big things ahead for Apple Silicon, both in terms of achieving new designs and perhaps appealing to the most demanding audience of all — gamers. After all, many of the engineers building Apple’s chips are gamers themselves. Apple is now setting a third goal for its M-series processors: Bringing gaming to the Mac.
“Of course, you can imagine the pride of some of the GPU folks and imagining, ‘Hey, wouldn't it be great if it hits a broader set of those really intense gamers,’” said Milet. “It's a natural place for us to be looking, to be working closely with our Metal team and our Developer team. We love the challenge.”"
Apple Says Its Looking at Future Macs Competing in Gaming | Digital Trends
Intel, Nvidia, and AMD should be watching their backs -- Apple is gunning for the PC gaming market with a future M-series processor for the Mac.www.digitaltrends.com
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Do you think Apple will release a M1 Mac with a dedicated GPU
- Thread starter RobGwy
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I'm not sure about a dedicated GPU, but I have heard rumors the higher-end Apple Silicon pro chips will give the graphics their own dedicated memory that's separate form the system memory, so THAT would be a big boost.
That would slow the system down, not speed it up, unless you mean that the graphics memory will be a partitioned portion of the system memory.
Having its own separate memory pool is the very definition of a dedicated GPU. As mentioned before, such memory arrangements are incompatible with the programming model of Apple Silicon and would lead to software fragmentation and diminished performance in many professional applications.
The way Apple flaunts unified memory makes me doubt this. I could see maybe a separate gpu die that shares memory with a cpu die, but having separate memory pools goes against Apple’s architecture.
Correct. Which is why it will be interesting to see how they solve this kinda conundrum
In 3 years, 50% of all computers capable of playing AAA games will be Macs
Edit: December 13th, 2021: Apple will sell about 27 million Macs in 2021. Assume that 80% are M1/M1Pro/M1Max Macs, then Apple will have sold 21 million Macs capable of playing AAA games. According to IDC, the number of gaming computers (desktops and laptops) sold in 2021 is projected to be 47...
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It's inevitable.
How to interface a really powerful GPU (using unified memory) and ideally make it modular/replaceable.
Ah. Well, I don’t see the conundrum. RAM can be in a socket and still be shared between the CPU and GPU.
Ok - but this would be a novel approach, right? And would likely not use PCIe, would it?
I am not aware of anyone doing anything similar
That’s how everyone used to do it before the days of PCI - each coprocessor connected to a custom bus and a memory controller on that bus arbitrated accesses to shared memory.
I could be wrong but I don't think @cmaier is saying these three components will be separate. Just that the RAM doesn't have to be co-located.
If I had a new Mac Pro and wanted a AS Mac Pro I would prepare myself for the possibility that expand-ability will be limited to Thunderbolt 4 devices.
There is little point for Apple to make that computer. They’ve already done that experiment and it failed for their target audience. I love the 2013 Mac Pro design but most Mac Pro users did not and will not buy a non-expandable Mac Pro.
I would say that’s a safe bet. I imagine it’s either that or an extension of the MPX slots currently available (pci, but with extra rails to do other things)
There are other ways to achieve modularity, which are more compatible with Apples hardware and software strategy. A separate dGPU is probably the least realistic scenario IMO if they want to keep the current programming model with its performance guarantees.
I don’t think that anyone expects you to
We are just a bunch of likely-minded people who like speculate about these things 
It's not in the cards. However, comparing the M1's GPU to, let's say, the G7 version of the Intel Iris Plus graphics in the 2020 4-port 13" MacBook Pro, for example, (or any AMD integrated Radeon as part of a Ryzen APU for that matter) is an Apples and oranges comparison. Apple Silicon integrated GPUs are way more efficient than that of either Intel or AMD's and are able to come much closer to the discrete GPUs of 3-5 years ago (and certainly way better than anything Intel has released to date). It's also important to note that literally any Apple SoC destined for a Mac following the M1 (both in terms of the same class of Apple SoC [i.e. M2] as well as any above it [i.e. M1X, M2X, etc.]) will have a faster and more capable GPU in tow.
That said, Apple Silicon presents a bunch of factors that will make it a poor proposition for gaming. Between the small handful of Apple Silicon native titles out there, you only have a subset of the games that survived Catalina's culling of 32-bit games (albeit that seems to be a large subset for now) running in Rosetta 2, but you lose Boot Camp. I'd say the Omen 15 was probably a better choice given your gaming affinity. I'd also argue that Windows has had a better track record of not breaking pre-existing apps and workflows with its semi-annual releases than Apple has had with its annual ones. Apple really needs to make more Snow Leopard style releases that polish the OS and remedy the bugs it makes from more feature-heavy releases. But it's also the case that these annual releases need more time in the oven before release, on average.
They are not. They are integrated.
You are mistaken. They are integrated, not dedicated. Apple has already outright stated that they're only going to be doing integrated GPUs for Apple Silicon systems. While this presumably includes the Mac Pro; it's highly possible that they'll introduce more Afterburner-esque cards that can be added in to assist with specific workloads.
There won't be a dedicated Apple Silicon GPU. This defeats the entire point of their system architecture model and they've already stated that they won't be doing it.
Honestly, it's people that post with such intense anti-Windows vitriol in response to honest queries that truly wastes everyone's time. Did an AMD-based Windows gaming machine steal your significant other or run over your dog or something like that? Do you need a hug?
Not everyone cares about thickness or how loud something is. The notion that these are essential features boggles my mind to no end. Also, as you stated above, this is an Apple forum; we are no strangers to paying premiums here.
I know this will be difficult to fathom, but gaming is important to a lot of people, let alone those who are considering a Mac. Crawling up the behind of the person you're replying to just to yell at them for considering a Windows PC because it suits their needs over a Mac and wondering if future Apple Silicon Macs might be suitable for gaming is unbecoming. You have your needs and use cases for a computer, the person you were replying to has theirs. No need to get even half as snippy about it as you've been here. Go listen to some smooth jazz, chill out, calm down, and then rejoin us when you're ready to have a civil discussion.
The Mac Pro won't be an exception to this. There may be Afterburner-esque cards that specifically assist the GPU for specific tasks, however. Afterburner is a programable mini-computer in and of itself; it's not unreasonable to assume that Apple will sell similar products to help with certain workloads. But, no, there won't be the kinds of dGPUs that you see on the Mac Pro currently. Apple has pretty much outright said that this is not going to be their computing model for Apple Silicon Macs.
The M1 isn't limiting anything in GPU performance any more than Intel Iris Plus G7 graphics are on something like the 2020 Intel 4-port 13" MacBook Pro or i5/i7 versions of the 2020 Intel MacBook Air, or the 2018 Mac mini, for that matter. Plus, it's assumed that the level of performance in whatever SoC you have in an Apple Silicon Mac Pro will be massive compared to the M1, let alone anything in any current Mac Pro. Apple knows how badly they burned people with the 2013 Mac Pro. They know that the iMac Pro wasn't a viable substitute either. They understand that what Mac Pro users want is something like the 2019 Mac Pro or even a modern version of the 2010 Mac Pro.
Given that, I'd say it's safe to assume that they'll provide an ample GPU in the SoC, along with expansion cards that assist the GPU in completing tasks rather than outright replacing it.