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leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,152
18,916
The following from the efficiency and performance perspective: if its AMD, its gonna be the unreleased pirate islands. The current AMD cards are too hot. Otherwise, the refreshed Maxwell. Which kind of confuses me, as the new GPUs are scheduled to be launched in 2015. But then again, its Apple, it has precedents of packing old GPUs into their computers...

I do not expect a 5K iMac to have any more powerful GPU btw, experience shows that no substantial horsepower is needed for common desktop composing tasks. Memory bandwidth is more important!
 

MartinAppleGuy

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Sep 27, 2013
2,247
889
I do not expect a 5K iMac to have any more powerful GPU btw, experience shows that no substantial horsepower is needed for common desktop composing tasks. Memory bandwidth is more important!

Well if I was ever going to buy a 5K iMac, I would want to edit 5K video as well as I edit 1080p video on my iMac, and as well as people edit 1440p video on their 27" iMac's. Until the price of this drops, mainly pro-users will want this and it needs to more than just eye candy.
 

Mac32

Suspended
Nov 20, 2010
1,263
454
Agree, I don't get the AMD GPU rumour. Nvidia's Maxwell would certainly be superior in both performance and temperature/thermals. Well, it's just a rumour.. :)
 

shokunin

macrumors regular
Jun 7, 2005
218
48
AMD tonga R9 m295X. I guess they'll want to leverage OpenCL performance with 4k content on Adobe CC and FCPX.

I secretly hope it's nVidia 980m since it's a beast of GPU and the drivers are already in Yosemite beta.
 

Truthfulie

macrumors regular
Dec 18, 2013
248
0
It has to be a 980M, nothing else will be acceptable.
This, no other mobile GPU is suitable for 5K display at this point. The new 900 series from Nvidia puts most AMD cards to shame in terms of performance per watt. There is no reason to go AMD at this point especially for machine like iMac. They need to keep it cool as possible and the best way to do it is by using less power.
 

chelch

macrumors regular
Dec 14, 2012
105
0
AMD tonga R9 m295X. I guess they'll want to leverage OpenCL performance with 4k content on Adobe CC and FCPX.

There was a lot of buzz about the M295X this summer and then even after full specs were released, nothing more. As it's still unreleased, maybe this is why. I think this is the most plausible outcome. The M295X should be slightly more powerful than the GTX 880m, much cheaper than a 980m (which is still unreleased) and possibly tweaked to suit the retina iMac.

Maxwell's architecture improves power efficiency during tasks similar to gaming, but not during rendering. Going from the 780m to the M295X only increases the TDP by 3W. I think Apple is actually making the right call here, as long as they pass the savings on to us.
 

crsh1976

macrumors 68000
Jun 13, 2011
1,551
1,699
Apple would likely use the Rx 300 series if they moved to AMD, we only have leaks thus far and even less info about the mobile variants - stay tuned, I guess.
 

Georgio

macrumors 6502
Apr 30, 2008
369
38
Essex, UK
To be honest if Apple did jump ship to AMD for the next refresh, I think I'd give it a miss until they re-adopt NVidia; there's just too many issues with AMD mobile cards and I don't want to go back there with heat etc as well.
 

crsh1976

macrumors 68000
Jun 13, 2011
1,551
1,699
To be honest if Apple did jump ship to AMD for the next refresh, I think I'd give it a miss until they re-adopt NVidia; there's just too many issues with AMD mobile cards and I don't want to go back there with heat etc as well.

What issues? Honest question, it's the first time I hear there are major issues with AMD mobile GPUs (recently, at least).
 

jji7skyline

macrumors 6502
Aug 10, 2011
302
0
As someone who has a mid-2011 iMac with a Radeon HD6750M that works fine, I think it'd be great if Apple switched back to using AMD cards again. I'm not sure what AMD have planned for the future of their mobile graphics line, but I'm sure that it would have to be something pretty substantial in order to compete with NVIDIA's offerings.
 

lowendlinux

macrumors 603
Sep 24, 2014
5,438
6,732
Germany
What issues? Honest question, it's the first time I hear there are major issues with AMD mobile GPUs (recently, at least).

There really isn't much issue if you don't live in a CUDA world. Maxwell is great compared to last gen ATI but that's kinda the point new will of course be better than old. There are rumors of a die shrink for the for the 3xx ATI cards as well as stacked memory and if you combine that with Apple OpenCL or bust and the Mac Pro having ATI I'd imagine the odds of ATI in the new iMac are better than 50%. I think in general it's a wash either way whatever Apple chooses will be enough to do what they believe the typical work load is combined with their own projected SW optimizations.
 

chelch

macrumors regular
Dec 14, 2012
105
0
Those are desktop graphics cards. It's unlikely that Apple will put desktop class graphics in the iMacs since they've never done it before, and the heat would be too much. Power consumption would also go up.

Thanks Tips
 

Serban

Suspended
Jan 8, 2013
5,159
928
i really hope for the 970M and BTO 980M
980M 2048 CUDA cores with 8 Gb vRAM
Nvidia’s mobile division has been slowly but surely catching up with its desktop counterparts as the generations and architectures progress. According to a slide by Nvidia, the 980 and 980M are only ~10% apart.
 
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chelch

macrumors regular
Dec 14, 2012
105
0
i really hope for the 970M and BTO 980M
980M 2048 CUDA cores with 8 Gb vRAM
Nvidia’s mobile division has been slowly but surely catching up with its desktop counterparts as the generations and architectures progress. According to a slide by Nvidia, the 980 and 980M are only ~10% apart.

The only benchmark we have for the 980m shows it about 21% behind the 780TI. Maybe 980m SLI is 10% behind the 980 but not the 980m. And after Apple underclocks it, the gap widens.

If you want a gaming machine, buy a Steam box. Check out the G-Pack from Piixl.
 

Georgio

macrumors 6502
Apr 30, 2008
369
38
Essex, UK
It would be really nice if Apple had the 980M as a BTO for the 27" and maybe SLi two 980M's for the 'super-mac' though I suspect that would be getting too much into Apple Pro territory for their liking.
 
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