AMD Details Radeon Pro Graphics in New 15-inch MacBook Pro Models

[darksithpro]

I had to register here to clear up a few misconceptions. I recently bought a MSIG63VR with the 1060 Pascal chip. It's the 6GB version. A lot of you are disappointed about the AMD 460. Well let me fill you in on the 1060 chip. It's got an 80 watt TDP! It's fricken hot as hell. I'm hitting 80c in Overwatch. The gs63vr has 2 fans mind you for the GPU and a 3rd of the back is dedicated to just cooling. I have a ****** 4 hour battery life with simple browsing and a little over an hour of gimped gaming unplugged. Yea, that's right. The 1060 pascal sucks up so much power that the internal battery cannot provide enough watts for just the GPU alone. So do you want ten hour battery life with a 965m like performance laptop, or do you want 4 hours with half the desktop like performance unplugged? Thanks for listening guys...

 

[leman]

We are used to compromising to get that "well-rounded package", but as I asked earlier, where does it end? Today it's 14% thinner and 20% less volume? Why not 7% and 10%? And for what? With each revision the compromises get bigger and bigger.

The funny thing about Apple is that they have their vision and they are set on it. This vision can align with other people's purposes or maybe not. I don't think that Apple values thinness etc. over everything. I think is more along the lines of 'thinness without compromising performance'. The important point here is that the performance is defined relative to the previous gen. I am fine with the fact that Apple doesn't have the most powerful GPU. For my purpose, their vision is EXACTLY what I look for. The new MBP means that I can go on to conferences more comfortably (no bulky backpacks etc.), but still work essentially the entire day on a single charge, and if I need to, I can fire up some heavy-duty MCMC model fitting on that thing as well and be done with it twice as fast as with my previous machine. Is that worth $3000 to me? God yes. Its literally peanuts compared to the rest of the operating costs.

Any links to this stats and any more details? Really curious about the GPU power but don't fully understand it all...

Just look for any Radeon 460 RX review. The 460 Pro should perform around 10% less. Which means that you can basically play any modern game with decent resolution and get very good performance.

 

[Michael Goff]

Is it just me or has the Apple fan base gotten especially quick with the "don't talk bad about it, just don't buy it" line?

 

[jwpoof]

I kinda feel bad for Apple's professional customers. They are beholden to a single manufacturer who, more often than not lately, makes some questionable decisions.

In the Windows world... if you don't like what Dell is offering... you can jump over to HP. Or Lenovo.

But if you want to run MacOS... you're stuck with Apple. It must be frustrating to make a purchase request for Apple hardware.

Nobody should feel sorry for me, but yes, this is essentially what it's like. As I told a friend earlier today, I used to want Apple products that I didn't actually need. Now I actually need apple products I don't actually want.

Either Apple will eventually sort themselves out or I will, and life will go on. But this release represents the low point for me as an Apple pro user who basically needs to buy one of these, and is not happy about it.

 

[Rockadile]

My ignore list has grown steadily today.

When you get caught with the BS, you take the easy way out

 

[antondonovan]

Remember people, the processors came out in Q3/4 2015.

And why does it matter? The biggest issue with Apple's Mac lineup is its graphical capabilities.

Should have been a GTX 1050 or better in the new MacBook Pro.

Apple uses OpenCL, which AMD supports better. NVIDIA supports CUDA, it's a matter of OS.

...Where's the 470 or even 480? ....

They don't exist.

They should have used DDR4 for such a high end laptop, crazy they used DDR3.

DDR4 technology is not mature yet, maybe in 1-2 year's time it will be good enough for MacBook Pros, but now is not the time.

It's irrelevant if it's a laptop or a desktop ... for the price you should be getting desktop class performance.

Actually, yes it is. You need to take form factor and card type/generation/power into account. If you're looking for something more powerful, you're looking at the wrong Macs, perhaps you should even question if you really want to use Macs.

Reality check? Apple always used a sub 50W GPUs in their laptops. Name me a sub 50W mobile GPU which is currently faster? What did you expect? A desktop-grade GTX 1080? You do realise that the mobile Nvidia 1060 draws more power than the entire 15" MBP? I really don't get whats happening in brains of some people. Apple gives you the fastest possible GPU given the form factor constraints and you are still not happy.

P.S. BTW, the mobile GTX 1050 which would be the closest contender is not released yet.

This guy deserves a cookie.

 

[kk1ro]

I had to register here to clear up a few misconceptions. I recently bought a MSIG63VR with the 1060 Pascal chip. It's the 6GB version. A lot of you are disappointed about the AMD 460. Well let me fill you in on the 1060 chip. It's got an 80 watt TDP! It's fricken hot as hell. I'm hitting 80c in Overwatch. The gs63vr has 2 fans mind you for the GPU and a 3rd of the back is dedicated to just cooling. I have a ****** 4 hour battery life with simple browsing and a little over an hour of gimped gaming unplugged. Yea, that's right. The 1060 pascal sucks up so much power that the internal battery cannot provide enough watts for just the GPU alone. So do you want ten hour battery life with a 965m like performance laptop, or do you want 4 hours with half the desktop like performance unplugged? Thanks for listening guys...

I have a 2011 MBP with a AMD 6770M, I hit 70-80ºC regularly when gaming and my laptop had a 1-2h battery life when playing games, even when it was brand new.

The Apple battery life estimates are for simple tasks such as browsing and word processing. Start playing a video and those 10h suddenly fall to 6h. Start editing a 4K video, and it suddenly jumps to 3h.

When I'm sitting down at my desk, plugged in, being a "Pro" and doing complex tasks, I want performance.

 

[R.P.G]

May be a noob question..

I am planning to upgrade GPU from 450 to 460 when ordering. Is it going to have adverse effect on cook ng or battery life???

 

[darksithpro]

I have a 2011 MBP with a AMD 6770M, I hit 70-80ºC regularly when gaming and my laptop had a 1-2h battery life when playing games, even when it was brand new.

The Apple battery life estimates are for simple tasks such as browsing and word processing. Start playing a video and those 10h suddenly fall to 6h. Start editing a 4K video, and it suddenly jumps to 3h.

When I'm sitting down at my desk, plugged in, being a "Pro" and doing complex tasks, I want performance.

You do realize with the 1060 chip the internal battery is incapable of providing enough power to get the full performance, right? The laptop has to be plugged in, or it will give you literally less than half the performance. The 1060 pascal is for "gaming" laptops.

 

[hakonik]

Would someone be kind enough to predict how fluently would the eGPU work with mac? And I mean when running osx, not windows. I'm familiar with the basic concept and possible minor performance losses. But in real life:
- driver issues
- hot pluggable etc.

 

[Rockadile]

The funny thing about Apple is that they have their vision and they are set on it. This vision can align with other people's purposes or maybe not. I don't think that Apple values thinness etc. over everything. I think is more along the lines of 'thinness without compromising performance'. The important point here is that the performance is defined relative to the previous gen. I am fine with the fact that Apple doesn't have the most powerful GPU. For my purpose, their vision is EXACTLY what I look for. The new MBP means that I can go on to conferences more comfortably (no bulky backpacks etc.), but still work essentially the entire day on a single charge, and if I need to, I can fire up some heavy-duty MCMC model fitting on that thing as well and be done with it twice as fast as with my previous machine. Is that worth $3000 to me? God yes. Its literally peanuts compared to the rest of the operating costs.



Just look for any Radeon 460 RX review. The 460 Pro should perform around 10% less. Which means that you can basically play any modern game with decent resolution and get very good performance.

But the MBP line isn't the right one for shrinking form factor each redesign. There is/was the Air and Macbook line for that. It should have stayed in its modular, cMBP size.

 

[kk1ro]

You do realize with the 1060 chip the internal battery is incapable of providing enough power to get the full performance, right? The laptop has to be plugged in, or it will give you literally less than half the performance. The 1060 pascal is for "gaming" laptops.

The unplugged GTX 1060 is still more powerful than the plugged Radeon Pro 460.

Saying that a specific GPU is for "gaming" is simply not correct. The GTX 1060 and the Radeon Pro 460 have *exactly* the same range of purpose. The user defines what they're being used for, not the other way around.

Also, if you think that MBPs don't get severely throttled when unplugged and doing intensive tasks, you must not have used one for very long.

 

[PatrickJMcCurry]

AMD has shared some technical details on the new Radeon Pro graphics cards included in the 15-inch MacBook Pro models, giving some insight into their performance and the differences between the three options.

The Radeon Pro 400 Series Graphics are built on AMD's Polaris architecture and are fabricated using the 14nm FinFET process to achieve high performance without sacrificing power efficiency. They offer memory bandwidth of up to 80GB/s.

The Radeon Pro 460, available as a $200 upgrade in the entry-level 15-inch MacBook Pro and a $100 upgrade in the higher-end 15-inch MacBook Pro, offers 1.86 Teraflops of horsepower and 16 compute units (1024 stream processors).

The Radon Pro 455, the default option in the higher-end 15-inch MacBook Pro, features 1.3 Teraflops of horsepower and 12 compute units (768 stream processors). The Radeon Pro 450, available in the entry-level 15-inch MacBook Pro as the default option, offers 1 Teraflop of horsepower and 10 compute units (640 stream processors).

According to AMD, the Radeon Pro graphics processors inside the MacBook Pro are thinner than a US penny with a Z-height of 1.5mm but still pack in 3 billion transistors. The Radeon Pro features "advanced power technology" to allow the MacBook Pro to stay cool and quiet even during demanding tasks.

On its MacBook Pro website, Apple says the 15-inch MacBook Pro offers up to 130 percent faster graphics performance (with the Radeon 460) and up to 2.5x more computing power per watt compared to the previous-generation 15-inch MacBook Pro.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro uses integrated graphics instead of discrete graphics, but Apple says the Iris Graphics 550 are up to 103 percent faster than the Iris Graphics 6100 in the previous-generation 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Article Link: AMD Details Radeon Pro Graphics in New 15-inch MacBook Pro Models

 

[fokmik]

those who are comparing with the razer..really they just read the brochure? last year i tryied (because i liked what ive saw) razer blade and surface book....after 2 months i return both. Not even close...the battery on razer blade that on paper was about 5.5-6 hours (typicaly in windows OEM fashion) the reality was that the battery last around 4 and a half hours (WEB BROWSING), on a mac you get almost what they tell you. Now doing gaming...the battery slip to 1.5-2h depending of the game. using adobe i have the battery lasting for 3 hours. So what are we talking about here? even on the mac if you lets say play a game the battery slips to what razer claims for web-5 hours

 

[darksithpro]

The unplugged GTX 1060 is still more powerful than the plugged Radeon Pro 460.

Saying that a specific GPU is for "gaming" is simply not correct. The GTX 1060 and the Radeon Pro 460 have *exactly* the same range of purpose. The user defines what they're being used for, not the other way around.

Also, if you think that MBPs don't get severely throttled when unplugged and doing intensive tasks, you must not have used one for very long.

The 460 Pro has a TDP of 30-35 watts, the 1060 is 80! Like others have said, the power requirements of the 1060 GPU alone exceed the entire power requirements of the MBP itself. It IS a gaming chip, for gamers. You want a Gaming laptop, get a MSI, ASUS, Clevo, or Sager.

 

[dantroline]

Hi, I joined up just to say this. I bought a 2013 maxxed out Macbook Pro, and I was extremely happy with the purchase at the time because for the money there was nothing remotely as good on the market - Lenovo and Dell had vastly inferior laptops at the time. Fast forward to today, this new Macbook Pro is twice the price for the hardware compared with a Dell XPS which, for what it's worth, comes with more memory. "Oh but you don't need memory" is the fanboy response. Well let me explain why memory on a Dell XPS is important: When I buy it (and there is NO WAY I would buy this new Apple at the price they ask for it) I will be able to run Windows natively, OSX in a VM - probably with the performance of my 2013 Macbook Pro which is entirely adequate, and several other VM's. Plus better gaming, plus it has better battery life, plus I end up with several thousand dollars for other stuff like holidays. No one in their right mind would pay this much for this product.

[edit] Oh.. and add to this Apple's shameful handling of Screengate which my laptop was a victim of - eventually I got the screen replaced but I won't forget the lack of support for Apple "care". If I got this kind of treatment from a tradesman he wouldn't get paid.

 

[pratikindia]

Apple should omit the Pro from MacBook Pro. A Pro computer without PRO features such as SD card reader(DSLR users)and uses dongles to connect iPhone or USB-A devices. It's an epic fail for Apple. Apple is moving to a wireless future but with lots of dongles. Professional laptops should have all the tools a professional needs, not this crippled laptop. Just imagine a $3000 MBP surrounded by dongles. What about heat? Is this hotter than the previous models?

 

[Jaekae]

Reality check? Apple always used a sub 50W GPUs in their laptops. Name me a sub 50W mobile GPU which is currently faster? What did you expect? A desktop-grade GTX 1080? You do realise that the mobile Nvidia 1060 draws more power than the entire 15" MBP? I really don't get whats happening in brains of some people. Apple gives you the fastest possible GPU given the form factor constraints and you are still not happy.

P.S. BTW, the mobile GTX 1050 which would be the closest contender is not released yet.

Finally someone who use the brain on this forum.

Everyone else seem to expect it to have unreleased tech in it.

And at this size of a laptop the performance is impressive.

I ordered mine already now, will get a overall really nice portable computer, and for home use ill just get a eGPU in the future (if i even need it)

Only bad thing is the price increase

Less size is awesome for traveling photographer like me, and the new screen will be top notch

 

[PatrickJMcCurry]

The new MacBook Pro is a joke in my opinion. Apple claim that the touch bar is innovative and are essentially claiming a life changing experience. All apple have done have priced themselves out of a market they have spent years building up. A starting price of around £1500 makes it perfect for bringing the market back to the power users but near enough wipes out the ability for the average joe to get in on the bottom rung without resorting to the 12 inch MacBook which is not what you want to be editing on. All I can hope is that they don't make these sort of "inovations" with the new iMac. I'm due an upgrade soon but if they maintain this Ashley of pricing statergy I'm going to have to move away from them.

 

[Michael Goff]

Can a professional help me out with something? Were people really screaming that the old MBP was too thick and too heavy?

 

[kwikdeth]

Seriously people. Quit whining about the built-in GPU. It has Thunderbolt 3 x 4. You do realize that is like having four full-speed PCI slots... right? Just get an external GPU. Gigabyte makes a sweet Thunderbolt 3 eGPU:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3079...ptop-external-graphics.amp.html?client=safari

except its not. Thunderbolt connections are equivalent of a 4x PCIe connection, 1/4th the bandwidth of a full-speed 16x PCIe slot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)
Protocol • Thunderbolt v1: 4× PCI Express 2.0,[4]DisplayPort 1.1a[3]
• Thunderbolt v2: 4× PCI Express 2.0, DisplayPort 1.2
• Thunderbolt v3: 4× PCI Express 3.0, DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 2.0, USB 3.1 gen. 2

Now, you're also assuming that each individual port has its own channel, which is not correct. Even the significantly more expensive Mac Pro only has 2x controllers for all six thunderbolt ports on the machine. There's simply not enough available bandwidth on the CPU to handle that many Thunderbolt controllers. So in essence, its 1 4x PCIe channel being split across all four ports. Luckily enough, the USB channel operates outside of thunderbolt, so you're not going to consume precious PCIE bandwidth by hooking up a bunch of USB peripherals.

This is the snake oil that is Thunderbolt in the manner in which Apple markets it. It was never meant to be a replacement for internal expansion, it was meant to complement it.

[Edit]
Ive done some more research on this and based off current intel offerings, it would seem that the new MBP has two controllers. the DSL6540 is the highest bandwidth part they offer which is two thunderbolt channels on a PCIe 4x bus. unless Apple has their hands on some custom silicon, then it has to have two controllers. Still, though, a high end modern graphics card will be bottlenecked by an external thunderbolt connection.

 

[greglo]

Everyone else seem to expect it to have unreleased tech in it.

I think, it is using using unreleased tech? This CPU and GPU have not been released elsewhere? (Only the CPU is in Intel's box).

 

[freezelighter]

Waiting for GTX 1180 iMac 27". Please.

 

[Michael Goff]

Waiting for GTX 1180 iMac 27". Please.

I believe you mean some sort of AMD based machine, you're not likely getting NVIDIA.

 

[Maxx Power]

I had to register here to clear up a few misconceptions. I recently bought a MSIG63VR with the 1060 Pascal chip. It's the 6GB version. A lot of you are disappointed about the AMD 460. Well let me fill you in on the 1060 chip. It's got an 80 watt TDP! It's fricken hot as hell. I'm hitting 80c in Overwatch. The gs63vr has 2 fans mind you for the GPU and a 3rd of the back is dedicated to just cooling. I have a ****** 4 hour battery life with simple browsing and a little over an hour of gimped gaming unplugged. Yea, that's right. The 1060 pascal sucks up so much power that the internal battery cannot provide enough watts for just the GPU alone. So do you want ten hour battery life with a 965m like performance laptop, or do you want 4 hours with half the desktop like performance unplugged? Thanks for listening guys...

I think this is what a lot of people may have missed here. The 1060 is 160% of the TDP of the Radeon M370X (80 Watts vs. 50 Watts). The previous generation Geforce 960M is rated at 75 Watts and that figure alone would have prevented Apple from considering that chip in their thin MBPs. The generation before that - 750M was rated at 50 Watts and was the last generation to be featured inside Apple's MBPs.