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AMD in MacBook Pros [merged]

Lennyvalentin said:
AMD has the clearly superior integrated graphics, and Intel has no discrete graphics at all (yet.) Of course, there are no Macs with AMD CPUs, so it doesn't matter... 😉
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Thank you for the answer. I think superior graphics could be appealing then assuming battery life is on par and CPU doesn't regress too much. Decisions seem to be less and less logical when it comes to Apple's laptops so it is harder to gauge, but “old” Apple would prioritise overall performance above a single spec.

I remember they held back upgrading to Intel chips one year because they valued the overall performance of much faster use of the Nvidia discrete graphics in combination with the older CPUs.

Here it is: Why the 13″ MacBook Pro didn’t get a Core i5 upgrade.
 
elppa said:
I remember they held back upgrading to Intel chips one year because they valued the overall performance of much faster use of the Nvidia discrete graphics in combination with the older CPUs.
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Things are more complicated now though, considering how much trouble Intel has had getting their 10nm manufacturing process working; it's allegedly caused bottlenecks in their current 14nm production, because products that were supposed to have moved down to 10nm never did. Apple is dependent on reliable chip supplies, and also prefer to not update their hardware unless there's sufficient need to do so. Like, current Macbook CPUs not supporting low-voltage DDR4, so therefore no 32GB RAM option, for example.

With Intel's post-Skylake CPUs being basically one and the same (and not seldomly also in short supply, as witnessed with the craptastic coffee lake chip launch of last year), Apple apparently reasons that it is more profitable to simply not update their hardware... 😛
 
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w4rm said:
It's more so a sign that AMD are sticking to there roadmap, Intel was supposed to have 7nm around the same time as AMD but Intel has been having major delays the last few years.

AMD has been handling there technological advancements way better than Intel the last while, and Intel is playing catch up. The CEO at Intel was just fired, so Intel is aware it's behind.

And these delays are trickling down to the Apple consumer.

In terms of size Intel is currently at 14nm, smaller chips means less power consumption and a host of other benefits. It's basically a generation ahead.

I think Apple is eventually moving to it's own chip like for iOS, but that's not until around 2020, since they already use AMD GPU's I don't think it's that farfetched that they may move to AMD for the CPU's until then.
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He was fired for something else other then performance related
 
It’s been interesting watching the back and forth between AMD and Intel over the years. It’s interesting to note the two times AMD have had the upper hand (or at least been extremely competitive) Jim Keller was responsible. He also kickstarted Apple’s A* line proper in between. Intel hired him in April.

In case you’re not familiar with him
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer)
 
Intel has a single core lead and AVX512. Otherwise the AMD offerings are about the same or better. With Keller at Intel designing a new ua, we're about 3-4 years out from seeing the fruit of his labor. Until then, enjoy "14nm."

Intel processors enjoy a decent leg up in Premiere Pro, for example, because Adobe focuses on Intel efficiency when it comes to rendering. I'm not sure this is the case with the likes of Avid or BlackMagic, for example. I would not be surprised if TR2 outperforms more expensive Intel processors. This is Intel, the company that used a highly-binned and overclocked processor with a cooling system that cost just over a grand.
 
Feenician said:
It’s been interesting watching the back and forth between AMD and Intel over the years. It’s interesting to note the two times AMD have had the upper hand (or at least been extremely competitive) Jim Keller was responsible. He also kickstarted Apple’s A* line proper in between. Intel hired him in April.

In case you’re not familiar with him
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer)
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Actually, the lead engineer in charge of Zen is Michael Clark.
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Closingracer said:
And yet the official story says otherwise. Either way who cares
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You do.
 
w4rm said:
AMD just announced 7nm CPU chips coming out this year. Intel over a year behind.

Do you think Apple would ever put an AMD CPU in a Mac in the future?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveal...al-and-first-silicon-will-ship-this-year/amp/
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I'm betting on it.

AMD are shipping many more cores than intel at lower price with Ryzen and especially Threadripper. Of all the platforms that can actually make good use of more threads, macOS is right up there.


edit:
Kraznich was maybe fired ("resigned") for both reasons. The public reason is the relationship. That looks a lot better for intel as a company publicly than "we let him go because he's done a bad job and thus we have bad products".

i.e., the relationship was a convenient reason for the company.
 
tubeexperience said:
Actually, the lead engineer in charge of Zen is Michael Clark.
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Yes, he moved up the food chain on the second run at AMD and appointed and managed Mike Clark. Still heavily involved in the Zen project and supposedly responsible for infinity fabric. Success certainly seems to follow him around.

Don’t get me wrong, I surely hope he breaks his run this time. Stiff competition keeps both sides on their toes in development and pricing.
 
Feenician said:
Yes, he moved up the food chain on the second run at AMD and appointed and managed Mike Clark. Still heavily involved in the Zen project and supposedly responsible for infinity fabric. Success certainly seems to follow him around.

Don’t get me wrong, I surely hope he breaks his run this time. Stiff competition keeps both sides on their toes in development and pricing.
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Actually, Keller wasn't. He was the head of the K12 development team which AMD cancelled to speed up development of Zen.
 
tubeexperience said:
Actually, Keller wasn't. He was the head of the K12 development team which AMD cancelled to speed up development of Zen.
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He wasn’t what? He worked directly on it at the start, worked with Clark on the arch and appointed Clark as lead architect. This is according to Clark himself.

https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330348&page_number=1
“EET said:
Later, Clark was lead architect for Steamroller, an x86 core that some reviewers trashed as uncompetitive in AMD’s 2014 chips. By that time, AMD had already started work on its comeback core Zen under Jim Keller, a microprocessor rock star who led AMD’s K8, then left to work on two successful chip startups and do a stint designing smartphone chips at Apple.

Keller “was involved in the early days of Zen, we worked together on the arch and he made me lead architect for it because he was running the whole [processor design] group,” said Clark. “The engineering team loved him because he’s an engineer at heart and you felt you had a champion,” he said.
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Closingracer said:
He was fired for something else other then performance related
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Kraznic's relationship with a collegue had allegedly been known for some time within the company without anyone making a fuss over it. Then there's the continued delays with 10nm and fails in execution where the company previously ran like clockwork, and suddenly people aren't as willing to turn their eyes aside for a little indiscretion anymore...

So off, out to pasture the guy goes.
 
What if Apple ditches Apple but not quite ready for Arm chips yet? Apples seems hellbent on using ATI’s for GPUs

For those who are in the know..... how would Ryzen chips perform?
 
maflynn said:
Does AMD have mobile Ryzen chipsets that comparable or better then Intel's? I know the desktop ones are better then Intel but I don't know about the chipsets for laptops.
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I could have swore I’ve seen some spec’d for dell inspirons
 
Yeah I'm not sure they have yet, but if AMD can bring out a mobile APU it could be a huge winner. The Ryzen 3 2200G was excellent, and I'm sure the new Ryzen 3 3200G and Ryzen 5 3400G will be even better. It sounds like that's going to be a thing. Pretty sure Apple have been known to work much better with AMD than with Nvidia for many years anyway, so I wouldn't be surprised if within the next 12-18 months we saw MacBook Pros running AMD Ryzen APUs. Depends if they can eke out the same CPU performance as Intel's mobile CPUs while continuing to crush Intel's HD/Iris integrated GPUs.

There are already a number of high-powered gaming laptops running AMD Ryzen CPUs and more coming (just as an example, though it's using a discrete RX 580 GPU not integrated/APU) so I guess we'll see.

EDIT: I just wanted to clarify because my post was a little vague. AMD has been selling desktop processors they're calling APUs (Specifically the Ryzen 3 2200G) for a while now, and what you basically get is way better gaming performance than Intel processors using HD3000 or whatever. In fact for light gaming on 900p or lower with medium or lower detail, it basically renders discrete GPUs unnecessary, hence a lot of younger people with lower budgets using 2200Gs to play games like Fortnite on a PC.

AMD have announced mobile versions of these APUs. I don't know of any laptops that have released with them or been announced for them yet, but in theory - if the results are similar on laptops as they are on desktop PCs, you'd end up with significantly better graphical power in your laptop compared to an Intel-based system. And if that's the case, and if the rumours are true that Apple have been unhappy with Intel for a while now, and IIRC that Mac OS plays better with AMD than Nvidia anyway, I would not be totally surprised to see future MacBook Pros using AMD APUs, at least before Apple can figure out ARM.
 
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The new Ryzen 3 outperforms Intel chips in almost every area. The question is how Ice Lake will perform. If I’ve Lake can match Zen 2 performance/watt, it would be more attractive to Apple because of integrated TB3 and avx-512.
 
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