Any chance a switch to an Nvidia dGPU will be in the refresh?

[Adamantoise]

Just curious. I've just not had nothing but unfavorable experiences with AMD chips (mostly in the desktop environment).

I am looking to get a 15" (god I wish they sold it without the touchbar!), and it seems it only comes with an AMD chip.

 

[caramelpolice]

No one really knows. They haven't put an Nvidia chip in a Mac since the 7xx series, but they switch between AMD and Nvidia every few years.

 

[leman]

Unfortunately, we don't get any insight into the details of business communication between Apple and chip makers. It could be very interesting though. There must be a good reason why Apple didn't adopt nvidia chips despite the later having a better performance-per-watt track record with maxwell generation. It also seems that AMD was prepared to make a better deal this time, esentualky selling the entire initial stock of Polaris 11 to Apple as well as implementing a custom post-processing manufacturing step. Given that Nvidia offering in the sub-45W segment are rather lacking at the moment, I don't think that a refresh (if one is to come) is going to feature an Nvidia GPU.

 

[ZapNZs]

It will probably depend on which GPUs are available at a certain point in time at the quantity desired that meets power constraints, and which chip in a respective performance class Apple can get for the lowest out-the-door price after any of their own processing specs are added on. And I'm not sure if Nvidia currently has a whole lot of newer products that would meet all of the above???

Historically, Apple MBPs have had some issues with certain AMD and Nvidia GPUs - when they have switched from one brand to another on the MBP, this has sometimes happened shortly a MBP GPU issue. It may just be coincidence. But if it is not, since the most recent Nvidia and AMD dGPUs in MacBook Pros both have a pretty solid track record, that may give Apple more incentive to stay with AMD if pricing is favorable, given there isn't a potential PR nightmare on the horizon.

 

[cynics]

Beginning of April nVidia released their Pascal driver for MacOS.

Personally I would like to think there is more to it then eGPU and Hackintosh support. Why pay people (probably a lot btw) to have ongoing Pascal development for an OS that does have their product?

To me it would seem something is in the works. It could just be better eGPU support and nVidia wants to be ready so AMD doesn't grab up that entire market being the only game in town. However it could be more than that, and them prepping for first party implementation.

The tight lip nature of nVidia and Apple on the matter is suspicious too. According to Anandtech nVidia stated they are “making the new TITAN Xp open to the Mac community with new Pascal drivers”....... ok...?

 

[turbineseaplane]

I sort of doubt it.

Power Usage and most importantly pricing seem to make AMD the best choice for this use case.

Hard to know what to make of the NVIDIA thing other than perhaps acquiescing to discussion with NVIDIA about desire out in the wild for more official support. It wasn't a huge change though, just a more formal and public declaration of direct support that was mostly there on NVIDIA's part anyhow, as those of us Hackintosher's know (been using NVIDIA and their compatible drivers for many years now)
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The tight lip nature of nVidia and Apple on the matter is suspicious too. According to Anandtech nVidia stated they are “making the new TITAN Xp open to the Mac community with new Pascal drivers”....... ok...?

It could just be about the MacPro in the future too I suppose.
Hard to really know.