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Thoughts on AMD Radeon R9 M370X over the Nvidia 750m?

So far the consensus amongst MR posters seems to be that it's not the M370, so it's a good bit better than that, but also likely a good bit worse than the 950M.

Considering the 950M was the conservative estimate of most of the techie posters, if true then this is yet another GPU disappointment, but perhaps not worth getting too upset about if Skylake MBPs are now likely to hit late this year.
 
Not a great way to go...

I use, build, repair computers regularly. Other than the iPod Touch, and MacBook Pro I don't really use Macs for anything, other than PowerMac for work sometimes.

That being said, if Apple switched from Intel CPUs to AMD CPUs, it would have been a firestorm of anger. AMD has always lagged far behind on single core performance per price in every category available.

Now as for the Graphics, Physx is exclusively owned and used by nVidia. Some games use it, some don't. The games listed (Tomb Raider) quite possibly may not use them. Overall, I would never, ever, ever expect Apple to use an AMD graphics card/chip as they are terrible in every situation I've dealt with.

I'm assuming in this case, that Apple got a good deal, was able to offer a good price, and is going to put out a good product. If you are buying a MacBook Pro for gaming, you aren't really the enthusiast most people consider a hardcore gamer, as OS X doesn't have the biggest library of games. Even in Boot Camp, the machine isn't really for that.

That being said, programs that use GPU like Photoshops use for acceleration is what I expect to get a nice performance boost. I have to update my MacBook within a few months, and I really hate leaving behind my CD drive, but unfortunately I have no choice.

It wasn't a bad move on Apple's part. Not unless someone finds something more substantial than gaming performance issues. We'll see in a week or so.
 
SCOLANATOR said:
Yeh will do, let me know if there's any games you want tested that I might have and I'll be sure to compare, will be cool having them side by side. I'll start a thread in this forum for you all to see next week when the Mac arrives.
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Hm, I think a selection of general industry-standard benchmarks would be interesting (if you have access to those). As of games, GW2, GTA V and the new Witcher would be nice of course. Also, if you have one of games that support Mantle, it would also be very interesting to see how they perform on a Mantle-enabled platform.
 
radiohead14 said:
Skyrim, Mass Effect 3, and if you can.. Witcher 3 please =)
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Got Skyrim, no ME3 or Witcher 3 sadly (just got the Witcher 3 on PS4). Keep them coming :).

I'll be sure to include BF4 - likely with Mantle, CSGO, Skyrim, WoT, Warthunder, CoH2...
Got a pretty big Steam Library, just can't remember them off the top of my head.
 
repoman27 said:
There is apparently at least one 104.6", curved, 5120 x 2160 panel in production, but it ain't cheap:

http://www.samsung.com/us/video/tvs/UN105S9WAFXZA
http://www.lg.com/us/tvs/lg-105UC9-led-tv

These are TVs though, and lack DisplayPort inputs.

Apple probably has a better idea than we do as to what will become available in the near future, and apparently the hardware, OS and drivers are all ready for 5120 x 2160 on the specified models. Intel's IGP's clearly aren't up to the task, and if I had to guess, it's probably due to memory bandwidth.

Although Thunderbolt controllers can pass through or output a native DP signal, the output is limited to whatever generation of DP they support. Many Macs were limited to DP 1.1 solely by their Thunderbolt controllers, and even if the Radeon R9 M370X (Litho XT?) were to support DP 1.3, it would still be limited to DP 1.2 by the DSL5520 Thunderbolt 2 controller.
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Wow those cost a fortune, but they do exist...

Great explanation! This would suggest that other models using full DP 1.2 up to the correct spec... Mac Pro, iMac with discrete graphics, etc. should be able to output 5120 x 2160 as well, correct?
 
Yixian said:
So far the consensus amongst MR posters seems to be that it's not the M370, so it's a good bit better than that, but also likely a good bit worse than the 950M.

Considering the 950M was the conservative estimate of most of the techie posters, if true then this is yet another GPU disappointment, but perhaps not worth getting too upset about if Skylake MBPs are now likely to hit late this year.
Click to expand...

I made that mistake at first, the M370X and M370 are different chips and from what I've seen the M370X code named Strato XT is actually looking like a decent upgrade, at least performance wise like a 950 at least but time will tell.
 
Yixian said:
So far the consensus amongst MR posters seems to be that it's not the M370, so it's a good bit better than that, but also likely a good bit worse than the 950M.

Considering the 950M was the conservative estimate of most of the techie posters, if true then this is yet another GPU disappointment, but perhaps not worth getting too upset about if Skylake MBPs are now likely to hit late this year.
Click to expand...
Its impossible to know the performance of the M370X at this point. AMD's product names are confusing, and M370 vs M370X could be drastically different in performance. Apple is the first company using this chip, just like when they introduced the retina iMac with the M295X. The M295X turned out to be a decent performer. Wait and see.
 
Just had a quick look on AMD's website.

They don't seem to list any 3xx chips in their drop down box while looking for drivers.

The beta drivers say they shouldn't be used with Bootcamp? Is this just usual covering themselves type thing?

Hopefully they'll have some options showing by next week.
 
It turns out to be 896 GCN core chip. Looks like GloFo process is way better than TSMC's...

It might be also cut down Tonga chip with that technology. Quite interesting. I think the OpenCL performance for this chip should be around 1.4 - 1.5 TFLOPS.
 
Apple states that the GPU is 80% faster and if we use the videocardbenchmark score the 750m has about 1390 marks which if we multiply by 1.8 brings it to around 2500 which is spot on 290x speeds, of course this should be taken with a grain of salt. also it has half the frame buffer of a regular m290x which has 4gb so it remains to be seen how much of an effect that will have.
 
556fmjoe said:
This is complete and utter nonsense. I'm posting this on an 11 year old T42 ThinkPad. A good laptop is a good laptop, regardless of who makes it.
Click to expand...

Hardware is different from OS. I'm quite sure you aren't running the originally installed version of Windows.

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iUsers said:
I use, build, repair computers regularly. Other than the iPod Touch, and MacBook Pro I don't really use Macs for anything, other than PowerMac for work sometimes.

That being said, if Apple switched from Intel CPUs to AMD CPUs, it would have been a firestorm of anger. AMD has always lagged far behind on single core performance per price in every category available.

Now as for the Graphics, Physx is exclusively owned and used by nVidia. Some games use it, some don't. The games listed (Tomb Raider) quite possibly may not use them. Overall, I would never, ever, ever expect Apple to use an AMD graphics card/chip as they are terrible in every situation I've dealt with.

I'm assuming in this case, that Apple got a good deal, was able to offer a good price, and is going to put out a good product. If you are buying a MacBook Pro for gaming, you aren't really the enthusiast most people consider a hardcore gamer, as OS X doesn't have the biggest library of games. Even in Boot Camp, the machine isn't really for that.

That being said, programs that use GPU like Photoshops use for acceleration is what I expect to get a nice performance boost. I have to update my MacBook within a few months, and I really hate leaving behind my CD drive, but unfortunately I have no choice.

It wasn't a bad move on Apple's part. Not unless someone finds something more substantial than gaming performance issues. We'll see in a week or so.
Click to expand...

It doesn't matter to Steam and other sellers of game software if you are "hardcore". Most of their customers aren't.
That very fast sed will also be great for the Photoshop scratch disk and any kind of VM as well as just, anything really.
 
moussa247 said:
Apple states that the GPU is 80% faster and if we use the videocardbenchmark score the 750m has about 1390 marks which if we multiply by 1.8 brings it to around 2500 which is spot on 290x speeds, of course this should be taken with a grain of salt. also it has half the frame buffer of a regular m290x which has 4gb so it remains to be seen how much of an effect that will have.
Click to expand...


Frankly, this whole thread is BS until we have official specs and benchmarks. The general attitude of the forum of hailing the GTX 900M series GPU in a holy grail-like status before official benchmarks come out of the M370X is BS.
 
SCOLANATOR said:
No problem, any games in particular you wanted looked at that I might have? I'm a world of tanks addict so a 70% would make the game go from playable to a perfect sweet spot while retaining good visuals. ~31avg to ~50avg would be huge for me, I sink so many hours into that game it's getting ridiculous, closing in on unicum stats though #.

Do you know if Apple (UK) still include a 3 year warranty with their student discount now that they've moved to Unidays rather than relying on a Internet connection within a university?
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I'm US based so I can't say about the warranty. I will use my Amex and get a year of extra warranty (won't matter as I plan on getting Skylake after this, if I decide to buy this one). Seems like you have a good list of games going. I hate to say it but the only other I'd say is WOW.
 
I used to do gaming on my Mac and I think it handled really good but now I bought a ps4!

If I choose stock model with these specs,
2.5ghz and 512gb it will cost me 2249$ with student discount. If I go with the dgpu it will cost 2299$. Since 40$ is really not a budget issue, is having it good to bad. I will do some cad/cam but since it also creates extra heat and if it dies, will it kill the whole laptop too, or it can still run on the iris pro?
 
sebseb said:
I used to do gaming on my Mac and I think it handled really good but now I bought a ps4!

If I choose stock model with these specs,
2.5ghz and 512gb it will cost me 2249$ with student discount. If I go with the dgpu it will cost 2299$. Since 40$ is really not a budget issue, is having it good to bad. I will do some cad/cam but since it also creates extra heat and if it dies, will it kill the whole laptop too, or it can still run on the iris pro?
Click to expand...

The dGPU won't hurt. You might as well go for it. With that said, I'm on a late 2013 8/256/Iris Pro and its more than enough for CAD work. Id just get the dGPU given the small price difference.
 
TechZeke said:
Frankly, this whole thread is BS until we have official specs and benchmarks. The general attitude of the forum of hailing the GTX 900M series GPU in a holy grail-like status before official benchmarks come out of the M370X is BS.
Click to expand...

True but the reason myself and many others were hyped for Maxwell was due to its fanatic performance per watt. Something that AMD has been lacking in, and in mobile GPU's it's alllllll about PPW. Like I've said though, I've bought myself this new update and I'll be benchmarking it as best I can versus my current Mac and will let all you guys see my results to judge for yourself, I'll also watch out for throttling issues which I never ran into with my 750M.

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capitanbuzo said:
I'm US based so I can't say about the warranty. I will use my Amex and get a year of extra warranty (won't matter as I plan on getting Skylake after this, if I decide to buy this one). Seems like you have a good list of games going. I hate to say it but the only other I'd say is WOW.
Click to expand...

Nice, I need to get myself an Amex even although they're not as popular over here. My student account and debit card have been all I've needed so far.
Yeh I'm not too worried about the extra warranty this time as I'll be buying Skylake on day 1 for sure.
Never played WoW (unless you mean world of warships which I do play), but I'll also benchmark the new Tomb Raider so I'll add that to my list.

Good news, already got a buyer lined up for my old Mac #.
 
TechZeke said:
The dGPU won't hurt. You might as well go for it. With that said, I'm on a late 2013 8/256/Iris Pro and its more than enough for CAD work. Id just get the dGPU given the small price difference.
Click to expand...

Yeh I agree with this, plus it's likely to have a higher resale value with the dGPU.
 
Well, I didn't realize they weren't available in stores already. I thought I read somewhere they were available today. When will the stores start having stock of them?

Edit: Looks like June 1st?
 
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