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

[tninety]

I love AMD. They have sucked at battery life and power consumption in the past few years, but that may be slowly changing now.

They are releasing 20nm GPU's (390/390x) with HBM Stacked Memory in a few weeks. The nvidia 970/980 still use a 28nm GPU with GDDR5. AMD will have the crown of best GPU's once again when these new desktop cards are released.

I'm not sure how much of this new tech. is making it to the macbook pro, we may have to wait for the 2016 refresh for something sweet.

Why does the 15 inch rmbp still have 1600mhz ram compared to the 13 inch's 1866mhz ram?

Due to the 13" being Broadwell versus the 15" Haswell presumably.

The Broadwell in the 13" supports up to 1866 MHz LPDDR3 **or** 1600 MHz DDR3L while the Haswell in the 15" only supports DDR3L up to 1600 MHz.

 

[ooans]

Just ordered this, will benchmark it against my current one when it arrives (Bootcamp W7 of course) and gauge if it's worth it.

But you won't be able to install Windows 7 Bootcamp drivers, right? Even the Mac Pro doesnt have Windows 7 support. I have the late 2013 MBP and I think that was the last one.

 

[Amnios]

But you won't be able to install Windows 7 Bootcamp drivers, right? Even the Mac Pro doesnt have Windows 7 support. I have the late 2013 MBP and I think that was the last one.

I think that's right, Windows 7 support has been pulled, but you may be able to rig something together with native Windows drivers.

 

[leman]

I also just saw this (about AMD desktop lineup):

http://wccftech.com/xfx-radeon-r9-3...-feature-2-gb-gddr5-vram-launches-april-2015/

Assuming that this data is accurate, and that the 370X can actually compete with 960, we can see that AMD might have managed to reduce their power consumption dramatically and is competitive with Maxwell in that respect. If m370x is "half" of the desktop version, it could perform reasonably close to the 950M while maintaining similar TDP.

 

[Quu]

Personally I don't care which brand GPU they put in it. NVIDIA or AMD makes no difference to me.

All I care about is that the GPU results in a nice smooth desktop experience. If the M370X is really 70% faster than the 750m like Apple claim on their performance page then it's a huge jump and a great choice by them to use it.

I know some people have been really concerned about a lack of CUDA. Personally I see OpenCL as the future and NVIDIA's proprietary stuff be it CUDA, GameWorks or PhysX need to die or we'll end up in a one vendor monopoly.

 

[koyoot]

If anyone will buy rMBP 15 with R9 M370X and will install Bootcamp it would be good to install also GPU-Z app, to get information about the GPU.

Thank you.

 

[MagicBoy]

That's making the assumption that GPU-Z knows about the M370X.

It's the first notebook to use that GPU that I'm aware of.

 

[padapada]

Personally I don't care which brand GPU they put in it. NVIDIA or AMD makes no difference to me.



All I care about is that the GPU results in a nice smooth desktop experience. If the M370X is really 70% faster than the 750m like Apple claim on their performance page then it's a huge jump and a great choice by them to use it.

I fear it's not a GPU problem and a faster GPU will not solve anything.

 

[Jamalien]

Just ordered this, will benchmark it against my current one when it arrives (Bootcamp W7 of course) and gauge if it's worth it. With the student discount and the resale value it's not that bad an upgrade price.

Also sorry to hear people have been having problems with their 750M's failing, I've been lucky and never had a single issue so far.

WTF, Please tell me how you got that for £1,416. Education store only brings it down from £2000 to £1800 or so.

 

[jonisign]

Where did you find this info? Do you have a link? Thanks.

http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/

 

[Persian-apple]

i'll stick to my rMBP with GT750M i have lots of reasons for that ...
first:the right card for high end games is always Nvidia despite being expensive...

second:AMD driver support is a big problem and games usually don't run flawlessly on mid-range or (upper-midrange) AMD mobile graphic cards and this happens to be true in many titles...

third:force touch is apples way of fooling people who own 2012-2014retina models(15" models) i don't see any big differences its not innovative in my opinion...

4th: GT750m is still capable of playing games on medium-high setting except some titles like unity etc...

5thaying 2500USD just for a better graphics and force touch (and that extra hour of battery life doesn't make it worth 2500usd)

at last i wanna say that i have a gnu problem with graphic switching when i play games on mac for 10 minutes then the system can't switch back to iris pro and screen goes black but when i switch graphics using system preferences it doesn't make it crash so its a logicboard-related problem
overall macbook pros with discrete graphics are full of bugs...(like mine since i experienced huge lag playing games with no overclocking this on my 2012 gt650 )model... )

i don't have access to an apple retail store but .. in a month I'm gonna set up a repair...
lets hope apple doesn't ignore and act like nothing is wrong like it sometimes does


and sorry for being too long...

 

[827538]

WTF, Please tell me how you got that for £1,416. Education store only brings it down from £2000 to £1800 or so.

That's without tax, comes in at £1,700 with tax. Which is 15% off its full £2000 retail price.

 

[827538]

i'll stick to my rMBP with GT750M i have lots of reasons for that ...
first:the right card for high end games is always Nvidia despite being expensive...

second:AMD driver support is a big problem and games usually don't run flawlessly on mid-range or (upper-midrange) AMD mobile graphic cards and this happens to be true in many titles...

third:force touch is apples way of fooling people who own 2012-2014retina models(15" models) i don't see any big differences its not innovative in my opinion...

4th: GT750m is still capable of playing games on medium-high setting except some titles like unity etc...

5thaying 2500USD just for a better graphics and force touch (and that extra hour of battery life doesn't make it worth 2500usd)

at last i wanna say that i have a gnu problem with graphic switching when i play games on mac for 10 minutes then the system can't switch back to iris pro and screen goes black but when i switch graphics using system preferences it doesn't make it crash so its a logicboard-related problem
overall macbook pros with discrete graphics are full of bugs...(like mine since i experienced huge lag playing games with no overclocking this on my 2012 gt650 )model... )

i don't have access to an apple retail store but .. in a month I'm gonna set up a repair...
lets hope apple doesn't ignore and act like nothing is wrong like it sometimes does


and sorry for being too long...

I agree it's not a worthwhile upgrade for most but I want the extra dGPU power and I have plenty of cash to burn thankfully.

Yeh AMD's drivers suck, it's something I hope won't be as big an issue as I imagine but we will see.

I've only had one rMBP but one of my best friends also has the exact same model (got it after using mine) and she's also never had a single issue with the dGPU, maybe we're just lucky.
I did have to get the display replaced after a year due to a small cluster of dead pixels right in the centre of the display, and I had to replace the power supply.

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If anyone will buy rMBP 15 with R9 M370X and will install Bootcamp it would be good to install also GPU-Z app, to get information about the GPU.

Thank you.

Don't worry I'll be posting full screenshots up of CPU-z and GPU-z.

----------

But you won't be able to install Windows 7 Bootcamp drivers, right? Even the Mac Pro doesnt have Windows 7 support. I have the late 2013 MBP and I think that was the last one.

Dam... I hate W8.1

 

[Persian-apple]

I agree it's not a worthwhile upgrade for most but I want the extra dGPU power and I have plenty of cash to burn thankfully.

Yeh AMD's drivers suck, it's something I hope won't be as big an issue as I imagine but we will see.

I've only had one rMBP but one of my best friends also has the exact same model (got it after using mine) and she's also never had a single issue with the dGPU, maybe we're just lucky.
I did have to get the display replaced after a year due to a small cluster of dead pixels right in the centre of the display, and I had to replace the power supply.

----------



Don't worry I'll be posting full screenshots up of CPU-z and GPU-z.

----------



Dam... I hate W8.1

i hope i can make apple replace my mac since i have access to apple retailer for just a week could you help me how to approach them for a replacement since the problem doesn't occur everytime i start up just after upening a problem that uses discrete gpu and quoting it while the machine relatively hot at east and i got screen shots if this on both mavericks and yosemite and i would be glad to hear your opinion on this (i don't think that the problem can be fixed with a repair ...)

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i mean they might say nothing is wrong and i only have 120days of warranty and when i go to the store two month later ... its like the last time i can visit apple retailer before warranty ends

and i don't have that much money to burn mate...

 

[HarryT]

I agree it's not a worthwhile upgrade for most but I want the extra dGPU power and I have plenty of cash to burn thankfully.

Yeh AMD's drivers suck, it's something I hope won't be as big an issue as I imagine but we will see.

I've only had one rMBP but one of my best friends also has the exact same model (got it after using mine) and she's also never had a single issue with the dGPU, maybe we're just lucky.
I did have to get the display replaced after a year due to a small cluster of dead pixels right in the centre of the display, and I had to replace the power supply.

----------



Don't worry I'll be posting full screenshots up of CPU-z and GPU-z.

----------



Dam... I hate W8.1

When is yours due? I've ordered the maxed out model and have a June 1st to 3rd delivery date.

 

[nikhsub1]

Dam... I hate W8.1

Try classicshell.net - It's free and puts the start menu back to normal. I can't use Win 8/8.1 without it...

 

[HurtinMinorKey]

The irony is that the Adobe Apps can't take advantage of CUDA like they're supposed to. In fact, all the After Effects and Premiere users are having to UN-install CUDA to get their systems working again. And we end up switching the renderer to... that's right, OpenCL.

So maybe this AMD chip will be just what Adobe users like me are waiting for!

I've never had to uninstall CUDA using my 680MX with my iMac. I use Premiere, Photoshop, Aftereffects, illustrator, and Audition without a hitch.

 

[MartinAppleGuy]

The irony is that the Adobe Apps can't take advantage of CUDA like they're supposed to. In fact, all the After Effects and Premiere users are having to UN-install CUDA to get their systems working again. And we end up switching the renderer to... that's right, OpenCL.

So maybe this AMD chip will be just what Adobe users like me are waiting for!

I don't. All of my friends don't either.

 

[iCreate]

Yeah, the chip seems pretty new, can't find out a lot about it.

Whats your personal opinion on the jump to AMD? I feel like they are less reliable (personal opinion of course) and lack of CUDA cores is a downgrade.

For some reason Apple backs OpenCL big time, which is why they probably went with AMD for the Mac Pro and now the MBP as well. If you're an Adobe CC user, they support OpenCL. Not sure which is better, but I've read some reviews saying there's very little, if any difference, between CUDA and OpenCL performance.

 

[Flabasha]

I don't. All of my friends don't either.

Wow, you and your friends are amazingly lucky. The problem is so widespread that Adobe has acknowledged it and promised they're working hard with Nvidia to solve it. If you want to give yourself nightmares, read this thread...
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/961633

Are you sure you've actually installed CUDA? A lot of people think it comes installed, which it doesn't - it has it's own separate installer. NOT that I'd advise you to do it...

 

[jbellanca]

Anyone have any thoughts or benchmarks on how the AMD Radeon R9 M370X will compare to the (original MBP R 2012) nVidia GeForce GT 650M?

 

[capitanbuzo]

Again, the store rep I talked to today said next week, and I've learned over the years that the store in question usually gets stuff in sooner than they tell you.

I'd be fine with it if they got it in earlier. Quite honestly, I'm not sure why it wouldn't be in earlier given that it is possible to have it shipped to your house with an earlier date.

 

[MartinAppleGuy]

Wow, you and your friends are amazingly lucky. The problem is so widespread that Adobe has acknowledged it and promised they're working hard with Nvidia to solve it. If you want to give yourself nightmares, read this thread...
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/961633

Are you sure you've actually installed CUDA? A lot of people think it comes installed, which it doesn't - it has it's own separate installer. NOT that I'd advise you to do it...

Thanks for the link. I'm sure I have CUDA installed on my OS X partition on my iMac, not sure about me friends of course. Maybe I did uninstall it, not sure haha

 

[leman]

For some reason Apple backs OpenCL big time

Maybe its because Apple invented OpenCL And of course, OpenCL is an open standard, which is always good for the user.

Not sure which is better, but I've read some reviews saying there's very little, if any difference, between CUDA and OpenCL performance.

There is no such thing as "better" nowadays. A good compiler should give you the same performance on the same hardware, no matter which API you use. CUDA did have certain added convenience features, but OpenCL cough up in many regards with the latest 2.1 version.

All in all, the only legitimate reason I see for use CUDA is if you have some very specific application needs and develop specialised software for a locked platform. This is the case with scientific programming, military etc.

For any kind of software that is aimed at broader audience, OpenCL is definitely the way to go.

 

[totten76]

I agree it's not a worthwhile upgrade for most but I want the extra dGPU power and I have plenty of cash to burn thankfully.

Yeh AMD's drivers suck, it's something I hope won't be as big an issue as I imagine but we will see.

I've only had one rMBP but one of my best friends also has the exact same model (got it after using mine) and she's also never had a single issue with the dGPU, maybe we're just lucky.
I did have to get the display replaced after a year due to a small cluster of dead pixels right in the centre of the display, and I had to replace the power supply.

----------



Don't worry I'll be posting full screenshots up of CPU-z and GPU-z.

----------



Dam... I hate W8.1

You could just go straight to W10, seems better than W8, and mostly seems fully functional.....so might as well go for it