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

[puelocesar]

Hey guys, I have a question
I don't want to make new thread, so... I'm planning to buy new rMBP 15 but I really can't decide if I need the dGPU.
Are there any other benefits in having dGPU option instead of the normal one besides slightly faster CPU and 256GB's more SSD storage?
Maybe the SSD is faster in the dGPU model?

I'm asking beacuse I really can't care less about having the dGPU option as I'm not gamer on the computers except Football Manager sometimes and some indie games. I guess Football Manager will run just fine on Iris Pro?

Also sorry for my possible english mistakes - it isn't my native language!

It seems you can even play GTA V on a Iris Pro, so Football Manager would be fine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG9mYnvU_yI

 

[Persian-apple]

950M is weaker than 860M so if it is less than 80percent of a 950M it definitly isnt worth it for GT750M owners if it is capable to meet 950M then it kinda is ...
and i hope U never run into troubles with dGPU
waiting for cnet gizmodo anandtech ...

 

[kaellar]

I think you should wait for benchmarks and tests with this opinion. There has been some leaks suggesting that new AMD chips are just as power-efficient as Maxwell.

If Apple puts this mysterious M370x into the MBP, it means that its TDP is around 40W at best. And if Apple's benchmarks data are to be trusted, the performance increase is more or less consistent with what 850M/950M can do over 750M.

There were no leaks of that. There was AMD' official announcement that they will ship new GPUs with up to 100% higher energy efficiency (in other words, similar to Maxwell) in 2016. There's nothing close to this they could produce right now because they'd happily announce it already.

 

[Trojita]

Not on topic, but as a reply to the previous windows lovers:

I had to use windows for years too, I re-formatted devices probably 100 times including my linux usage, windows only recently started to catch up, I'm not a masochist, so I jumped out of the windows wagon as soon as I can and I intend to never turn back, I hope osx lives on

I really love Mac and Time Machine, all my macos devices are as snappy as they always were, I'm not afraid of failures anymore, as I know I can restore my system from one of my time machine backups without issues

Yes, some macbook versions had issues, but comparatively all windows devices have issues

Many people report unknown glitches, graphics failures, electrical issues with random windows setups, just take a glance at any online forum, at least with osx devices, these issues are easily detected and hunted

TL;DR: windows and random hardware combinations are deadly on both os and hardware level - no need to suffer

I had no intention of using my machine for gaming, but I was also able to get basic gaming performance with my mid-2014 too, and the gaming performance was more reliable than any machine that I had before (in terms of temperatures) - even with a 750m - I'm very unfortunate on the hardware level - almost all my previous graphics cards glitched but not the 750m - knocking on wood

I'm not going to upgrade with this new release, but I plan to upgrade to an external retina screened setup when dp1.3 is released with hopefully a more powerful macbook (in terms of graphics) - and the upgrade will most probably be done in under an hour

I also suspect those who defend the idiocracies of windows on a mac forum might have different motives

I agree with the cost issues, with the state of us dollar, the mac devices are certainly wallet biting - but I think they are worthy investments, as we spend more and more time in front of computers, it makes sense to seek the best experience

You are comparing devices manufactured by third party vendors and using a Microsoft OS to a company like Apple where the Hardware and OS are made in house and the actual portfolio of products per category are kept to a minimum.

Also Macs have their quirks. If they didn't we wouldn't have forums dedicated to problems. Something as simple as telling Time Machine not to use up my already small 256 GB SSD of my rMBP to back up the OS because the external drive wasn't plugged in recently to backup required me to find information on the internet. I found out I had to go into the console command line to tell it to turn off the backup to local drive and to delete the image that was taking up so much space.

 

[Yixian]

If this is a custom chip for Apple then presumably this update is a miss for gamers because there will never be good drivers under Bootcamp?

 

[Kauai]

This should be a pretty significant upgrade over the 650M, right?

 

[Stacc]

If this is a custom chip for Apple then presumably this update is a miss for gamers because there will never be good drivers under Bootcamp?

Incorrect. The technology on the chip itself will also be shared with hardware available for the PC. For example GPU in the AMD m295X in the iMac is known as "Tonga" and is available for the PC as the R9 285X.

AMD releases separate bootcamp drivers for windows, but you can hack the general drivers from AMD to work under bootcamp. There is a thread somewhere in the Mac Pro forum where someone uses it to get better performance out of the D300/D500/D700.

The catch is no one knows what is in the M370X. However, it is safe to say that if its something not yet available on the PC, it will be soon and there will certainly be driver support for it in windows.

 

[yjchua95]

This should be a pretty significant upgrade over the 650M, right?

In professional tasks (especially those that leverage OpenCL), it's a massive upgrade.

 

[leman]

There were no leaks of that. There was AMD' official announcement that they will ship new GPUs with up to 100% higher energy efficiency (in other words, similar to Maxwell) in 2016. There's nothing close to this they could produce right now because they'd happily announce it already.

I have posted this link several times already (of course, I have no idea whether its accurate or not):

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

I am sure they will make some announcements at Computex

 

[kaellar]

I have posted this link several times already (of course, I have no idea whether its accurate or not):

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

I am sure they will make some announcements at Computex

Not to offend you man, but I rather trust Anandtech quoting AMD themselves than Wccftech stating something that disapproved itself already.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9233/amds-2016-gpu-roadmap-finfet-high-bandwidth-memory

 

[leman]

Not to offend you man, but I rather trust Anandtech quoting AMD themselves than Wccftech stating something that disapproved itself already.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9233/amds-2016-gpu-roadmap-finfet-high-bandwidth-memory

There is no offending here! We are exchanging rumours after all and there is still no clear data... either way, I don't see Anandtech here contradicting the claims that a more power-efficient chip might be already coming with Pirate Islands. Anyway, I hope we will get more data soon.

 

[MacDevMike]

There is no offending here! We are exchanging rumours after all and there is still no clear data... either way, I don't see Anandtech here contradicting the claims that a more power-efficient chip might be already coming with Pirate Islands. Anyway, I hope we will get more data soon.

I'm waiting patiently for benchmarks. It's interesting that Apple quotes 1-3 business days but folks are getting June 1st as their ETA. I suppose that could be shipping ground and taking five days to get there or something. I was hoping that someone would order Tuesday and get one this week.

Its also interesting that dGPU models aren't in the stores. Possible supply constraints on the m370x?

 

[kaellar]

There is no offending here! We are exchanging rumours after all and there is still no clear data... either way, I don't see Anandtech here contradicting the claims that a more power-efficient chip might be already coming with Pirate Islands. Anyway, I hope we will get more data soon.

The AMD's slide states that energy efficiency improvements are coming in 2016, not month or so later.

 

[MacDevMike]

An interesting add from the footnotes on Apples website regarding their gaming performance numbers:

Testing conducted by Apple in April 2015 using preproduction 2.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based 15-inch MacBook Pro systems with AMD Radeon R9 M370X and 2GB graphics memory, and shipping 2.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based 15-inch MacBook Pro systems with NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M and 2GB graphics memory, all configured with 16GB RAM. Resolution used: 1440x900. Tomb Raider tested using the built-in benchmark, with anti-aliasing turned off and low graphics quality. Formula 1 2013 tested using the built-in benchmark, with 2x anti-aliasing and default graphics settings. Batman: Arkham City GOTY tested using the built-in benchmark, with 4x anti-aliasing and high quality setting. MacBook Pro continuously monitors system thermal and power conditions, and may adjust processor speed as needed to maintain optimal system operation.


A couple things to note here:

1. Gaming was at 1440x900, not 1080p and not full Retina resolution. I would be willing to bet that if they would have used those resolutions, the difference would have been bigger then 50-70%.

2. Of these three, I would say that Tomb Raider is the one that is less CPU bound and leaning harder on the video card. This is in fact the game that saw a 70% fps improvement.

It will be interesting to see a real test with 3dMark under windows, but I'm not sure how good the windows driver would be under Boot Camp for this card.

Just more random thoughts

 

[Stacc]

I have posted this link several times already (of course, I have no idea whether its accurate or not):

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

I am sure they will make some announcements at Computex

Just a warning, AMD's naming conventions mean that the technology in desktop chips does not correlate to the mobile line. In this article, Trinidad is rumored to be a rebadged Pitcairn, the same chip used in the Mac Pro D300 and is several generations old. This is probably not in the new macbook pro, as this article is referring to desktop chips.

It is possible for AMD to improve power efficiency without moving to 16 nm. Nvidia was able to do it with maxwell, and so can AMD. What chips AMD has used and whether they are more efficient remains to be seen though. The most likely case is these chips are down clocked versions of Tonga, which is in the m295X in the retina iMac. Alternatively, this could be the brand new Fiji from AMD, which could be much more efficient. Fiji may be unlikely though, as it hasn't been released publicly yet.

 

[iCreate]

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

Apple is just one of many contributors to OpenCL. Open is good, whether it's better for the user depends on how widely adopted it remains over time.

 

[Persian-apple]

has any body received their mac?
if some body can benchmark and test somegames like GTA V on it that would be great

 

[iindigo]

I ordered one of these a day or two ago and it's shipped. It's currently sitting in Shanghai and will be at my doorstep on Tuesday (the 26th).

However much of an upgrade the M370X turns out to be, it'll be a phenomenal boost over the 2.5Ghz C2D/8GB/FX 770M (rebadged 9600M) @ 1920x1200 hackintoshed dell laptop that I'm using now. It'd be great if the M370X is as huge of an improvement on the last model's 750M as some people in this thread are theorizing, though, because it means I'll be able to get a longer lifespan out of the laptop.

As outdated as the notion may be, I can't bring myself to buy anything above a 13" or smaller ultraportable without a dGPU. I've had too many bad experiences with iGPU-only machines limping along after only a year or two or even right out of the box, and that's not something that's acceptable for a 15" workstation-class laptop.

 

[christarp]

This review claims leaked benchmarks suggest that the M370x is about the same performance as the M295x found in the 5k iMac, that seems like a pretty powerful mobile dGPU to me....

http://wwwwww.dailytech.com/Apple+F...ouch+5K+iMac+Gets+Price+Cut/article37358c.htm

Info found here apparently

http://wccftech.com/amd-strato-xt-benchmarks-radeon-mobility-r9-m300-series/

There's no way it's near the same power of the M295x. That card already has a hard enough time being cooled in an imac. Most of the rumors going around are saying the r9 3** series is just a rebrand of the 2** series from AMD, except for the flagship model 390 or 390x that's going to be utilizing HBM.

 

[leman]

Apple is just one of many contributors to OpenCL. Open is good, whether it's better for the user depends on how widely adopted it remains over time.

Apple has created the initial OpenCL implementation and holds the trademark. So while you are of course correct, I would still say that Apple invented OpenCL

 

[Persian-apple]

@leman
did you order the newmacbook pro (With AMD card)?
if yes then when is it due?

 

[leman]

@leman
did you order the newmacbook pro (With AMD card)?
if yes then when is it due?

I actually did, yes. I have no idea when its arriving though because its my employer that pays for it and a supply company that carries out the order. They said something about three weeks, but I would not be surprised if it takes longer. I oderered a non-standard keyboard, so it will have to be built first.

When I get it, I will try to benchmark as much as I can of course. If I will find the time to do it, because my June looks absolutely crazy right now.

 

[MallardDuck]

2. Most people have looked to Skylake as the big update, with a spec bump and inclusion of the new force trackpad part of the refresh (which we got) and the new keyboard (which we apparently didn't get). The faster SSD and battery improvements are actually a bonus in this case.

I'm darned glad we didn't get the new fingertip crushing flat surface keyboard. If I wanted something with no key travel, I'd type on my iPad!

 

[Laai]

Considering I have an Early 2013 rMBP with an nVidia M650 GPU I'm thinking the jump to the R9 370X (even if it's rebranded) is going to be fairly large.

What are people's thoughts? A GPU refresh has been the one thing I've been waiting on.

This should be a pretty significant upgrade over the 650M, right?

Same here. Waiting to see how the GPU pans out. I only use the GPU to game in bootcamp (CS GO 90% of the time, but I sure would love to run AC: Unity and Witcher on it).

 

[SamuelShand]

I have ordered the new mbp 2.8ghz with this mysterious AMD card.
Should be with me by 2nd june latest. As soon as I have it unboxed I will provide benchmarks along with testing witcher and gtaV to give everyone an idea on what this card is all about.

I do hope Apple havnt royally messed up with this card...