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I think he mixed things up there. You'd have to be crazy to buy a 970m notebook for VR now that the 10-series chips are out and deliver almost twice the performance with similar power requirements and price points.

I highly recommend the graph on this site to get a feeling for what a quantum leap the new Pascal chips are:

http://alteredqualia.com/texts/notebooks/

According to the fresh reviews today a (mobile) GTX1060 is about the minimum for decent VR experience but you really want a (mobile) GTX1070 or better.

Polaris 11 will be somewhere around the 960m/965m, less than half the performance of a GTX1060.

wtf? Why is everybody saying polaris sux? Really thought amd was going to do something big With this one.
 
Mac Pro, Apple Watch, and iPad Pro were all unveiled months before release.

I recently realized Apple's fiscal year ends at the end of September. So putting something in the first fiscal quarter of 2017 + the holiday season starts FY17 off to a bang (exactly like iPad Pro last year which was released in November).

Back to school would be over. People who needed a laptop either bought a current Apple product, or went elsewhere. Apple knows others are still waiting, so a reveal makes more people hold onto their cash.
Agreed - the loss of revenue in the 2 month period between announcement and release could be more than made up for by the extended advertising period and the fact that most people will be willing to wait so Apple gets the cash anyway. The very end of the current quarter could look ropey though.
 
wtf? Why is everybody saying polaris sux?

Because desktop (Polaris 10) is already out and not very power efficient, mobile polaris will be very similar but worse (narrower memory bus, less "compute units" than the desktop chip although they didn't define what a "compute unit" is). AMD already published benchmark scores hidden in the footnotes of a PR slide that suggest it performs like a GTX960m/Playstation 4.

Really thought amd was going to do something big With this one.

if it helps so did AMD and Apple ;)
 
Because desktop (Polaris 10) is already out and not very power efficient, mobile polaris will be very similar but worse (narrower memory bus, less "compute units" than the desktop chip although they didn't define what a "compute unit" is). AMD already published benchmark scores hidden in the footnotes of a PR slide that suggest it performs like a GTX960m/Playstation 4.



if it helps so did AMD and Apple ;)

In those same slides, AMD states that mobile 480 will have a full-fledged Polaris 11 GPU with complete CUs, and that it will indeed perform around a 965m (Firestrike 5600 points).
But assuming that mobile perf/watt is similar to desktop is bs. Desktop Polaris is optimized for maximum performance, if you look at 460 reviews it's clear that 5% more performance consume 50% more wattage. Also, as not a single reference 460 has been tested yet (only oc versions), we have not a profound clue about mobile Polaris perf/watt. AMD states that the 460m has a 35w TDP, that would be a superb perf/watt. The 1060 mobile has a TDP of 100 watts and is just not suitable for the MBP.
 
Will Polaris GPUs in a MBP be able to do regular VR? I'm not really concerned with über graphics-intense multiplayer gaming, but regular immersive VR interests me.
 
Will Polaris GPUs in a MBP be able to do regular VR? I'm not really concerned with über graphics-intense multiplayer gaming, but regular immersive VR interests me.
I would recommend a custom PC.
It always puzzles me that these questions come up.
You can be absolutely sure that the GPU performance will not be close to anything available in the PC universe.
Apple does not build hardware for that purpose.
 
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I would recommend a custom PC.
It always puzzles me that these questions come up.
You can be absolutely sure that the GPU performance will not be close to anything available in the PC universe.
Apple does not build hardware for that purpose.

Definitely won't be getting a PC...just wanted to know if it would be an added perk when I get my MBP.
 
In those same slides, AMD states that mobile 480 will have a full-fledged Polaris 11 GPU with complete CUs, and that it will indeed perform around a 965m (Firestrike 5600 points).
But assuming that mobile perf/watt is similar to desktop is bs. Desktop Polaris is optimized for maximum performance, if you look at 460 reviews it's clear that 5% more performance consume 50% more wattage. Also, as not a single reference 460 has been tested yet (only oc versions), we have not a profound clue about mobile Polaris perf/watt. AMD states that the 460m has a 35w TDP, that would be a superb perf/watt. The 1060 mobile has a TDP of 100 watts and is just not suitable for the MBP.

In terms of actual power consumption, if what you are saying were correct (5% = 50% higher power consumption) then Apple could have asked nicely for a custom "GTX 1055" chip (like they did with the GT650m & GT750m) that would blow the doors off Polaris at nearly performance of a GTX1060.

Here's the typical wattage of a mobile GTX1060 — a 50% reduction would put you comfortably below 50W which is what you'll find in a current rMBP:

NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1060-Mobile-5.png


It seems safe to assume that a new, maxed out Polaris 11 rMBP will deliver roughly half the graphics performance of a $1500 GTX1060 notebook and one third the performance of a $2000 GTX1070 notebook.
Perhaps the trade-off in thinness/temperature/battery runtime will be worth it for the average consumer but I'll be disappointed.
 
In terms of actual power consumption, if what you are saying were correct (5% = 50% higher power consumption) then Apple could have asked nicely for a custom "GTX 1055" chip (like they did with the GT650m & GT750m) that would blow the doors off Polaris at nearly performance of a GTX1060.

Here's the typical wattage of a mobile GTX1060 — a 50% reduction would put you comfortably below 50W which is what you'll find in a current rMBP:

NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1060-Mobile-5.png


It seems safe to assume that a new, maxed out Polaris 11 rMBP will deliver roughly half the graphics performance of a $1500 GTX1060 notebook and one third the performance of a $2000 GTX1070 notebook.
Perhaps the trade-off in thinness/temperature/battery runtime will be worth it for the average consumer but I'll be disappointed.
Yeah, no. AMD Polaris 11 is a given at this point. New drivers supporting it were found in the macOS Sierra beta, whereas there was no support for NVIDIA's offerings. Hoping for Pascal at this point is just wishful thinking, it's not happening, nor we need to make up scenarios were omnipotent Apple asks for custom offerings from NVIDIA. You are correct on your assessment of Polaris' performance though. If you want Pascal on a notebook you'll have to look elsewhere, not Apple's lineup.
 
It seems safe to assume that a new, maxed out Polaris 11 rMBP will deliver roughly half the graphics performance of a $1500 GTX1060 notebook and one third the performance of a $2000 GTX1070 notebook.
Perhaps the trade-off in thinness/temperature/battery runtime will be worth it for the average consumer but I'll be disappointed.
Nice summary ... thumbs up.
 
As someone who is looking to play some WoW on MBP, this excites me greatly:

http://www.cio.com/article/3096995/...f-warcraft-in-legion-pre-expansion-patch.html

http://www.cio.com/article/3097642/...es-a-big-difference-in-world-of-warcraft.html

Before the patch (and before Metal was included) I generally ran World of Warcraft at the Good or High setting. For the most part it was enjoyable, but I noticed stuttering and slowdowns when I went into certain areas with a lot of things moving on the screen at the same time.

But after the patch I found everything to be much, much smoother regardless of which areas I was in or what I was doing. There’s a much better consistency in graphics performance after World of Warcraft started using the Metal API instead of OpenGL.

I also found my frame rates to be significantly higher than before the patch as well. For example, in certain areas I would average around 30 - 50 frames per second before the switch to Metal. After the switch I found myself getting around 70 - 90 frames per second in the same places.

I'm not well versed in GPUs. The one the author was using on his 5K iMac was an R9 M295X. How does that compare to the integrated graphics and probably Polaris GPUs that we might get with the MBP?
 
I can't help but think that the only reason Apple would use AMD over Nvida is pure profits. Obviously AMD is willing to sell them their inferior technology cheap enough that it makes it worth it for Apple.
So how long until AMD outbids Intel on the CPUs as well?
 
Because desktop (Polaris 10) is already out and not very power efficient, mobile polaris will be very similar but worse (narrower memory bus, less "compute units" than the desktop chip although they didn't define what a "compute unit" is). AMD already published benchmark scores hidden in the footnotes of a PR slide that suggest it performs like a GTX960m/Playstation 4.



if it helps so did AMD and Apple ;)

Polaris 10 is such a fail, IMO. The RX 480 is a joke. AMD's next big thing is a GTX 970 that isn't available, at all, and costs more, with sh***ier drivers.
 
I think he mixed things up there. You'd have to be crazy to buy a 970m notebook for VR now that the 10-series chips are out and deliver almost twice the performance with similar power requirements and price points.

I highly recommend the graph on this site to get a feeling for what a quantum leap the new Pascal chips are:

http://alteredqualia.com/texts/notebooks/

According to the fresh reviews today a (mobile) GTX1060 is about the minimum for decent VR experience but you really want a (mobile) GTX1070 or better.

Polaris 11 will be somewhere around the 960m/965m, less than half the performance of a GTX1060.

yep- the 1070s tho should be available now on the MSI. have not found it yet.
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Because desktop (Polaris 10) is already out and not very power efficient, mobile polaris will be very similar but worse (narrower memory bus, less "compute units" than the desktop chip although they didn't define what a "compute unit" is). AMD already published benchmark scores hidden in the footnotes of a PR slide that suggest it performs like a GTX960m/Playstation 4.



if it helps so did AMD and Apple ;)

Kind of amazing Tim Cook would make us wait this long and put AMD in there when NVDA is so much better
playstation 4 grapics is pretty far down on that chart compared to what nvidia is doing
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Will Polaris GPUs in a MBP be able to do regular VR? I'm not really concerned with über graphics-intense multiplayer gaming, but regular immersive VR interests me.

If we are getting polaris 11 and the benchmarks are right- the amd chip is like 1/3rd the power of the nvdia GPU 1060 that Nvidia says is barely able to do VR.

I'm hoping we are missing something.
 
wtf? Why is everybody saying polaris sux? Really thought amd was going to do something big With this one.

Are you forgetting that we are talking about Tim Cook? All he cares about is that this graphics card is thinner than the others. From that point of view it's a killer card.
 
I may be in the minority but I'm only asking that the graphics card be 'adequate', as the thunderbolt 3 port would allow me to hopefully easily add an external GPU for gaming and more serious work. If that means we get a sleeker more portable 15" at the cost of having a mediocre AMD chip, then so be it.
 
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