Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Will they be updating graphics with the 2017 MBP refresh?

S

shadow82x

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 11, 2012
445
195
New Jersey
Does anyone know or think they'll update the GPU in the high end Macbook Pro's for the 2017 refresh? Or will they be sticking with the AMD Pro 400 series?

Here's to hoping they'll update the GPU. I find the 460 quite underwhelming currently. I'd love to see Apple move to Nvidia but I don't foresee that happening anytime soon.
 
Considering the 500 series will mostly be rebadges except for the high-end Vega chips, we will most likely see a Radeon Pro 560 which would be slightly faster.

Point is; regardless of impending update don't expect anything much better than what you have now.
 
Nvidia doesn't really have anything better in the same power bracket right now, their new cards are all high-end stuff that start at much higher TDP.
 
  • Like
Reactions: TechZeke
leman said:
Nvidia doesn't really have anything better in the same power bracket right now, their new cards are all high-end stuff that start at much higher TDP.
Click to expand...
Precisely. Three things people forget: power, size, performance - the competition uses far too much power and generates far too much heat to have anything like the current form factor. Same with size.

But performance is the important one because, guess what, despite the moaning we read, the current chips are actually pretty decent!

There is a reason so many "pros" (gosh I hate that term) end up with a MacBook Pro year in year out, despite the competition always offering superior graphics: in this game of compromise, it ticks a lot of boxes.

I wouldn't be surprised if the 2017 spec bump uses exactly the same graphics chips.
 
  • Like
Reactions: turbineseaplane
shadow82x said:
Does anyone know or think they'll update the GPU in the high end Macbook Pro's for the 2017 refresh? Or will they be sticking with the AMD Pro 400 series?

Here's to hoping they'll update the GPU. I find the 460 quite underwhelming currently. I'd love to see Apple move to Nvidia but I don't foresee that happening anytime soon.
Click to expand...

I don't quite get NVidia's announcemnet on much smaller laptops and boards- i.e. bringing average for gaming laptops down from 10 pounds to 5. They've announced these are coming soon but what are the new TDPs of the chips?
 
gadgetfreaky said:
I don't quite get NVidia's announcemnet on much smaller laptops and boards- i.e. bringing average for gaming laptops down from 10 pounds to 5. They've announced these are coming soon but what are the new TDPs of the chips?
Click to expand...

You can find the TDP of the Max-Q cards on the notebookcheck website, im not sure how accurate those are though.
 
leman said:
You can find the TDP of the Max-Q cards on the notebookcheck website, im not sure how accurate those are though.
Click to expand...
the lowest TDP is 60 for the 1060. A bit too hot it seems. don't see a 1050 version for the max-q
 
Brookzy said:
Precisely. Three things people forget: power, size, performance - the competition uses far too much power and generates far too much heat to have anything like the current form factor. Same with size.

But performance is the important one because, guess what, despite the moaning we read, the current chips are actually pretty decent!

There is a reason so many "pros" (gosh I hate that term) end up with a MacBook Pro year in year out, despite the competition always offering superior graphics: in this game of compromise, it ticks a lot of boxes.

I wouldn't be surprised if the 2017 spec bump uses exactly the same graphics chips.
Click to expand...
While I do understand the TDP limitations, they could feasibly throw a Nvidia graphics chip within the MacBook chassis. Razer was able to do it with a similar form factor. Obviously with a higher tdp, greater heat, etc. it would sacrifice with battery life though. Would be nice if consumers could choose between these tradeoffs or if Apple came out with their own EGPU solution. :)
 
shadow82x said:
While I do understand the TDP limitations, they could feasibly throw a Nvidia graphics chip within the MacBook chassis. Razer was able to do it with a similar form factor. Obviously with a higher tdp, greater heat, etc. it would sacrifice with battery life though. Would be nice if consumers could choose between these tradeoffs or if Apple came out with their own EGPU solution. :)
Click to expand...
An :apple:-eGPU solution would be nice, but a general eGPU support would be even better :D

IMO it should be possible to modify a 1050 to get it under the 60 watts.
Would love to see the next MBP with 1050 or a general eGPU support and a Pro 560. :cool:
 
Interesting...so they now use the AMD 560 pro. I'm guessing it's more or less the same thing, wonder if there's any marginal performance improvements.
 
The Pro 560 will probably be more or less the same as the GTX 1050. Of course we'd need to wait out the actual specs. On a more important note, eGPU is now official. But it seems to be limited to Metal.

Edit: scratch that, AMD just published the specs of the new GPUs — its basically the same 455/460 with 3% faster clocks :confused: Disappointing.
 
Last edited:
leman said:
The Pro 560 will probably be more or less the same as the GTX 1050. Of course we'd need to wait out the actual specs. On a more important note, eGPU is now official. But it seems to be limited to Metal.
Click to expand...
"Apps that use Metal, OpenCL, and OpenGL can now take advantage of the increased performance that external graphics processors can bring."
 
jerryk said:
Thanks for posting

Looks like about 5-9% improvement.
Click to expand...

Cheaper to make, slightly overclocked and rebranded with a 5 instead of a 4 :)

I would probably wait for Cannonlake / Coffee Lake if I owned a usable computer at the moment.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back