So, for someone that still believes in the Mac Pro, I feel like the current 5700 XT support in Catalina is welcome and appreciated… but will that continue into RDNA2 GPUs that will actually have the right horsepower for video tasks?
Probably, who knows only time will tell.
The good news is the Intel macs will be supported for at least 7 years still, and there’s 2 more years of Intel machines to come. Well within the general lifecycle of a production machine. So I don’t think there much worry from anyone.
As for what the upcoming ARM architecture machines will support, no one knows?. ARM can support non SoC GPUs, but as I expect Apple will be shipping laptops first (and perhaps Mac mini’s) I’m not sure if we’ll see that support immediately until they release a new tower Mac. I don’t know if AMD have the drivers for it? Nvidia seems to.
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USB4 Docked GPUs?
My wonder is if they’ll care (at least for this first generation). To be honest, there’s zero info on what this new SoC will do, presumably everything the current ones can do plus more… it seems unlikely that they haven’t been working on a laptop/desktop specific design for years.
I guess the question is maybe a two parter, is Apple looking for 100% parity? I’m not sure they are. And are they willing to not include support for something until it works?
How many people use external GPUs that would buy a first generation ARM laptop? (Keeping in mind two more years of Intel products and 7 more years of support). How much work is it to design that support into the chip over other features?
I’ve no idea. The answer is obvious though, it will either be supported, or won’t be until future generations. But I can’t imagine it not being supported in the future.
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Is tbolt an open thing now? can they interoperate that so you dont need to buy new docks again for the apple users who use that set up already.
They have to get around to that sooner or later anyway since USB4 is partly based on it, right?
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Not quite, Thunderbolt 3 is open, but Thunderbolt 4 is still owned by Intel.
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Doesn’t matter for the stuff people already have. And also doesn’t seem to matter … at all really.
…Thunderbolt 4 will carry the same speeds as Thunderbolt 3
I think Thunderbolt is gonna go the same route FireWire went. In the end USB4 is the important one for the decade.
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The difference is licensing. Speed may not be different, so Intel is just trying to make a new version just for the name.
USB 4 and thunderbolt 4 are the same thing from what I gather.
Re: RDNA2 support - I would wager yes.
The keynote said they still had some intel machines to come.
However I also think that they will release their own GPUs that will likely be superior for the workloads their machines are designed for due to inclusion of custom hardware that is tweaked to work specifically with the Metal API, etc.
i.e., once they release the iMac and up SKUs, you probably won’t WANT RDNA2.
Unless CDNA optimizes for Metal, and that’s what we might see… CDNA GPUs. The 5600M with HBM2 really points to a CDNA GPU for Apple down the line.
My suspicions on the end of AMD support were warranted.
Good move I think
Which means RDNA2 will be the LAST AMD GPU architecture on Intel Macs. That’s now a certain fact, if they get those final deals in.
I wonder what we might see from Apple in terms of performance. They seem to do pretty well with their other various chips compared to the competition.
It’s a fact when they announce it. And I am sceptical about that happening soon.
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