The Future of Discrete GPUs in Apple Computers

In the world of computer hardware, discrete graphics cards have been a staple for gaming and professional applications for decades. However, with the rise of integrated GPU designs, many are wondering if discrete GPUs will still be a thing in future Apple computers. To explore this question, let's take a closer look at the latest advancements in GPU technology.

One area that's worth mentioning is the new A12 chip in the 2019 Mac Pro. This chip features a powerful discrete GPU that's capable of handling demanding tasks like video editing and gaming. Specifically, it boasts two Vega 2 cards on a single module, which provides an impressive amount of memory bandwidth and performance. However, when Geekbench 5 was run with this setup, the score for just one of those cards came in at 97,208. With the Duo module, which features four Vega 2 cards, the potential performance is quadrupled.

This raises the question: how will Apple Silicon compete with discrete GPUs like these? One advantage of integrated GPU designs is that they share the same memory as the CPU, which can reduce access times and improve performance. The GPU also has a small amount of reserved tile memory, which reduces the number of times it needs to access shared system memory. This approach may allow Apple to punch above its weight without necessarily matching the raw performance of discrete GPUs.

However, for most consumers, does this even matter? With the Macbook Pro 16-inch featuring a beefy 5600M GPU, many users might wonder if they'll ever need to use it in their daily lives. Running Activity Monitor and watching GPU usage can reveal that the discrete GPU is only working when needed, while the onboard Intel UHD 630 handles most tasks. Even for video editing, which often requires more powerful GPUs, the A12 chip's performance is sufficient for many basic consumer needs.

But what about professional applications? Will we need even more powerful GPUs to handle demanding tasks like 4K video rendering or AAA games at high settings? The answer depends on the specific use case. For some codecs, like ProRes, hardware acceleration can make a significant difference in performance. Apple's Afterburner module for the 2019 Mac Pro is a prime example of this.

In conclusion, while discrete GPUs may not be as essential for casual computing needs, they will likely still remain a feature of Apple computers for professional users who require more power. The new A12 chip and Apple Silicon design offer impressive performance at an integrated cost, but it's unclear how long that will last. As the technology continues to evolve, we'll have to wait and see what Apple has planned for the future of discrete GPUs in their computers.

For those interested in staying up-to-date on the latest developments, consider supporting the channel with just one click of the subscribe button. It makes a huge difference to a small creator like me, and I'm grateful for your support. So far, we've only scratched the surface of this topic; feel free to share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below. What do you think about the future of discrete GPUs in Apple computers? Do you have any questions or concerns about the latest advancements in GPU technology? Let's keep the conversation going!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enapple has defined its new silicon as a system on chip so processor and graphics all in one does this spell the end for macs with discrete gpus from amd can apple hope to get anywhere near the performance of a discrete gpu with its own silicon let's take a look at what we know and see if we can make some more predictions the fastest of apple's current chips for graphics performance is the a12x and a12z or z as found in the ipad pro and let's start by looking at how it scores in geekbench 5's metal benchmark and seeing how it compares to other graphics cards so let's go to the geekbench 5 benchmark charts for metal now this is basically a league table of results with each being the average score for all of the user benchmarks that have been completed and submitted back to geekbench as always your ipad may score higher than this average but that's true for any model of gpu on the list and we also need to disregard any nvidia gpus on this list because very few of them are supported in mac os and in any case they tend to underperform with apple's metal framework so the majority of scores here for nvidia cards are much lower than the actual potential performance of that gpu let's start by finding apple's a12 cpu so if we just search for a12 there we go so we found the the apple a12x gpu and it scores 9105 now i don't see the a12z on this list anywhere but it is basically the same chip as the a12x though it does score a little bit higher you can see just below the a12x score is the iris plus graphics scoring 8502 and this is the onboard graphics that feature in intel's latest 10th generation cpus as found in the 2020 13-inch macbook pro the 4-port version so already the apple chips are outperforming intels and bear in mind that the a12 is about 2 years old now so i think we can safely expect that the first mac specific apple silicon chips will have better performance than this and we'll dig into that in a moment but first let's just reflect that for every mac without a discrete gpu apple silicon will be a step up in graphics performance from anything that intel offers there are quite a few apple models without discreet gpus there's the macbook air the macbook pro 13-inch the mac mini and there's the entry-level 21-inch imac that's the one without the 4k display and those computers represent a decent chunk of apple's consumer lineup and if you do step up to the 4k 21-inch imac the first discreet gpu on offer is the radeon pro 555x so let's have a look on the geekbench chart to see where that scores so if we scroll up the list here we find there it is look the radeon pro 555x it scores 13 424 so it's not actually that far ahead of the a12x and it's probably safe to say that the new apple silicon will be faster than this now how fast does it need to get if we scroll up the list we can find the amd radeon pro 5300m and you can see it scores 24 349. this is the gpu that's in the base model of the macbook pro 16-inch the fastest gpu that you can specify for that notebook is the 5600 m and that is an expensive option but it's a decent performer as you can see it scores 40 804 and it's not actually that far behind the amd radeon pro vega 48 look which is just below 50 000. that's the highest gpu that you can spec in the consumer imac the 27 inch 5k model let's jump all the way to the top of the list where we find the radeon pro vega 2 duo and this is a module that's available for the 2019 mac pro and again it's not cheap it actually features two vega 2 cards on one module now because geekbench 5 isn't multi gpu aware this score that you're seeing here 97208 is for just one of those cards so with the duo there are two cards on board and you can actually specify two of those modules in the mac pro if money is no object of course so that's four vega two cards with 32 gigs of hbm2 video ram on each of those four cards and you can essentially quadruple that score to get an idea of the overall potential performance of those video cards naturally you'd have to have software that fully takes advantage of those multiple gpus now how is apple silicon going to compete with that particularly when apple haven't said anything about retaining discrete gpu options at least not yet they've only given information on the benefits of the on-board gpu so let's just sidestep and consider those benefits for a moment the gpu and the cpu within apple silicon will share the same memory in fact the gpu will have a small amount of memory reserved for it known as tile memory this reduces the number of times the gpu has to access shared system memory when it does access the shared memory it's fast with a discrete gpu data has to be copied from the system ram to the video ram via pci express it's much more intensive and it's not as quick as being able to simply address the memory directly of course modern gpus are so powerful and they've got so much onboard video ram that performance doesn't suffer however if you scale up apple silicon to similar levels of performance this more efficient architecture would make a very big difference and what this means is that apple doesn't have to match the raw performance of the amd gpus we've looked at through careful optimization of their system on chip design and the metal graphics framework they can get the onboard gpu to punch well above its weight let's be realistic though we're still not going to be matching these high performing amd cards just yet will discrete gpus remain a feature of apple max well yes at least for now anyway the question is perhaps more a case of do most of us actually need discrete graphics cards in our computers and bear with me on this one if you take that macbook pro 16-inch sure you can spec that beefy 5600 m gpu but in day-to-day use how often does it actually kick in if you run activity monitor and you watch your gpu usage you might be surprised at how little the discrete gpu is actually working what you're using most of the time is the onboard graphics in this case intel uhd630 and that doesn't even have half the performance of the a12 chip we've just been looking at the gpu in the a12 is fast enough for editing photos and it's fine for most basic consumer video editing needs as well you can run some pretty impressive games on it sure not aaa titles at the top settings but basic gaming isn't a problem and do we need more gpu performance for video editing it helps sometimes but it does depend which codecs you work with i'm increasingly finding that rendering is cpu bound or handled by the t2 chip in modern max apple has perhaps already shown their hand in this regard by creating the afterburner module for the 2019 mac pro this is a card that's specifically designed for hardware acceleration of prores video codecs so with this new architecture and new silicon designs are we actually looking at a paradigm shift where tasks that used to rely on powerful gpus will now be handled by a combination of purpose-built cores cpu gpu custom modules and software optimization of course there are still lots of use cases where people do need massive gpu power and apple will need to continue catering for those users so that means that discrete gpus will need to continue being a thing until apple can provide similar performance by other means i think for most consumers you don't need to worry but for pro users maybe it's a case of patiently watching and waiting i seriously doubt that apple hasn't planned for this and i wonder if they may have an ace hidden up their proverbial sleeve that's all for this video i hope you enjoyed it and if you did please consider supporting the channel with just one click of the subscribe button it makes a huge difference to a small creator like me so thank you all so much for your support i really do appreciate it now of course you may not agree with me it's not like i've got any inside information so put forward any ideas and thoughts you may have in the comments section and i look forward to seeing what you guys have got to say hopefully i did enough to earn a thumbs up or a thumbs down if that's your thing in any case see you next time for some more geekery youapple has defined its new silicon as a system on chip so processor and graphics all in one does this spell the end for macs with discrete gpus from amd can apple hope to get anywhere near the performance of a discrete gpu with its own silicon let's take a look at what we know and see if we can make some more predictions the fastest of apple's current chips for graphics performance is the a12x and a12z or z as found in the ipad pro and let's start by looking at how it scores in geekbench 5's metal benchmark and seeing how it compares to other graphics cards so let's go to the geekbench 5 benchmark charts for metal now this is basically a league table of results with each being the average score for all of the user benchmarks that have been completed and submitted back to geekbench as always your ipad may score higher than this average but that's true for any model of gpu on the list and we also need to disregard any nvidia gpus on this list because very few of them are supported in mac os and in any case they tend to underperform with apple's metal framework so the majority of scores here for nvidia cards are much lower than the actual potential performance of that gpu let's start by finding apple's a12 cpu so if we just search for a12 there we go so we found the the apple a12x gpu and it scores 9105 now i don't see the a12z on this list anywhere but it is basically the same chip as the a12x though it does score a little bit higher you can see just below the a12x score is the iris plus graphics scoring 8502 and this is the onboard graphics that feature in intel's latest 10th generation cpus as found in the 2020 13-inch macbook pro the 4-port version so already the apple chips are outperforming intels and bear in mind that the a12 is about 2 years old now so i think we can safely expect that the first mac specific apple silicon chips will have better performance than this and we'll dig into that in a moment but first let's just reflect that for every mac without a discrete gpu apple silicon will be a step up in graphics performance from anything that intel offers there are quite a few apple models without discreet gpus there's the macbook air the macbook pro 13-inch the mac mini and there's the entry-level 21-inch imac that's the one without the 4k display and those computers represent a decent chunk of apple's consumer lineup and if you do step up to the 4k 21-inch imac the first discreet gpu on offer is the radeon pro 555x so let's have a look on the geekbench chart to see where that scores so if we scroll up the list here we find there it is look the radeon pro 555x it scores 13 424 so it's not actually that far ahead of the a12x and it's probably safe to say that the new apple silicon will be faster than this now how fast does it need to get if we scroll up the list we can find the amd radeon pro 5300m and you can see it scores 24 349. this is the gpu that's in the base model of the macbook pro 16-inch the fastest gpu that you can specify for that notebook is the 5600 m and that is an expensive option but it's a decent performer as you can see it scores 40 804 and it's not actually that far behind the amd radeon pro vega 48 look which is just below 50 000. that's the highest gpu that you can spec in the consumer imac the 27 inch 5k model let's jump all the way to the top of the list where we find the radeon pro vega 2 duo and this is a module that's available for the 2019 mac pro and again it's not cheap it actually features two vega 2 cards on one module now because geekbench 5 isn't multi gpu aware this score that you're seeing here 97208 is for just one of those cards so with the duo there are two cards on board and you can actually specify two of those modules in the mac pro if money is no object of course so that's four vega two cards with 32 gigs of hbm2 video ram on each of those four cards and you can essentially quadruple that score to get an idea of the overall potential performance of those video cards naturally you'd have to have software that fully takes advantage of those multiple gpus now how is apple silicon going to compete with that particularly when apple haven't said anything about retaining discrete gpu options at least not yet they've only given information on the benefits of the on-board gpu so let's just sidestep and consider those benefits for a moment the gpu and the cpu within apple silicon will share the same memory in fact the gpu will have a small amount of memory reserved for it known as tile memory this reduces the number of times the gpu has to access shared system memory when it does access the shared memory it's fast with a discrete gpu data has to be copied from the system ram to the video ram via pci express it's much more intensive and it's not as quick as being able to simply address the memory directly of course modern gpus are so powerful and they've got so much onboard video ram that performance doesn't suffer however if you scale up apple silicon to similar levels of performance this more efficient architecture would make a very big difference and what this means is that apple doesn't have to match the raw performance of the amd gpus we've looked at through careful optimization of their system on chip design and the metal graphics framework they can get the onboard gpu to punch well above its weight let's be realistic though we're still not going to be matching these high performing amd cards just yet will discrete gpus remain a feature of apple max well yes at least for now anyway the question is perhaps more a case of do most of us actually need discrete graphics cards in our computers and bear with me on this one if you take that macbook pro 16-inch sure you can spec that beefy 5600 m gpu but in day-to-day use how often does it actually kick in if you run activity monitor and you watch your gpu usage you might be surprised at how little the discrete gpu is actually working what you're using most of the time is the onboard graphics in this case intel uhd630 and that doesn't even have half the performance of the a12 chip we've just been looking at the gpu in the a12 is fast enough for editing photos and it's fine for most basic consumer video editing needs as well you can run some pretty impressive games on it sure not aaa titles at the top settings but basic gaming isn't a problem and do we need more gpu performance for video editing it helps sometimes but it does depend which codecs you work with i'm increasingly finding that rendering is cpu bound or handled by the t2 chip in modern max apple has perhaps already shown their hand in this regard by creating the afterburner module for the 2019 mac pro this is a card that's specifically designed for hardware acceleration of prores video codecs so with this new architecture and new silicon designs are we actually looking at a paradigm shift where tasks that used to rely on powerful gpus will now be handled by a combination of purpose-built cores cpu gpu custom modules and software optimization of course there are still lots of use cases where people do need massive gpu power and apple will need to continue catering for those users so that means that discrete gpus will need to continue being a thing until apple can provide similar performance by other means i think for most consumers you don't need to worry but for pro users maybe it's a case of patiently watching and waiting i seriously doubt that apple hasn't planned for this and i wonder if they may have an ace hidden up their proverbial sleeve that's all for this video i hope you enjoyed it and if you did please consider supporting the channel with just one click of the subscribe button it makes a huge difference to a small creator like me so thank you all so much for your support i really do appreciate it now of course you may not agree with me it's not like i've got any inside information so put forward any ideas and thoughts you may have in the comments section and i look forward to seeing what you guys have got to say hopefully i did enough to earn a thumbs up or a thumbs down if that's your thing in any case see you next time for some more geekery you\n"