NVIDIA GeForce Making a Comeback to Apple?

btarunr · Sep 28, 2016

NVIDIA could be close to scoring design wins with Apple, for its MacBook, iMac, and Mac Pro families. This came to light in a job posting at NVIDIA, which calls for applicants to "help produce the next revolutionary Apple products." Although Apple has offered options of both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs on its Mac products in the past, the company hasn't offered NVIDIA GPUs for several generations now, with AMD Radeon being the only discrete GPU choice for MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac Pro products, with the only other choices being integrated GPUs by Intel.

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ZoneDymo · Sep 28, 2016

Interesting, I thought Apple would do away with a graphics processor altogether, why? courage!

AlienIsGOD · Sep 28, 2016

i also read that Apple may be considering Zen CPUs http://www.eteknix.com/apple-considering-custom-amd-zen-socs-imac/

Patriot · Sep 28, 2016

Doesn't make any sense. Nvidia just doesn't support OpenCL well enough to get wins from Mac.

Octavean · Sep 28, 2016

Apple could probably buy AMD if they really wanted to,....

MagnuTron · Sep 28, 2016

Patriot said:
Doesn't make any sense. Nvidia just doesn't support OpenCL well enough to get wins from Mac.

To be honest I think the lack of OpenCL support is just that.. No reason when they have CUDA. It will have to change.

dj-electric · Sep 28, 2016

Who cares about openCL? NVIDIA is eons ahead of AMD in power efficiency and that is all that matters in thin and\or mobile devices. shoving a GTX 1080 in a thin desktop mac is not a hard job.

Toothless · Sep 28, 2016

Dj-ElectriC said:
Who cares about openCL? NVIDIA is eons ahead of AMD in power efficiency and that is all that matters in thin and\or mobile devices. shoving a GTX 1080 in a thin desktop mac is not a hard job.

Bring the price up 5x because Apple

Patriot · Sep 28, 2016

Dj-ElectriC said:
Who cares about openCL? NVIDIA is eons ahead of AMD in power efficiency and that is all that matters in thin and\or mobile devices. shoving a GTX 1080 in a thin desktop mac is not a hard job.

Apple does... hence the problem.
All of their software is OpenCL accelerated...

And nvidia is NOT eons ahead of AMD on power efficiency.

jabbadap · Sep 28, 2016

Patriot said:
Doesn't make any sense. Nvidia just doesn't support OpenCL well enough to get wins from Mac.

Oh it does, apple supports only OpenCL 1.2 same as nvidia. OpenCL is like bastard son of nvidia and apple, neiher is really wanting it any longer.

I think those job positions are more to do with getting Metal API support for nvidia graphics cards than any.

slozomby · Sep 29, 2016

here's hoping the next mac pro gives up the magic trashcan design and goes back towards a proper ATX style case.

Fluffmeister · Sep 29, 2016

Octavean said:
Apple could probably buy AMD if they really wanted to,....

No need, they get their stuff at bargain basement prices already.

Captain_Tom · Sep 29, 2016

Hmmm after losing almost the entire console market Nvidia seems keen on not letting AMD capture Apple.

If AMD managed to capture Apple in 2018, they could come back hard on Nvidia's last true market: PC GPU's.

Octavean · Sep 29, 2016

Fluffmeister said:
No need, they get their stuff at bargain basement prices already.

Perhaps but that isn't necessarily the point.

Apple is interested in exclusivity. For example, the necessary components needed to design their own ARM based SoC and circle the wagons in the process. Apple would probably be interested in designing their own CPUs and GPUs based on acquisitions from a company like AMD,....assuming the designs are competitive / perform well.

Then again, as you said, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free,.....

ironwolf · Sep 29, 2016

There goes that word "revolutionary" by a company again... :wtf:

Captain_Tom · Sep 29, 2016

ironwolf said:
There goes that word "revolutionary" by a company again...

Haha I bet people are responding to that word well these days because they are fed up with their governments.

Like a subliminal message to our subconscious...

Bansaku · Sep 29, 2016

nVidia has always played nice with Apple; With every OS update they release new drivers. Not to mention that in terms of compatibility nVidia has always made their latest releases fully compatible. Considering Apple has discontinued Pro model desktops with upgradability options, this is pretty impressive for nVidia to care. Although I am pretty sure nVidia recognizes the HUGE Hackintosh community, where because of OOB compatibility their cards reign supreme over sometimes troublesome AMD cards (even though Apple has an AMD engineer on their payroll just for drivers which are bundled in the system, and thus unable to upgrade without updating the OS or downgrade when needed).

Anyway, many popular apps use CUDA, and Metal plays nice with nVidia, so no worries in regards to lacking compatibility.

:toast:

Frick · Sep 29, 2016

Captain_Tom said:
Hmmm after losing almost the entire console market Nvidia seems keen on not letting AMD capture Apple.

If AMD managed to capture Apple in 2018, they could come back hard on Nvidia's last true market: PC GPU's.

Apple already have AMD GPUs in them, and (obviously) only mobile versions.

Pascal is exactly what Apple should want. Massive power/W.

Assimilator · Sep 29, 2016

Patriot said:
And nvidia is NOT eons ahead of AMD on power efficiency.

When AMD's current-gen 14nm GPU uses the same amount of power as NVIDIA's last-gen 28nm GPU... yes, NVIDIA is streets ahead.

Nosada · Sep 29, 2016

ironwolf said:
There goes that word "revolutionary" by a company again...

The only thing "revolutionary" about Apple is that they haven't payed taxes in decades.

Captain_Tom · Sep 29, 2016

Frick said:
Apple already have AMD GPUs in them, and (obviously) only mobile versions.

Pascal is exactly what Apple should want. Massive power/W.

Yeah but in Vulkan/DX12 games Pascal is barely more efficient that Polaris (Or even Fiji lol). So if you take full advantage of GCN's compute properties (Like with Apple's Metal): efficiency isn't an issue, and dirt cheap GloFlo would allow AMD to sell their cards for a lot less than Nvidia.

But Apple may go with Nvidia in the short term while they wait for the rumored Zen/HBM/APU being custom designed for Apple by AMD.

I No · Sep 29, 2016

Captain_Tom said:
Yeah but in Vulkan/DX12 games Pascal is barely more efficient that Polaris (Or even Fiji lol). So if you take full advantage of GCN's compute properties (Like with Apple's Metal): efficiency isn't an issue, and dirt cheap GloFlo would allow AMD to sell their cards for a lot less than Nvidia.

But Apple may go with Nvidia in the short term while they wait for the rumored Zen/HBM/APU being custom designed for Apple by AMD.

Mac and games, came up with that one all by yourself? Who in their right mind would buy Mac for exclusive gaming?. I don't mean to rain on your parade but say what you want about Apple (i hate them btw) but they do have efficient stuff. And I really don't see them fitting space-heaters into their junk designs. If AMD can't get their stuff to be remotely functional in laptops I doubt that Apple will even consider them since OpenCL is dying out on OS X (or whatever the heck they call that abomination).

FordGT90Concept · Sep 29, 2016

AMD doesn't have any products to compete with the GTX 1080 and family. AMD forced Apple's hand to NVIDIA. Sad but inevitable. AMD had to see this coming and Apple won't be the only one changing orders.

Captain_Tom · Sep 29, 2016

I No said:
Mac and games, came up with that one all by yourself? Who in their right mind would buy Mac for exclusive gaming?. I don't mean to rain on your parade but say what you want about Apple (i hate them btw) but they do have efficient stuff. And I really don't see them fitting space-heaters into their junk designs. If AMD can't get their stuff to be remotely functional in laptops I doubt that Apple will even consider them since OpenCL is dying out on OS X (or whatever the heck they call that abomination).

Games is the only reason we would debate if Apple should use Nvidia. If games aren't being talked about, than AMD is CLEARLY the better choice.

AMD's hardware acceleration curb-stomps Nvidia's (OpenCL is more the standard on OSX than Cuda), and again their cards are a lot cheaper to produce and therefore sell to Apple. Also you are really making me laugh with the space heater talk. RX 460 in laptops uses like <50w of energy, and Nvidia is busy shoving 2 x 180w cards in moron laptops.

Frick · Sep 29, 2016

I No said:
Mac and games, came up with that one all by yourself? Who in their right mind would buy Mac for exclusive gaming?

You wouldn't, but capable occasional gaming is always nice.

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NVIDIA GeForce Making a Comeback to Apple?

btarunr

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