No new laptops - possibly waiting for GPUs.

wizard69wizard69
Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware
I'm just wondering what the speculation is for the lack of new laptops at WWDC.    I'm leaning towards Apple waiting for 14nm GPUs in mobile format.  I'm a bit shocked that nothing hardware wise was offered up but yet realize that they had a lot to cover software wise.  

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 9
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    As the M370X is used currently, I bet they’ll swap it for the M470X. Given that only the first of the 400 series comes out at the end of this month, I bet they’ll be an August revamp.
  • Reply 2 of 9
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,326moderator
    wizard69 said:
    I'm just wondering what the speculation is for the lack of new laptops at WWDC.    I'm leaning towards Apple waiting for 14nm GPUs in mobile format.  I'm a bit shocked that nothing hardware wise was offered up but yet realize that they had a lot to cover software wise.  
    They are limited by what their suppliers have available. The AMD GPUs will affect most of the lineup. The desktop GPUs are due at the end of June:

    http://www.ecumenicalnews.com/article/amd-polaris-10-release-date-set-for-june-29-when-it-arrives-on-radeon-rx-480-graphics-cards/46047.htm

    AMD said they'd launch everything before the back-to-school period, which is July-September.

    AMD had a presentation in the last week and there are some benchmarks of the mobile Polaris GPU:

    http://videocardz.com/61064/amd-polaris-10-and-polaris-11-specifications

    The 480M is listed at 35W with scores around double the M370X in the current MBP. The Iris Pro Skylake chips are available already:

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/10343/the-intel-skull-canyon-nuc6i7kyk-minipc-review/4

    I'd be surprised if Apple held the updates all the way back to October time. I'd expect a July refresh of the iMac, MBP and Mac Pro, mostly with drop-in upgrades but design changes on the MBP.
    hmm
  • Reply 3 of 9
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    Cool guys!    Marvin thanks for the links, some of those performance figure are better than I anticipated.    2.8X per watts ought to make for some interesting updates to Apples machinery.

    No hardware at WWDC always makes me frustrated.    Yes I know it is developer focused but it is hardware that drive the business and gives a platform for developers to work upon.    


  • Reply 4 of 9
    danwellsdanwells Posts: 39member
    What doesn't make sense to me about this is that, of five models of the MacBook Pro (not counting the OLD pre-Retina 13" or various custom configurations) , ONE of them has a discrete GPU. If you count all the custom configuration, there are around 25 (again without the pre-Retina model), of which three or four have a GPU (I don't know if 2.5 gHz/1 TB SSD/GPU is a real configuration, or whether you automatically get the 2.8 gHz upgrade if you upgrade everything else).

    From everything I've seen, the 13" outsells the 15" three or four to one, and ONLY the 15" has the GPU option

    Apple could have EASILY upgraded the 13", and maybe even introduced the 15" with delayed availability on GPU models, if that's all they were waiting for. Unfortunately, the "touch strip requires Sierra" theory makes too much sense to me...
  • Reply 5 of 9
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    It isn't just an issue of the discreet GPU's, Apple uses some of Intels most advanced chips with much higher performing GPUs.  
  • Reply 6 of 9
    danwellsdanwells Posts: 39member
    They may be waiting for the quad cores with Iris 580... These were released in January, but I can't find them on any shipping laptop (checked Lenovo, HP and Dell (XPS and Alienware). It may be that, even if some oddball company has them, they aren't shipping in Apple quantities...
  • Reply 7 of 9
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,326moderator
    danwells said:
    They may be waiting for the quad cores with Iris 580... These were released in January, but I can't find them on any shipping laptop (checked Lenovo, HP and Dell (XPS and Alienware). It may be that, even if some oddball company has them, they aren't shipping in Apple quantities...
    Intel started shipping mobile Iris Pro i7s in their own PC boxes at the end of May:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856102166
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/10343/the-intel-skull-canyon-nuc6i7kyk-minipc-review/4

    The following video tests it against the 2015 Iris Pro MBP:



    Most GPU increases seem to be about 30-40% with the occasional huge increase that even exceeds a much higher end dedicated GPU. Intel chips are pretty good for computing.

    Other manufacturers haven't used them yet though, they decided to use Skylake i7s with the HD 530 graphics and pair the machines with older dedicated GPUs like the 960M so they were able to ship back in March/April. It made more sense for Apple to wait a couple of months for the next-gen GPUs and be able to get the same performance but with half the power usage. They have to get both these i7s from Intel and the mobile chips from AMD, which could push an update into July.

    Given that they are milling the parts suggests they are getting ready for an update soon:

    http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/05/31/photos-of-purported-macbook-pro-chassis-surface-with-groove-for-oled-touch-bar-four-usb-ports-no-magsafe
  • Reply 8 of 9
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    danwells said:
    They may be waiting for the quad cores with Iris 580... These were released in January, but I can't find them on any shipping laptop (checked Lenovo, HP and Dell (XPS and Alienware). It may be that, even if some oddball company has them, they aren't shipping in Apple quantities...
    It didn't start shipping until the end of May.   Intel ran into serious problems with this model. 

    Beyond that, these chips do not show up in a lot of different machine.  Just Apple and a few other high end models.    Also I expect a major overhaul on Apples part.   
  • Reply 9 of 9
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member

    Marvin said:
    danwells said:
    They may be waiting for the quad cores with Iris 580... These were released in January, but I can't find them on any shipping laptop (checked Lenovo, HP and Dell (XPS and Alienware). It may be that, even if some oddball company has them, they aren't shipping in Apple quantities...
    Intel started shipping mobile Iris Pro i7s in their own PC boxes at the end of May:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856102166
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/10343/the-intel-skull-canyon-nuc6i7kyk-minipc-review/4

    The following video tests it against the 2015 Iris Pro MBP:



    Most GPU increases seem to be about 30-40% with the occasional huge increase that even exceeds a much higher end dedicated GPU. Intel chips are pretty good for computing.

    Other manufacturers haven't used them yet though, they decided to use Skylake i7s with the HD 530 graphics and pair the machines with older dedicated GPUs like the 960M so they were able to ship back in March/April. It made more sense for Apple to wait a couple of months for the next-gen GPUs and be able to get the same performance but with half the power usage. They have to get both these i7s from Intel and the mobile chips from AMD, which could push an update into July.

    Given that they are milling the parts suggests they are getting ready for an update soon:

    http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/05/31/photos-of-purported-macbook-pro-chassis-surface-with-groove-for-oled-touch-bar-four-usb-ports-no-magsafe
     I missed out on audio in that clip but the graphs where good.  The considerable increase in performance for the GPU is very nice and somewhat expected. I say somewhat due to the performance increase being somewhat more than expected.  It goes with out saying that Intel has come a very very long way with their GPU's.    
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