Eight unreleased AMD Radeon GPUs found in second macOS Catalina beta
The second developer beta of macOS Catalina 10.15 has seemingly revealed a list of unannounced AMD Radeon graphics cards, with eight references to GPUs bearing the "RX" and "Pro" prefixes, including seven under "Vega 20."
The AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo, a graphics card for the modular Mac Pro
The betas of Apple's operating systems have previously hinted at the launch of new GPUs and cards in AMD's Radeon lineup, like one for Mojave in December, but it seems the same thing has happened again for Catalina. A collection of eight yet-to-launch models have surfaced in an inspection of macOS 10.15 beta 2, which is due to arrive in the fall.
Spotted by developer Steve Moser, the cards are split into two categories: RX and Pro. There are six GPUs identified as Radeon RX Vega 20 cards, with a variety of different suffixes, as well as two under Radeon Pro Vega 20.
The RX list are said to be the Vega 20 GL XT WKS, GL XT Server, XTA, XLA, and XTX, as well as one described as "Unknown." All of the RX cards are also flagged as "Prototype," which could simply be a way of stating they are in development and could launch from AMD soon.
The other two are called the Radeon Pro Vega 20 XTA and XLA.
It isn't clear what each of the different acronyms refer to, but they could be for different Mac variants. For example, the Pro models could be destined for use with the new modular Mac Pro, while others could be discrete GPUs in revised MacBook Pro variants, replacing the existing Vega 20 and Vega 16 options.
As it isn't entirely descriptive what the cards could be, launches from the last year may give some clues as to what to expect for the cards.
Though using the new RDNA gaming architecture and Navi GPUs rather than Vega, one of the cards could be an intentionally misnamed version of the Radeon RX5700 series, which boast 7nm GPUs and up to 10.14 teraflops of performance. At the top of the list is the RX 5700 50th Anniversary Edition, which offers 40 compute units, 2,560 stream processors, and 8GB of GDDR6 memory.
It is unlikely that any of the cards will turn out to be the Radeon VII, as it is already supported in macOS as of version. 10.14.5. Offering 25-percent faster performance than earlier Vega cards, the Radeon VII has 16 gigabytes of memory, offering up to 60 compute units clocked at up to 1.8GHz.
The AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo, a graphics card for the modular Mac Pro
The betas of Apple's operating systems have previously hinted at the launch of new GPUs and cards in AMD's Radeon lineup, like one for Mojave in December, but it seems the same thing has happened again for Catalina. A collection of eight yet-to-launch models have surfaced in an inspection of macOS 10.15 beta 2, which is due to arrive in the fall.
Spotted by developer Steve Moser, the cards are split into two categories: RX and Pro. There are six GPUs identified as Radeon RX Vega 20 cards, with a variety of different suffixes, as well as two under Radeon Pro Vega 20.
Unannounced AMD GPUs mentioned in Catalina Beta 2:
Radeon RX Vega 20 GL XT WKS
Radeon RX Vega 20 GL XT Server
Radeon RX Vega 20 XTA
Radeon RX Vega 20 XLA
Radeon RX Vega 20 XTX
Radeon RX Vega UNKNOWN
Radeon Pro Vega 20 XTA
Radeon Pro Vega 20 XLA /cc @TUM_APISAK @_inside pic.twitter.com/GCzdScDhPo-- Steve Moser (@SteveMoser)
The RX list are said to be the Vega 20 GL XT WKS, GL XT Server, XTA, XLA, and XTX, as well as one described as "Unknown." All of the RX cards are also flagged as "Prototype," which could simply be a way of stating they are in development and could launch from AMD soon.
The other two are called the Radeon Pro Vega 20 XTA and XLA.
It isn't clear what each of the different acronyms refer to, but they could be for different Mac variants. For example, the Pro models could be destined for use with the new modular Mac Pro, while others could be discrete GPUs in revised MacBook Pro variants, replacing the existing Vega 20 and Vega 16 options.
As it isn't entirely descriptive what the cards could be, launches from the last year may give some clues as to what to expect for the cards.
Though using the new RDNA gaming architecture and Navi GPUs rather than Vega, one of the cards could be an intentionally misnamed version of the Radeon RX5700 series, which boast 7nm GPUs and up to 10.14 teraflops of performance. At the top of the list is the RX 5700 50th Anniversary Edition, which offers 40 compute units, 2,560 stream processors, and 8GB of GDDR6 memory.
It is unlikely that any of the cards will turn out to be the Radeon VII, as it is already supported in macOS as of version. 10.14.5. Offering 25-percent faster performance than earlier Vega cards, the Radeon VII has 16 gigabytes of memory, offering up to 60 compute units clocked at up to 1.8GHz.
Comments
What if Apple is going to offer a smaller version of the new Mac Pro! Basically, a desktop Vs Tower with fewer slots and less RAM support.
More of a system for photographers and gamers! We don't need as deep RAM as video editing or deep VR/CAD workstations.
Basically, replacing the 2013 Mac Pro which while many people won't want to hear was a pretty good system for what it was! As one who owns one I love it but its too limiting from a graphics perspective. Thats why I think Apple would be smart to offer a Desktop Mac Pro!
These GPU's would play well in such a system. Just think, a Mac Pro for the rest of us!
See the link I posted above. Hope it helps.
This bit about a prior licensing dispute may shed the most light:
“If Nvidia tried getting Apple to pay its license fees then Apple seemingly said no. In 2016, it also said no to putting Nvidia processors in the 15-inch MacBook Pro. Instead, Apple went with AMD GPUs publicly because of performance per watt issues, but the real reason is anybody's guess.”
“Developers using Macs with NVIDIA graphics cards are reporting that after upgrading from 10.13 to 10.14 (Mojave) they are experiencing rendering regressions and slow performance.
Apple fully controls drivers for Mac OS. Unfortunately, NVIDIA currently cannot release a driver unless it is approved by Apple.
Our hardware works on OS 10.13 which supports up to (and including) Pascal.”
As a computer and operating system producer, Apple has right to control every aspect of the products it is selling, including the drivers. If NVIDIA doesn’t consent their drivers to be approved by Apple, it is their marketplace choice: they prefer consumer products to the OEM products. If they do consent, then where are their Metal-compatible drivers?
P.S. In reality I'm an Apple supporter, but that doesn't mean I can't write something that's 50% facetious, 50% sincere, against Apple from time to time.
In any event that is a lot of cards res and may highlight a very interesting fall release schedule. I’d like to see Apple go a step further though and start using AMDs APU and other chips. Far better GPUs in the APUs the. What Intel has to offer is the reason. These days CPU performance is a wash so that isn’t a problem any more. So it makes me wonder if there is a way to tell if any of these are AMD APU GPUs?
If it truly is - and there has been zero evidence of this - because Nvidia won't allow low-level access to the Nvidia GPU core, then that's something that has Nvidia to blame. Nvidia always wrote drivers for Mac, and Apple wrote the AMD ones. And the AMD/Apple drivers were always pretty crap compared to the Nvidia ones. But it also might be that Nvidia doesn't want to spend millions developing drivers for an API that sees relatively little use versus a much much more popular and open source API - Vulkan.
Absolutely they do. That right ends with a purchase however. Apple does not have any right to choose what hardware is used with that computer, nor what software is run on it. It is my device, with which I shall do as I please. If that thing isn't sanctioned by Apple, boo boo I'm going to do it anyway. If Apple is artificially restricting software choice because of some stupid old spat with Nvidia then that is bad for everyone, and anticompetitive.
Unfortunately I don't think this is ever going to happen whilst Cook is at the helm. He can see that a lot of people (me included) would have gone for the likely cheaper xMac/FatMac/maxiMac rather than the expensive kitted out iMac. He doesn't want people upgrading their machines post-purchase as that money doesn't go through Apple. I used to have a cheesegrater Mac Pro and loved it, but now my only real choice was an iMac with a pretty poor GPU, which I have. It's a really nice machine, but the GPU is not great. They could have offered the Vega 64 rather than topping out at the 48, but that'd cannibalise the iMac Pro too much so they wouldn't do that either.
It's this kind of nickel and diming and meticulous positioning of products so that the better option is always just out of reach (no GPU upgrade in anything other than the "best" iMac) without forking out an extortionate amount to jump up to the next tier (think £2500 imac -> £5000 iMac Pro) that really pisses me off with Apple lately. They never used to do this, it's another Cookism.