AMD details the 16-inch MacBook Pro's Radeon Pro 5000M-series GPUs

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited June 2020
AMD has revealed the specifications of the new Radeon Pro 5000M-series GPU options available in the just-launched 16-inch MacBook Pro, with the Radeon Pro 5300M and 5500M offering better graphics performance and an option for up to 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM.




Introduced as part of Apple's launch of the 16-inch MacBook Pro, the Radeon Pro 5000M-series graphics processing units offer a significant bump in performance compared to the previous options available for the 15-inch MacBook Pro.

Alongside the integrated Intel graphics, the new MacBook Pro models are equipped with a Radeon Pro 5300M with 4GB of GDDR6 memory in the base model, while the second base option includes a Radeon Pro 5500M, again with 4GB of GDDR6 memory. Upgrades are available in both cases, from the 5300M to the 5500M, as well as from the 5500M with 4GB of VRAM to the same GPU but with 8GB of VRAM.

Radeon Pro 5500MRadeon Pro 5300MRadeon Pro Vega 20Radeon Pro Vega 16Radeon Pro 560XRadeon Pro 555X
MacBook Pro Model16-inch Late 201916-inch Late 201915-inch Mid 201915-inch Mid 201915-inch Mid 201915-inch Mid 2019
VRAM4GB or 8GB GDDR64GB GDDR64GB HBM24GB HBM24GB GDDR54GB GDDR5
Compute Units242020161612
Stream Processors ("Shaders")1,5361,280128010241024768
Max Performance (FP32 in TFlops)4.03.23.22.42.01.4
Peak Engine Clock1,300MHz1,250MHz1,283MHz1,190MHz1,004MHz907MHz
GPU Process Size7nm7nm14nm14nm14nm14nm


The Radeon Pro 5000M series is made using AMD's new RDNA architecture, as seen in its graphics cards, and are billed as the first discrete mobile GPUs that are made using a 7-nanometer process. The use of GDDR6 enables up to 192 gigabytes per second of memory bandwidth, twice that of GDDR5, though only the 5500M can use 8GB of the memory while the 5300M is limited to 4GB.

The Radeon Pro 5500M GPU is equipped with 24 compute units, 1,536 stream processors, a peak engine clock of 1,300MHz, and can provide up to 4 teraflops of single-precision floating-point performance. The Radeon Pro 5300M GPU has 20 compute units and 1,280 stream processors, along with a peak engine clock of 1,250MHz, giving it up to 3.2 teraflops of performance.

Based on the standard configurations, Apple claims consumers will enjoy 2.1 times faster graphics performance than the GPUs used in the previous standard configuration. In the 15-inch MacBook Pro, this would have consisted of a Radeon Pro 555X or a Radeon Pro 560X, both with 4GB of VRAM.

In a comparison of the highest-performing GPUs for each, consisting of the Vega 20 with 4GB of VRAM against the 8GB Radeon Pro 5500M, Apple claims there is an 80-percent increase of graphical performance for the 16-inch MacBook Pro's GPU. Effects rendering for color grading in DaVinci Resolve is 1.8 times faster in the new model over the previous one, while 1.6-times faster performance is touted for "Fortnite."
applesnoranges
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 26
    Pretty impressive.

    watto_cobra
  • Reply 2 of 26
    hodarhodar Posts: 357member
    Given that Intel did NOT fix the Meltdown/Spectre exploit, even on the new family of their processors - this means that all of their current offerings were INTENTIONALLY left open.  So, perhaps Apple may want to consider offering some Mac's with AMD processor families; in the interest of security.
    acheron2018watto_cobra
  • Reply 3 of 26
    No slouch... although I find it funny that Apple have chosen Matlab as one of the benchmarks for the new MBP. For years now, the only GPGPU that Matlab has supported is with NVidia cards through CUDA, which makes this excellent card from ATI quite useless (at least for that scenario).
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 4 of 26
    How is this compared to the latest NVidia offerings in mobile?
    fastasleepwatto_cobra
  • Reply 5 of 26
    jimh2jimh2 Posts: 611member
    What is the true advantage of these high performance video cards and what is a use case that justifies them?
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 6 of 26
    thttht Posts: 5,421member
    jimh2 said:
    What is the true advantage of these high performance video cards and what is a use case that justifies them?
    Basically any operation that does single precision or lower (32 bit or lower) matrix math will benefit from the GPU. So, basically the same suite of workflows that Apple always touts: Final Cut Pro, Adobe’s suite, anything involving 3D, anything cryptography. If the job requires solving differential equations, or integrating non-linear systems of equations, in double precision, or compiling, or anything with lots of logic statements, not much of a help. 8 CPU cores would help with this.

    If all you do is office automation, and want a big laptop display, you should complain that Apple doesn’t offer a defeatured MBP15 or MBP16 for $1800 to $2000.
  • Reply 7 of 26
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,858administrator
    jimh2 said:
    What is the true advantage of these high performance video cards and what is a use case that justifies them?
    Video editing, image editing, and similar calculations.
    PickUrPoisonwatto_cobra
  • Reply 8 of 26
    jimh2 said:
    What is the true advantage of these high performance video cards and what is a use case that justifies them?
    While the above commenters are absolutely correct, just a real world right now example — I'm working on an After Effects composition that's really grinding along on my Vega 20, which was the previous top end option. Meaning, while trying to do RAM previews, it slowly churns along the timeline before it's able to loop back and play back in real time.  Anything that does this faster speeds this process up and saves time, often. If I were buying a new MBP, the top end option would be a no-brainer.

    Interestingly, the low end (5300) is almost identical spec-wise to the Vega 20, at least on paper. The 5500 would be worth the extra couple hundred bucks to me.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 9 of 26
    Does the new 16” mbp beg a comparison test with the revised Razer 17” 4K ?
    www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/razer-blade-pro

    Does the Geekbench 5 Open CL benchmark for the GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q @ 88,423 better even the Vega 64 ? browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks

    edited November 2019 watto_cobra
  • Reply 10 of 26
    mcdavemcdave Posts: 1,927member
    xyzzy01 said:
    How is this compared to the latest NVidia offerings in mobile?
    The dGPU works off the battery.
    entropyswatto_cobra
  • Reply 11 of 26
    2015: Radeon R9 M370X 
    2016: 
    Radeon Pro 450, 455, 460
    2017: 
    Radeon Pro 555, 560
    2018: Radeon Pro 555X, Radeon Pro 560X, Radeon Pro Vega 16, Radeon Pro Vega 20
    2019: Radeon Pro 
    5300M, Radeon Pro 5500M, 

    would it kill these guys to have a coherent naming scheme
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 12 of 26
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    MisterKit said:
    Pretty impressive.

    AMD has finally recovered from its dark years.    I’m surprised that Apple hasn’t gone with AMD CPUs as Intel’s solutions truly suck after all the security mitigations.  
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 13 of 26
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    jimh2 said:
    What is the true advantage of these high performance video cards and what is a use case that justifies them?
    There are probably dozens of different answers for this question.  One might point out the advantage of parallel processing on a GPU which can effectively speed up all sorts of computations.   This is often referred to as GPU compute.   With some classes of problems GPUs are much quicker and even if not much faster can often work in parallel with the CPU.  

    For people that need such capabilities they pretty much already understand the GPUs impact.    This is a rapidly changing landscape too.   GPU architectures have evolved rapidly (much faster than CPUs) leading to more and more applications that benefit from a performant GPU.  Recently many GPUs have picked up increase capability to accelerate machine learning applications.   The list of hardware features in a GPU continues to expand.  

    What does this mean?    If the software you use can be accelerated via a GPU it is well worth the investment.  What gets accelerated isnt always easy to determine, a review of a softwares specs can often help there.  Also with Apple you have the reality that some key libraries benefit from GPU accelerations which apps can use indirectly. 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 14 of 26
    Eric_WVGG said:
    2015: Radeon R9 M370X 
    2016: Radeon Pro 450, 455, 460
    2017: Radeon Pro 555, 560
    2018: Radeon Pro 555X, Radeon Pro 560X, Radeon Pro Vega 16, Radeon Pro Vega 20
    2019: Radeon Pro 5300M, Radeon Pro 5500M, 

    would it kill these guys to have a coherent naming scheme
    Still not as bad as Sony, but yeah.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 15 of 26
    4 tflops on a 5500M as opposed to the 9+ tflops on a mobile NVIDIA RTX 2080. You should get premium performance if you pay a premium price for a laptop.
    bobolicious
  • Reply 16 of 26
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    xyzzy01 said:
    How is this compared to the latest NVidia offerings in mobile?
    The graphics chips have variable power profiles so the same GPU can perform differently in one laptop to another but I think this page gives a decent comparison:

    https://www.notebookcheck.net/Radeon-RX-5500M-vs-GeForce-RTX-2080-Max-Q-vs-GeForce-RTX-2080-Desktop_9943_9621_9286.247598.0.html

    The RX 5500M there is a slightly faster model than the Pro 5500M in the MBP (4.6TFLOPs vs 4TFLOPs) but is also 7nm. In most cases the 2080 Max-Q (6.5TFLOPs) is about 50-70% faster.

    The NVidia GPUs use more power though, Apple usually targets 45-50W. Both NVidia and AMD are pretty close on performance-per-watt. NVidia has been moving more towards catering to bulky gamer laptops that can accommodate 90W+ GPUs.

    MBPs are designed for all kinds of professional work including software development, photography and design and not everyone wants to carry around a gaming-style laptop with large 200W power supplies, loud fans, excessive heat and 6 hour battery life.

    The good thing about this update is the good performance is priced much more reasonably. The last model had the Vega 20 right at the top BTO option. This performance is now in the base model MBP. That was previously $3349:

    https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook-pro-core-i9-2.4-eight-core-15-mid-2019-touch-bar-vega-16-vega-20-specs.html

    Now the entry $2399 model has that GPU performance, $2699 to match the CPU so $650 cheaper. Plus better keyboard, physical escape key, larger display, better audio. The SSD pricing is vastly improved, around $0.30-0.40/GB, very close to retail SSD prices. The old SSD prices are listed here:

    https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/macbook-pro-touch-bar-faq/macbook-pro-touch-bar-processor-ram-storage-upgrades.html#internal_storage

    This is the best update to the MBP in a long time.
    fastasleepboboliciousentropyswatto_cobra
  • Reply 17 of 26
    sc_marktsc_markt Posts: 1,401member
    Some questions on these new 16" MBPs"

    Can the Radeon Pro 5500M can support an external 4k monitor at 60hz? 
    How many external monitors can these MBPs support?

    Anybody compare the sound from this upgrade vs an older MBP?



    This upgrade has really got me interested in retiring my 2012 MBP 15 inch. 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 18 of 26
    thttht Posts: 5,421member
    sc_markt said:
    Some questions on these new 16" MBPs"

    Can the Radeon Pro 5500M can support an external 4k monitor at 60hz? 
    How many external monitors can these MBPs support?

    Anybody compare the sound from this upgrade vs an older MBP?

    This upgrade has really got me interested in retiring my 2012 MBP 15 inch. 
    Apple's MBP16 Tech Specs page states:
    Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at millions of colors and:
    • Up to two displays with 6016‑by‑3384 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors
    • Up to four displays with 4096‑by‑2304 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors
    Thunderbolt 3 digital video output
    • Native DisplayPort output over USB‑C
    • VGA, HDMI, DVI, and Thunderbolt 2 output supported using adapters (sold separately)
    For 5K and 6K displays, it's basically one 5K or 6K display per Titan Ridge TB3 controller. So you need to connect 1 of those monitors on one side only. Can't connect 2 to one side. 

    Reviewers are saying the speakers are really good, nearly external speaker quality, while the new microphone array is good enough for podcasting. It's not all the way to external speakers or external microphones, but close. So, it outclasses all prior Apple laptops in both speakers and microphones.
    watto_cobrafastasleep
  • Reply 19 of 26
    JuedneJuedne Posts: 2member
    Please can anyone with good tech knowledge help a stills photographer with only basic knowledge of graphics cards?

    If upgrading from a (darned annoying, constantly overheating) 15" Apple MacBook Pro, with Radeon Pro 555X 4GB, to a 16" MBP with AMD Radeon 5300M 4GB, I see what looks to my untrained eye like a decent difference in graphics performance(?), but no significant difference between Radeon Pro 5300M and 5500M, both with 4GB. My question is whether it's worth spending an extra £200 to go to a 5500M with 8GB.

    I don't do video or gaming, but I do use memory-hungry imaging apps (Caprure One, Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop and InDesign) and I have a recent 4K monitor, which I understand will perform better with a powerful graphics card. The question is HOW powerful do I need to go? I don't want to waste ££ on unnecessary upgrades, but given nothing can be upgraded in these machines later on, I don't want to risk under-speccing it either.
  • Reply 20 of 26
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,858administrator
    Juedne said:
    Please can anyone with good tech knowledge help a stills photographer with only basic knowledge of graphics cards?

    If upgrading from a (darned annoying, constantly overheating) 15" Apple MacBook Pro, with Radeon Pro 555X 4GB, to a 16" MBP with AMD Radeon 5300M 4GB, I see what looks to my untrained eye like a decent difference in graphics performance(?), but no significant difference between Radeon Pro 5300M and 5500M, both with 4GB. My question is whether it's worth spending an extra £200 to go to a 5500M with 8GB.

    I don't do video or gaming, but I do use memory-hungry imaging apps (Caprure One, Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop and InDesign) and I have a recent 4K monitor, which I understand will perform better with a powerful graphics card. The question is HOW powerful do I need to go? I don't want to waste ££ on unnecessary upgrades, but given nothing can be upgraded in these machines later on, I don't want to risk under-speccing it either.
    Assessing which is going to work the best for you from a cost to performance basis is complicated by the fact that it won't be universal -- some of your apps and filters will use the GPU, and some will not.

    That said, if you're trying to stretch it out for a few years, go for the 5500M, or get an eGPU to connect your Mac to your external monitor. This has an added benefit of taking heat off the machine, and into the PCI-E AMD card in the external enclosure. You won't be able to do this for £200, though, and looking quickly at UK prices, it looks closer to £500.
    edited June 2020 Juedne
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