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Apple Finally Buying AMD CPUs?

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imagine if the $6k Mac Pro was a 16 core machine
If the base model had a 16 core Threadripper and an RX 5700XT GPU 64GB of ram and a 1TB SSD Apple would be a lot closer to giving you a system you could use OOB without $5,000 worth of upgrades. They could hardly make enough of them.
 
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I really, really hope this materializes in to reality along with some price cuts to Macs.

Perhaps this was the CPU shift that so many people had been talking about for the last few years... Except it's a shift to AMD and not ARM...

It would be a huge symbolic coup for AMD.
 
Apple has recently launched Apple TV+ streaming service in an attempt to compete with Disney and Netflix. The amount of money spent on gaming every year though, is hundreds of times more than what consumers pay for streamed content or even what they spend in movie theaters. Yes, gaming revenue is way bigger than the total of what the film and television industries are currently taking in from the content they produce. Apple wants a piece of the pie as they say. Apple Arcade is already up and running. This new gaming device will be Apple’s way of competing with services like XBox Game Pass, PlayStation Now, or Nintendo Switch Online. Once you have the hardware to sell, you can lock customers in with content that only runs on your device. We already know how good Apple is at keeping customers inside their "walled garden."

I would bet that the code is there because of the new gaming device that Apple is supposedly releasing this year. Gaming on laptops on the new Ryzen 5 2500U/3500U APU is really good for budget laptop gaming, much better than any Intel chip with igfx could ever be. My guess is that they would use a more powerful Ryzen 5 3600 and dedicated AMD graphics in whatever device they make for gaming. Maybe an iMac like all in one but with a 6K display (not XDR quality). They'd have to do that at least to justify the $5,000 price tag that is rumored. They would use the iMac Pro's new cooling system to keep it cool and quiet. Maybe call it the Apple gaming Mac. It may also be a more portable iOS like device that is similar to an iPad Pro. Will be interesting to see what they come up with.


 
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They have lost many of their top ARM executives lately as well. It will be interesting to see if they do use AMD and an ARM chip together.

I don't know how much the loss of executives will matter... There was lots of talk when Roger Koduri left AMD for Intel that AMD was doomed... AMD seems to be doing fine and Intel's GPU effort doesn't seem to have yielded much yet.

I don't have much doubt that Apple will continue to use and/or increase the use of custom silicon in Macs. Either that or the role that T2 plays in Macs will increase.
 
I'd love to see this as well, I'm stoked to build one. That all said after I did a happy dance I thought about it a moment. What kind of gaming Mac would Apple really need to build? Since Catalina a lot of games dropped off Mac due to 32-bit and were not the greatest of ports to begin with. And to be honest Windows gaming (alive it is) is unstable and not wonderful either. I get a hint it's not a growing thing. I will say, however, using Geforce Now on my Mac is quite cool and does work.
 
I don't know how much the loss of executives will matter... There was lots of talk when Roger Koduri left AMD for Intel that AMD was doomed... AMD seems to be doing fine and Intel's GPU effort doesn't seem to have yielded much yet.

I don't have much doubt that Apple will continue to use and/or increase the use of custom silicon in Macs. Either that or the role that T2 plays in Macs will increase.

You mean Raja Koduri? I think AMD May have benefitted with him out of the way. Let the boys and girls in the lab run things. They are closer to the product line.

The Apple ARM guys were heavies in the ARM world. We will have to see if Apple stays competitive with the iPhone and iPad performance levels. They made the drop to 7nm in the iPhone 11 vs the X model which boosted frequency a bit.
 
I would bet that the code is there because of the new gaming device that Apple is supposedly releasing this year. Gaming on laptops on the new Ryzen 5 2500U/3500U APU is really good for budget laptop gaming, much better than any Intel chip with igfx could ever be. My guess is that they would use a more powerful Ryzen 5 3600 and dedicated AMD graphics in whatever device they make for gaming. Maybe an iMac like all in one but with a 6K display (not XDR quality). They'd have to do that at least to justify the $5,000 price tag that is rumored. They would used the iMac Pro's new cooling system to keep it cool and quiet.



Another possibility is the 6000kext set has these and maybe AMD forgot to remove them before submitting to Apple? Maybe the Linux group sent them over and they were not removed before being sent out?
 
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