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[Success] AMD RX6000 Series working in macOS

I think the following article gives a hint as to whether there will be AMD GPUs in future Apple Silicon Macs.

The article is ill informed. AMDs GPUs were, to anyone with basic computer knowledge, exclusive to Mac.
 
The article is ill informed. AMDs GPUs were, to anyone with basic computer knowledge, exclusive to Mac.

What?

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These are not Radeon VIIs. Radeon VII only had 60 compute units.
 
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Here we are my friends - a turning point I believe. AMD and NVIDIA have both discovered the miners as a clientele and they are now building individual products for them based on existing GPU designs but with the hint that those would be only usable for mining an nothing else. The good point here might be that this eases the situation for creatives and gamers as there is currently not enough supply and the GPU prices, even for second hand cards are skyrocketing. But with the current tendency of the market one could wonder what earns you more for a living, doing creative work on the GPU or just let it mine cryptos 24/7. To me that is the real question and frankly I am not sure anymore if creative usage of a GPU has enough advocates anymore. I am not talking about the gaming industry here, that's another big factor but the creative industry. Where are all those creative users. Maybe there are less then a decade or two ago? Or maybe they just became a less important clientele then consumers and miners. That's the point, when I look at Apple and AMD and NVIDIA. They don't care about the prosumers anymore as they tend to buy only once every 5 to 10 years and not yearly. The creative software industry has made the move before to subscription based models and yes those are more interesting for them, because they have a more stable cashflow and market behavior is more predictable, if you cut consumers freedom. So while we were wondering where our choices have gone the whole industry has changed and it turns out that the prosumers are not interesting anymore. Only consumers are needed for now and if there is something you could possibly use that GPU hardware for then you could just damn put it to mine. Who in the end needs a human brain behind that machine at all. It's a long long time ago since apple took that photography of Pablo Picasso and made an advertisement campaign with it. I think they called it "think different". Today they'd just take an image of any generic person and if there was a claim it would probably say "don't think at all"...because there is an app for that.

Difficult call because "pro-sumers" still exist. Are you saying Apple has abandoned creativity? Hmmm. Don't agree because of Garageband and iMovie. These are free stepping-stones for aspiring creatives. No subs just free. I have produced 20x podcasts and published them on iTunes all down to Apple's free software. Tried to do the same with Windows and ended up pulling my hair out.

But I'm no "Pro" just someone who was given the tools, and encouraged by, Apple.

Anyway, apologies... OFF TOPIC. Take this to the relevant Apple thread please. The RX6800XT isn't the be-all and end-all.
 
Hey hey, 11.2.3 is out and was supposed to carry the drivers for those cards... anyone had the chance to test it.
 
Hey hey, 11.2.3 is out and was supposed to carry the drivers for those cards... anyone had the chance to test it.

Who said 11.2.3 was supposed to have drivers? I see no evidence of anyone claiming that. 11.2.3 is a bugfix release primarily around WebKit.

Maybe you meant 11.3 beta 3, based on the OTOY forum post by an Octane X developer, which I see is now also being reported by news outlets (example, in Italian: https://www.macitynet.it/macos-11-3-radeon-rx-6800-6900-xt/) In which case no, sadly it's still not working in 11.3 beta 3. We're not sure why that Octane developer said it was there when it's not, but I'm hoping it means that he's heard it's coming and just got the release wrong - like maybe it'll be in 11.3 beta 4 (if there is one), or else in 11.4 beta 1.

EDIT: I posted a question on that OTOY forum to ask the developer for more info on why he thought it was in 11.3 beta 3. It's currently awaiting moderator approval as it was my first post. Hopefully it'll appear soon. If he really does have insider info, he probably can't say any more due to NDAs. Ot it could be he was just completely mistaken, thinking he heard it was already there when it's not.. but let's hope not.
 
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So the AMD 6000 family will be the last graphic card family the hack world will get? Will we even get that?
I am thinking macOS might never support RX 6000 series.
 
So the AMD 6000 family will be the last graphic card family the hack world will get?
We don't know.

Will we even get that?
We don't know.

All we have is speculation. Anyone who knows Apple's decisions on this will be bound by NDA. They might be working on it right now. They might have already decided not to support it. We did get that one recent positive sign: the quote from the Octane X developer who said full support would come with the release of 11.3. But he also said that 11.3 beta 3 already has support, which it doesn't, and we don't know what the basis for his statement was; whether it was based on communication he'd had from Apple (in which case he probably wasn't meant to say it in public), or if he was just quoting hearsay and getting it wrong.

We'll just have to keep waiting for each new release and hope for the best.

My personal speculation has always been that the 6000-series will be supported - to allow current Intel Mac users to use them for the next 18 months until Apple Silicon is available in all configurations and the Apple GPUs are competitive. It always seemed too early in the transition for the latest (and best performing in years) AMD GPUs not to be supported.

Though it's also possible to argue that Apple may well not want high-performing third-party GPUs around just as they're trying to push people to upgrade to Silicon. Locking existing Intel Mac users to last-gen AMD GPUs would arguably help 'encourage' them to buy a new Silicon system. So it's never been a sure thing that support will come.

Even if support does come, I further speculate that it's quite likely that no further third-party GPUs will be supported beyond that. The Apple M1 systems have Apple-built GPUs, and no support for external GPUs, which seems likely to set the pattern for future Silicon machines. And all the rumours coming out indicate they plan to scale up those GPUs significantly, likely into the realm where they would compete with - or beat - AMD and NVidia's top offerings. Recent rumours talk about future 64-core and 128-core GPUs; the AMD 6900XT has 80 Compute Units, for comparison.

As I say, it's all speculation. But Apple is the richest company in the world; if they want to do something, they can. And they've always loved locking consumers into buying only Apple products and upgrades.
 
But Apple is the richest company in the world; if they want to do something, they can. And they've always loved locking consumers into buying only Apple products and upgrades.
This statement about being locked in the Apple ecosystem (their walled garden) reminds me of the lyrics from Hotel California: "You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!" You may have a Windows PC you use for a few specific programs or even an Android smart phone, but you're still always going back to Apple products and services for the longer term. You're free to walk away from it all, but just can't convince yourself to leave Apple and make a complete break from everything they offer in terms software, hardware and the tight integration and ease of use of everything they make. The so-called "Apple Experience."
 
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