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Interesting times ahead, that's for sure. In my mind the small wildcard is going to be how effectively Apple can scale up CPU performance as their thermal budg
by sjwright 6y ago
Interesting times ahead, that's for sure.
In my mind the small wildcard is going to be how effectively Apple can scale up CPU performance as their thermal budgets are increased. But the big wildcard is going to be how their in-house GPU tech scales up. It's going to be strange times ahead if Apple can bring the fight to AMD and Nvidia's mid-tier discrete products.
- WorldMaker 6y agoWhere is the pressure for Apple to beat the GPU performance of AMD or Nvidia going to come from though? Game consoles are stalwartly back on x86 for at least another generation (Xbox Series X, PS5), so AAA developers will have even less pressure for ARM ports and especially macOS-specific ARM ports. Apple may be hoping for more "bottom up" ports from iOS/Apple Arcade, and ARM macOS will make that easier, but games ported up from mobile don't seem particularly like a source for parity with AMD/Nvidia, much less a source for innovative competition "fight".
- sjwright 6y agoTo be clear, I was referring to AMD/Nvidia mid-tier. And I don’t expect Apple to come close to that any time soon. But who knows—Apple have already exceeded all expectations on their in-house GPU tech. While Apple doesn’t need to be chasing tier 1 AAA game performance, they do need graphics horsepower to handle two or three 6K displays. They also need to be a compelling platform for occasional gamers. And they need performance to power their push into AR.