But while Apple has directly sold a few eGPUs, and natively supports AMD graphics cards without any special driver gymnastics required, it’s still mostly a niche category.
These have very high throughput, making it possible for a GPU in an internal enclosure to offer almost as much graphics processing capability as one connected internally.
Existing Macs with Intel chips will still be useful long after the transition is complete, however, and software porting means they might even support more of your existing favorite applications for the foreseeable future, which is why adding an external GPU (eGPU) likely makes more sense now than ever.Īpple added support for eGPUs a few years ago, made possible by the addition of Thunderbolt 3 ports on Macs. And while new Intel-powered Macs will be released and sold leading up to that time, it does mean that the writing is on the wall for Intel-based Apple hardware. That process is meant to begin with hardware to be announced later this year, and last two years according to Apple’s stated expectations.
(The i5 runs at 4.1 in it's Turbo mode).Apple recently announced they would be transitioning their Mac line from Intel processors to their own, ARM-based Apple Silicon. However, once you start breaking apart the performance, the difference between cores really isn't as great as you'd expect.Īn Opteron 6276 core (singe core, not single processor) running at it's turbo 2.6Ghz speed adjusted for 4.1Ghz is only 15% slower than a core on the i5, despite a 7 year difference in age. The test I've run is a watermarking, and as expected the quad Opteron pounds the Mini into the ground. The i5 is a 2018 process, the 6276 is a 2011 processor. I've been running a test between my 2018 Mac Mini with i5 6 core vs a new build (of old components) quad Opteron 6276. I think cpu history performance is a little overstated. The Nvidia GPUs would enable AI/ML developers to use Macs as the platform. It would be good if these new Macs can support external Nvidia GPUs! ARM is now owned by Nvidia. Its single core performance is 1,575 and multicore performance is around 5,000, using Geekbench 5. As a comparison, my wife's new Windows' laptop (Lenovo) has the current generation of Intel low-end i7 CPU with 4-cores.
These Intel Mini and MBP used older generations of Intel CPUs. I'd love to shed my external GPU if I don't need it.Īpple had not been good in using the latest Intel CPUs for their Macs. but then again, this is the first Apple Silicon processor we're seeing. No, it's not as good as the Radeon RX 580 external GPU. So the M1 built in GPU is clearly way better than either of build in intel GPU by a ton. Mini Intel native GPU (Intel UHD 630).Geekbench Compute benchmark (tests GPU, OPENCL test) Mini and MBP specs I just ran myself using Geekbench 5. And a 2018 MBP 13" w/ 2.7Ghz quadcore I7. I have a 2018 mini, 3.2ghz 6-core with a Radeon RX 580 in an e-GPU. It makes the need for an external eGPU much less likely. Spot on, I think the M1 integration and built in GPU are game changers. I know very little about this stuff, but it appears that the internal GPU inside the M1 chip is quite respectable.