Why oh why won’t apple go AMD

[233]

Do they have a long term tie in with Intel.?

would love you see a mpb based around the 4700u. Or heaven forbid a Mac Pro rocking threadripper

pother than the name that intel brings to their products why do they persevere or why do they not offer an Amd option on some lines at least.

 

[KraniX]

Do they have a long term tie in with Intel.?

would love you see a mpb based around the 4700u. Or heaven forbid a Mac Pro rocking threadripper

pother than the name that intel brings to their products why do they persevere or why do they not offer an Amd option on some lines at least.

The rumour is Apple will start to move Macs to their own Arm chips from next year, if true I doubt that means much of a chance for AMD in future.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Long term exclusivity contract with intel, Apple doesn’t pay anything close to wholesale for their chips and chipsets.

Intel chips are better in many scenarios, particularly single threaded applications and gaming ironically.

AMD didn’t really have anything in the mobile space until the last year.

Apple can hold a grudge, they don’t use Nvidia even though they are clearly way ahead of AMD in that department.

/Thread

 

[Feek]

I doubt Mac users really care what make of CPU or GPU is used. I don't think the average Mac user is really bothered by the whole Intel Vs AMD argument.

 

[shiver]

It didn't make any sense until relatively recently, and as others have said, supply contracts would've been baked in for multiple years.

They'd sooner go down their own chips route than change supply at this point I'd expect.

 

[Minstadave]

4800U in the air or pro would be epic. Gives them serious productivity horsepower.

 

[Valo]

They are probably more focused on transitioning to their own custom silicon. Just like with the transition they made from PowerPC to Intel it all comes down to the PPW (Performance Per Watt) - They want as much performance as possible for every watt of energy consumed.
The performance gains Apple are able to engineer with every generation of A series chips is mighty impressive and their focus will be on transferring this to their own hardware.

They want to control their supply chain from top to bottom.

 

[Hades]

As has been mentioned supply contracts were probably put in place quite some time ago when AMD were not competitive. At this point in time Apple seem to be going down the route of using their own chips and moving to AMD would simply be a distraction they don't need. There is a third issue too; Apple are quite invested into Thunderbolt which is a proprietary Intel technology and not available on Ryzen. However early reports of the the new Ryzen 4000's seem to suggest AMD are about to spank Intel just as hard in the mobile space as they have in the desktop arena. The danger for Apple is that overnight a Windows Ryzen 4000 laptop could offer both more power and more battery life than a Macbook and at a cheaper price.

I am currently in the market for a couple of laptops. I'll probably be getting my daughter a Macbook Pro 13 because she is quite image conscious among her friends. But I am up in the air between a MBP or one of the new Ryzen 4000 Thinkpads due to be lanuched in a month or two. The price will probably be similar but I'm waiting to see how quick the new Ryzen is in a Thinkpad. At least Apple fixed their keyboard otherwise the Thinkpad would have been a no-brainer.

 

[Valo]

As has been mentioned supply contracts were probably put in place quite some time ago when AMD were not competitive. At this point in time Apple seem to be going down the route of using their own chips and moving to AMD would simply be a distraction they don't need. There is a third issue too; Apple are quite invested into Thunderbolt which is a proprietary Intel technology and not available on Ryzen. However early reports of the the new Ryzen 4000's seem to suggest AMD are about to spank Intel just as hard in the mobile space as they have in the desktop arena. The danger for Apple is that overnight a Windows Ryzen 4000 laptop could offer both more power and more battery life than a Macbook and at a cheaper price.

I am currently in the market for a couple of laptops. I'll probably be getting my daughter a Macbook Pro 13 because she is quite image conscious among her friends. But I am up in the air between a MBP or one of the new Ryzen 4000 Thinkpads due to be lanuched in a month or two. The price will probably be similar but I'm waiting to see how quick the new Ryzen is in a Thinkpad. At least Apple fixed their keyboard otherwise the Thinkpad would have been a no-brainer.

Not strictly true about Ryzen and Thunderbolt. There are a few motherboards out there that do support Ryzen and Thunderbolt, so it wouldn't be a no go. I also seem to remember a report on MacRumors saying that code relating to Ryzen was found within macOS fairly recently.

Anything is possible, however I would bet they are focused on their own custom silicon and bringing that aspect of their supply chain in-house.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Ryzen can use thunderbolt, they just have to licence the IP and buy the chips from intel or any other manufacturers that makes them.

The issue with thunderbolt is that it’s really expensive and doesn’t offer functionality that the vast majority of people will actually use. Much of the thunderbolt functionality is now present in USB3.2, it’s only really eGPUs that benefit.