Banging on the iMac Pro

[Xavier Casado]

Do you think that apple deliberately gives up that segment of the market (3d) due to Apple´s insistence on using AMD GPUs? Why Redshift or Octane don´t support AMD cards? I mention it from the most absolute ignorance in these issues. Thanks!!

[Oliver Peters]

[xavier Casado] “Do you think that apple deliberately gives up that segment of the market (3d) due to Apple´s insistence on using AMD GPUs?”

I don’t honestly know the answer, but Apple makes it decisions about third-party partnerships for many reasons – better roadmap, attractive pricing, optimization for Apple hardware, etc. There are pros and cons to each of the GPU vendors, so depending on what you are trying to do, one manufacturer may be better than another. For example, Nvidia has been strong with GPU processing, but AMD is preferred if you want to drive a lot of displays at once.

Realistically, the only other option is Nvidia. I’ve heard lately that they are the favored GPU for people building custom PCs for Bitcoin mining, thus driving up the price or cards. Plus Nvidia seems to be more interested in the smart car market than PCs. Who knows, but maybe these are all factors in Apple’s decision to stick with AMD over Nvidia.

The 3D design, engineering, and animation market has to be a fraction of even the professional film/video production market. So it’s probably not a big driver. Gaming is really the big magilla and that’s an area where Apple was never very strong anyway.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com