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A Mac Pro with RDNA2 Graphics Has Leaked on Geekbench

Random_Person1234

Summary

A Mac Pro with an Intel i9-10920X, 192GB of RAM, and an unreleased Radeon Pro W6900X has appeared on Geekbench. This follows Apple recently updating macOS to support RDNA2 GPUs. This GPU appears to be an Apple exclusive judging by its name. No specs of the card besides product name have been leaked, but it is rumored that this card could be the first Navi 21 GPU with 32GB of VRAM. This also follows a photo of an alleged RDNA2 GPU for Apple that was leaked earlier this week. The W6900X was tested in Apple Metal API test, with it scoring 171,448 points, slightly better than the 6900XT.

Leaked system specs:

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image.png.adbac9e90d892d2da3c65acf0dd66589.png

Benchmarks:

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image.png.91a604c888d59820edb5bb53f49f9754.png

Compared to other GPUs:

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image.png.8a1c2883ddc223536a42fe139ea2d57d.png

 

Quotes

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Just recently Apple updated its macOS operating system with support for Navi RDNA2 architecture GPUs. The changelog only mentions consumer Radeon RX models, but the support for the upcoming Radeon Pro series is likely coming soon as well

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on Geekbench, an Intel Cascade Lake-X-based MacPro 7.1 has been spotted with a yet unreleased Radeon Pro W6900X graphics card. Judging by its name, it appears to be another Apple exclusive model. Unfortunately, nothing besides the product name has been leaked in terms of specifications, so we are unsure how much memory could this graphics card have but is likely that we are looking at the first Navi 21 model with 32GB of memory

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In terms of performance, the graphics card was tested in Apple Metal API test. We are looking at various scores ranging from 152K to 171K points, which puts its right between Radeon RX 6800XT and RX 6900XT.

 

My thoughts

This looks much better than the Radeon Pro Vega II which currently is the best GPU in a Mac Pro. However, I wonder how much stock Apple will be able to muster of these cards, as RDNA2 GPUs have been pretty hard to come by in the PC market.

 

Sources

https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/2724505

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-radeon-pro-w6900x-navi21-for-apple-macpro-appears-in-leaked-benchmark-results

 

Edit: Also, ray-tracing on Macs??? I wonder if this card will have ray-tracing capabilities, although I don’t see a use case for it on macOS.

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Yes!!! RX 6000 series macOS drivers!
 

How AMD just has to figure out their drivers.

 

If they do, there will be a 6700 XT in my system at some point.

elephants

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8 minutes ago, Random_Person1234 said:

A Mac Pro with an Intel i9-10920X

Personally I find this tidbit much more interesting - no Xeon in a Mac Pro?

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6 minutes ago, Random_Person1234 said:

This GPU appears to be an Apple exclusive judging by its name.

Likely not since the W series is the workstation cards in general, maybe first to Apple devices. The W5700 & W5500 are available for both platforms where the Apple variation ends with X's. The WX series professional cards are all older Vega or Polaris based btw, so the timing for RNDA2 high end professional cards is correct.

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I'm more interested in the CPU than the GPU. No production Mac Pro has ever used CPUs that aren't Xeons. 

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4 minutes ago, tim0901 said:

Personally I find this tidbit much more interesting - no Xeon in a Mac Pro?

Likely because a Xeon would actually be slower so if you don't need to go above the maximum ram of HEDT then you're better off price and performance to use HEDT than a Xeon. When HEDT and Xeon share the same socket and chipset generation you can put the HEDT CPUs in the Xeon motherboards without any alterations or specific BIOS support at all.

 

However I don't know if Apple would even do this, you can of course put your own CPU in to your Mac Pro, or it's not actually a Mac device at all.

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Surely when the Apple ARM based CPU's eventually hit the Mac Pro product line, it will make the Intel variants look a bit silly. 

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34 minutes ago, Random_Person1234 said:

Edit: Also, ray-tracing on Macs??? I wonder if this card will have ray-tracing capabilities, although I don’t see a use case for it on macOS.

Image rendering using hardware accelerated RT rather than pure CPU or GPU compute. Can do this with Blender on Windows.

https://techgage.com/article/testing-blender-2-81-alpha-with-nvidia-rtx/

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23 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Likely not since the W series is the workstation cards in general, maybe first to Apple devices. The W5700 & W5500 are available for both platforms where the Apple variation ends with X's. The WX series professional cards are all older Vega or Polaris based btw, so the timing for RNDA2 high end professional cards is correct.

Don’t the Radeon Pro variants with an “X” at the end mean Apple exclusive? Looking at the Apple website, only the W5500X and W5700X  appear there. Is there even a performance difference between them and the non-X version?

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5 minutes ago, Random_Person1234 said:

Don’t the Radeon Pro variants with an “X” at the end mean Apple exclusive.

I did say that 😉 However that doesn't mean exclusive, it means it has the VBIOS that allows it to work in a real actual Mac device.

 

Exclusive would imply there is no W6900 coming outside of Apple devices, because why would non Apple users give a damn otherwise.

 

5 minutes ago, Random_Person1234 said:

Is there even a performance difference between them and the non-X version?

No, just AMD's and Apple's blessing to actually use it. However there is likely more than just a simple flag in the VBIOS that allows it to be used in Mac devices, there's at least validation done but also likely some patches for things like Metal API. Basically it's not zero work from AMD or Apple.

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@Random_Person1234Actually no I was wrong the W5700X has more CUs enabled than the W5700, interesting. 40 vs 36 and for the 5700 24 vs 22. Also the W5700X has different VRAM options, up to 32GB where the W5700 is 8GB only.

 

Very interesting, first generation I'm aware of with hardware customization like that.

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Well cool to see though.

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It'd be odd for Apple to release a Core-based Mac Pro, especially with the ARM transition underway. However, I could see that happening if the company wants to put out a "last hurrah" system that gives pros decent hardware until there's a suitable ARM replacement. A Core i9 would probably lower the starting price, too, much like the old single-core Power Mac G5 did.

 

Of course, this could also be an audacious Hackintosh... but it's fun to speculate.

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2 hours ago, tim0901 said:

Personally I find this tidbit much more interesting - no Xeon in a Mac Pro?

We only have specs so might not be a Mac Pro. 

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53 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Of course, this could also be an audacious Hackintosh... but it's fun to speculate.

This is my guess as well.  I can't see Apple spending any money on the Intel Mac Pro line by updating the motherboard for any reason at all.  I do find it likely that a new line of MPX modules may be released, including the aforementioned Radeon.  But I don't think we'll see anything significant for the Mac Pro until next year when they finish up the AS migration.

 

 

 

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37 minutes ago, jasonvp said:

I can't see Apple spending any money on the Intel Mac Pro line by updating the motherboard for any reason at all

Edit: Argh nvm, bloody Intel naming. Forgot the Xeon W 3000 series were not LGA2066

 

Seals the deal for me, fake news (the CPU at least)

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1 hour ago, Commodus said:

Of course, this could also be an audacious Hackintosh... but it's fun to speculate.

I don't see how this could be a Hackintosh, since it's an unreleased GPU. Unless AMD is trying to test their card on macOS. This test was also conducted only two days after Apple officially released a macOS beta update for RDNA2 GPU support.

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3 minutes ago, Random_Person1234 said:

I don't see how this could be a Hackintosh, since it's an unreleased GPU. Unless AMD is trying to test their card on macOS. This test was also conducted only two days after Apple officially released a macOS beta update for RDNA2 GPU support.

The entire thing could be a lie, reported GPU model and everything. Mac OS supports RDNA2 so it could be any old AIB 6900XT.

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40 minutes ago, leadeater said:

The entire thing could be a lie, reported GPU model and everything. Mac OS supports RDNA2 so it could be any old AIB 6900XT.

My feeling here is that this a hackintosh with the SMBIOS identifying it as a MacPro 7,1 (2019 MacPro) , as using a non-Xeon is typical of a Hackintosh "I could build a cheaper system" unit.

 

The GPU however might just be applying the same trick to the video driver.

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Wonder if it will have RGB.

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11 hours ago, Random_Person1234 said:

Edit: Also, ray-tracing on Macs??? I wonder if this card will have ray-tracing capabilities, although I don’t see a use case for it on macOS.

Yes metal has the full support for the same types of ray intersect tests and Vulkan or DX, in-fact some these arrived in metal long before they did in Vulkan/DX. Redshift is one of (a few) of industry leading rendering engines that have added macOS GPU rendering support (using these apis).  


 

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21 hours ago, Random_Person1234 said:

A Mac Pro with an Intel i9-10920X, 192GB of RAM, and an unreleased Radeon Pro W6900X

An i9 in a Mac Pro? The only two options I see are A) they want to make a cheaper SKU because sales of the previous Mac Pro were too low, or B) it's a hackintosh. I mean the identifier says MacPro 7,1. Wouldn't a new Mac Pro say MacPro 8,1? It is bleeding edge, running macOS 11.4, a beta that was only released a few days ago so I guess it's unlikely that it would be a hackintosh, but it's still a possibility.

 

If this new Mac Pro is only for base and the more expensive Mac Pros get Intel Xeon, why would Apple do that? I assume this i9 is much faster in single core than the 8-core Xeon-W. So they would have to make an Apple Silicon chip better or at least on par with that i9. They must be extra confident about their SOCs.

 

But I'm not saying I didn't expect this. I always thought that they needed to release one final Intel Mac Pro to get all the people who need Intel and could not switch to Apple Silicon for possibly years onto the latest platform both Intel and AMD have to offer. Remember, at WWDC20, Cook said they had "more Intel Macs in the pipeline". They've only released one so far, the 27" iMac.

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wonder if apple will do M1 with AMD DGPU's? could it even work? very interesting. i wouldn't imagine they have PCI Express support with the M1 chip.

sounds like a lot of development to support people plugging PCI Express items in. i doubt they'd do it.

 

Would be cool if AMD made a dedicated GPU on the M1 Chip. that would be awesome... 🙂

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2 hours ago, Maticks said:

wonder if apple will do M1 with AMD DGPU's? could it even work?

If it has PCI-E lanes and support then it will work,just like how NVIDIA's TESLA V100 GPUs work with the IBM Power 9.

While NVIDIA does provide special support in order for the cards to work with these CPUs,it works flawlessly.

 

You can see in the driver release highlights of driver 390.85 that there was a bug with Power 9 CPUs that was fixed:

Quote
  • Fixed an issue in the CUDA driver which could result in a deadlock scenario when running applications (e.g. TensorFlow) on POWER 9 systems

https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/131167/en-us

 

The TESLA V100 is a powerful card (Similar to the TITAN V),both have the same GPU.

The TESLA V100 works in both Intel/AMD systems and Power 9 systems.

 

The TESLA V100 is a beauty: 

data-center-tesla-v100-pcie-625-ud@2x.jp

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