Why Doesn't Apple Use Nvidia GPUs?

[Nena Trinity]

Apple got on Nvidias bad side, just like AMD, Intel, Microsoft(before), Sony, XFX &  more... O3O

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Oh man I completely forgot about the pandemic Apple had with iMacs and MacBooks having mass GPU failures back in the early 2010s.

[Coaxialgamer]

Nvidia has had terrible experiences with nvidia in the past,  notably with g92 and the 2011 mbp

[Mira Yurizaki]

Some other probable theories as to why Apple won't go with NVIDIA:

• NVIDIA likes to stick their ecosystem on their hardware. Apple would like to play the game by their own rules and since AMD is usually more open than NVIDIA, there's that.
• NVIDIA doesn't make consumer grade hardware with compute chops. Or rather, they push a strong gaming use case for their consumer GPUs and Apple could care less about gaming. AMD still makes their GPUs as a jack of all trades regardless of market segment.
• NVIDIA may just be a stubborn donkey when it comes to custom orders.

[Arika]

1 hour ago, LOOK OVER HERE said:

Such an honor for Mr. Sebastian to reply to your thread!

happens all the time...

Quote

(Linus's last name is Sebastian).

we know...

 

11 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

• NVIDIA doesn't make consumer grade hardware with compute chips.

have they ever said why? or is it just so they can have a point of difference between their consumer cards and the quatro series?

[Mira Yurizaki]

20 minutes ago, Sierra Fox said:

have they ever said why? or is it just so they can have a point of difference between their consumer cards and the quatro series?

I should've been clearer. What I meant by that is that the GPUs don't have a lot of FP64 performance compared to AMD's offerings. And I found it's also not limited to consumer GPUs. It's any non Gx-100 GPU. As for why, most of it was to save on die space and it was a pragmatic move: how many consumer applications need FP64?

 

Though on the flipside, AMD's GPUs may be preferable for GPGPU usage anyway due that whole ACE thing. But I don't know, I'm not a GPGPU programmer.

[captain_to_fire]

5 hours ago, LOOK OVER HERE said:

Such an honor for Mr. Sebastian to reply to your thread! (Linus's last name is Sebastian). Anyways, I sincerely hope that Apple justifies their price point with either Geforce 2000 series or Mobile Vega GPUs in their new Macbook Pros.

Lol. I didn’t made this thread. But nah, unless NVIDIA wants to play with Apple’s rules, there ain’t new Macs with NVIDIA graphics cards

[Dr. KEK]

On 3/23/2018 at 11:57 PM, LinusTech said:

As far as I know it's to do with the RMA issues years ago. Until Nvidia is willing to pay back what Apple thinks they are owed, it's unlikely to ever change imo. 

 

^conjecture^

yes this is on track. there were multiple issues with their mobile lineup starting with 8400GS in 2008 until Apple told them to get rekt

[handymanshandle]

AMD has better GPUs

Well for Apple's case, AMD helps with a custom driver.

And AMD does have some pretty decent workstation stuff, since Apple products mostly work with OpenCL and OpenGL and Apple's Metal API being influenced by Mantle Vulkan and OGL. It's not a huge surprise.

[JohnVHSTapes]

Nvidia is anti-consumer and Apple is anti-consumer. If you put the two together, then no one will buy their products.

[SandalsWarrior]

Maybe they don't want nVidia to fully control the market. Otherwise there is no reason that I could find, Apple always made compromises to make their devices slimmer and more powerful, there is no reason for them to not go with nVidia GPUs. 

[Commodus]

14 hours ago, JohnVHSTapes said:

Nvidia is anti-consumer and Apple is anti-consumer. If you put the two together, then no one will buy their products.

Given that Apple is arguably the most profitable and cash-flush company on the planet, I'm pretty sure it does a good job of being pro-consumer.  Can't vouch for NVIDIA as much, but it's selling every GPU it can make at this point.

[agello24]

On 3/23/2018 at 2:38 PM, mr moose said:

I still ponder the idea of apple buying AMD.

i cant see this happening anytime soon.  apple sales are from the iphones. i can see them buying ARM.

[Matt0301]

The last Macbook models which used NVIDIA graphics cards was the 2012 retina model (please correct me if I'm wrong). After that, even though the NVIDIA cards gave more performance than the AMD ones, AMD used less battery. So apple went with them on the Macbooks. However, my guess is that after they went with AMD, they couldn't partner with NVIDIA even if they wanted to. So up till today, AMD cards can still be found in computers like the iMac Pro. 

[Arika]

11 hours ago, Commodus said:

Given that Apple is arguably the most profitable and cash-flush company on the planet, I'm pretty sure it does a good job of being pro-consumer.

that's not what pro-consumer means

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, agello24 said:

i cant see this happening anytime soon.  apple sales are from the iphones. i can see them buying ARM.

Unless I have overlooked something, Apples revenue from mac sales alone could buy AMD outright twice.

[Commodus]

1 hour ago, Sierra Fox said:

that's not what pro-consumer means

 

If it's selling a lot of gear, that suggests there are a lot of consumers who like what it's doing, that's all!

[wasab]

If Apple does takeover amd, imagine just the progress amd can make in x86!!! If Apple can beat everyone at arm, their processor engineers alongside amd expertise in x86 and proper funding can defiantly spit out an x86 superior than intel.

 

Although consumers are likely to pay a stupid Apple tax....

[Arika]

15 minutes ago, Commodus said:

 

If it's selling a lot of gear, that suggests there are a lot of consumers who like what it's doing, that's all!

thats still not what pro-consumer means. it's got nothing to do cash-flow

 

Pro-consumer is about giving the customer choice in regards to what they can buy and from where and what they can do with the product. it's to protect consumer rights and avoid monopolies.

 

anti-consumer on the other hand is a company essentially forcing people to only buy from them using generally illegal practices to force competitors out of the market. this generally comes in the form of locked down distributors so you can only get them from selected retailers and if left unchecked will turn into a monopoly. companies that do this generally dont care about their customers or customer choice and just want to get the most amount of money possible.

 

Intel has been accused of anti-consumer practices for years. yet they are still more successful financially than AMD, therefore according to their cash-flow are they actually pro-consumer?

[agello24]

On 3/26/2018 at 6:57 PM, mr moose said:

Unless I have overlooked something, Apples revenue from mac sales alone could buy AMD outright twice.

you may be right. since the R & D does not change anything extreme to make look different.   its the same thing year after year. just slight changes.  still shocked the greedy company canceled the idea of using sapphire glass instead of gorilla glass. this also explains the extra revenue from repairs on cracked screens.

[xeleron]

My humble opinion is the fact that Apple didnt want to use Nvidia cards because Nvidia is highly reticent about supporting compute technologies other than CUDA. If apple would have went full cuda it would have been at the mercy of them, instead they chose to rely on AMD(and Intel) because AMD was moving forward with their openCL implementation, Nvidia enabled openCL 2.0 last year, three years after the standard was ratified.