Will Apple iMac 2017 be powered by AMD Ryzen or 7th gen Intel Core?
The latest Apple iMac refresh in both the 21.5 inch and 27 inch versions included Intel’s 6th generation Skylake processor, which is currently the fastest CPU running on a Mac. With that said, Intel isn’t done with releasing CPU’s, and 2017 is the year of Kaby Lake, which is already expected to power brand new systems till early 2018, when the company will finally launch Cannon Lake.
On top of it all, last February, AMD unveiled Ryzen, a spectacular CPU whose benchmarks show some serious horsepower, for half the cost of Intel’s fastest, and most expensive processor, the Core i7.
Ryzen is an 8-core, 16 threads CPU capable of turbo-boosting to 4.0GHz, while requiring only 95 Watt to operate, compared to Intel Core i7’s 140 Watt, and with a price difference of more than $500.
With this in mind, it’s pretty obvious that the price/performance ratio is locked in favor of Ryzen, but is this reason enough for Apple to switch to AMD for the next iMac update?
While Apple has certainly favored AMD graphic processors over the more high-end NVIDIA, there may be a few hurdles to overcome, before AMD can turn into a viable alternative to Intel, for Mac computers, most of which has to do with integrated optimization.
By AMD CEO Lisa Su’s admission, AMD performs best when they introduce a game-changing product, and while AMD make some of the most powerful processors for desktop PCs, Apple MAcs are different machines.
Apple’s obsession with thin form factors, means that Apple will not settle for a CPU that, while massively powerful, won’t play well when pancaked into a logic board a quarter the size of your average ATX motherboard, especially when reaching near-4.0GHz clock speeds, which, on systems as tightly tuned as Macs, heating can become a concern.
AMD’s major focus is unmistakably on PC users, especially gamers, content creators, and VR/AR enthusiasts, which means that AMD is least likely to invest in building chips designed to be neutered by their own environment.
Next, as mentioned earlier, Apple Macs are extremely fine-tuned machines, in which hardware and software are engineered to work together in a very specific way, thus ensuring consistent performance across all Macs with the same specs.
Intel has mastered this scenario well enough for Apple to be able to rely on Intel to provide exactly the chip it needs.
So far, Intel Core i5 and i7 are certainly the best chips for Macs, not because they are faster than AMD’s, which is, for the moment, no longer the case, but because the performance provided by Intel’s chips is best suited for Mac users.
A better example would be the difference between a processor designed to power a server computer, versus a regular consumer CPU sold commercially.
Server CPUs are designed for endurance. They can run for years on-end. They don’t need to be powered down, because their rate of wear is extremely low. These CPUs power everything, from our favorite social media website, to cloud storage, and beyond.
By this token, to the uninitiated, a server processor sounds like just the thing every laptop owner dreams about: a CPU that lasts forever.
Unfortunately, there is a downside: network operations aren’t exactly the kind of tasks that require a quantum processor to handle. Most network tasks handle by web servers require processing power typically in the realm of 2.0GHz or less, with a priority on storage and data transfer speeds.
Can you experience VR, or play Fallout 4 at full specs on a network server? Some will be surprised to find out you can barely get Minecraft to run.
Unless AMD finds a way to successfully power an Apple iMac with Ryzen, in such tight space, and get it to play nice with macOS sierra, the odds will certainly go up, but this will heavily depend on AMD’s willingness to work with Apple, beyond its role of high-end GPU supplier.
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