Apple has updated its 16-inch MacBook Pro buying options by offering the new Radeon Pro 5600M mobile GPU. This joins the existing Radeon Pro 5300M and 5500M GPU options for the MacBook Pro.
Kitting out the new MacBook Pro with a AMD Radeon Pro 5600M GPU with 8GB of HBM2 memory adds $700 onto the base model MacBook Pro. According to Apple, it will improve performance by up to 75% compared to the 5500M configuration. Is that worth it? It absolutely depends on how much of a pro user you are!
In a press release, AMD notes that:
“Built with industry-leading 7nm process technology and advanced AMD RDNA architecture, this new GPU powers computationally heavy workloads—including video editing, color grading, application development, game creation and more—enabling professional users to maximize productivity while on-the-go.”
As noted by TechCrunch, a fully “specked out model (without tossing in an extra software) will run $6,699.” That’s a whole lot of cash for most of us. However, if you use your MacBook Pro for compute-intensive pro tasks, it may just be worth it!
In addition, Apple has updated the 2019 Mac Pro with an SSD upgrade kit. This means that it’s now possible to change up the internal SSD modules for customers who did not select the higher capacity configuration Mac Pro when they bought their machine originally. The new storage options are available in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB and 8TB storage modules.
The updates will be available on the Apple Online Store starting today.
