AMD has unveiled the high-performance, power-efficient Radeon Pro 500 series graphics, fueling beyond-UHD creativity in All-In-One computing and found in the updated 21.5- and 27-inch iMac.
The Radeon Pro 500 Series Graphics are built on the "Polaris" architecture with 4th generation Graphics Core Next and is fabricated using the latest 14nm FinFET process.
Radeon Pro 500 series graphics enable gaming, VR on select models, and fluid content creation with performance and support for GPU acceleration across a range of creative applications on the Mac platform, such as Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop and the Foundry Nuke, Mari and Modo. Moreover, Radeon Pro 500 series provides accelerated performance for the Radeon ProRender photorealistic ray-tracing rendering technology which is enabled for Autodesk Maya, and Maxon's Cinema 4D.
The higher-end 15" MacBook Pro machine comes with AMD Radeon Radeon Pro 555 or Radeon Pro 560 graphics chips onboard. Both chips are based on the Polaris 21 chip inside the desktop Radeon HD 560. It chip has 1024 stream processors at a 1275 MHz boost clock. It packs 1.3 TFLOPS of peak compute power courtesy of 768 SPs packed into 12 compute units. The Radeon Pro 560 has 1024 SPs in an array of 16 CUs, offering up a total of 1.9 TFLOPS. Both graphics options list 81 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The Radeon Pro 555 comes with 2 GB of its own memory, while the Radeon Pro 560 doubles that figure at 4 GB.
Apple's upcoming iMacs will available with the new AMD Radeon Pro 570, Radeon Pro 575, or the Radeon Pro 580. All three appear to be built around the same Polaris chip found in the desktop Radeon RX 570 and Radeon RX 580 cards. Memory bandwidth is set at 217 GB/s. As a reminder, the standard Radeon RX 570 packs 2048 SPs boosting to 1244 MHz and the Radeon RX 580 has 2304 at a 1340 MHz boost clock.
The Radeon Pro 570 features 1792 SPs offering up to 3.6 TFLOPs. The Radeon Pro RX 575 delivers up to 4.5 TFLOPS from its 2048 SPs. Last but not least, the Radeon Pro 580 has 2304 SPs cranking out up to 5.5 TFLOPS.
Apple has chosen to use AMD GPUs for its new devices, and its seems that the new Radeon Pro 500-series chips are Apple-exclusive.