Apple adds support for AMD RDNA 2 graphics cards to macOS 11.4
Apple released a macOS beta this week that adds support for AMD’s RDNA 2 GPU architecture to that operating system. That suggests that Apple will soon release a system with such an RDNA 2 GPU.
The update’s changelog mentions support for AMD’s Navi RDNA 2 architecture, which includes the Radeon RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT. Apple does not currently offer a system that includes such a desktop video card, although the company’s Mac Pro does come with AMD video cards. The company may also come with a new Radeon Pro 6000 video card for the Mac Pro. After the release of the Mac Pro, the company already released a Navi video card based on the original RDNA architecture.
A photo of an alleged RDNA 2 video card for Apple Mac computers already appeared on the Chinese forum Chiphell a few days ago, although the leaker who posted this image did not share any specifications. In addition, a possible Radeon Pro W6900X video card recently appeared in Geekbench, which was noticed by Twitter user BenchLeaks.
Apart from the name of the GPU, the Geekbench listing contains little concrete information. The GPU has been tested with an Apple Metal API benchmark, in which the GPU scores between 152,000 and 171,000, VideoCardz also writes. The benchmark would have been performed on a Mac Pro. It is also possible that this test was done on a so-called ‘Hackintosh’, or a PC with macOS installed. The system in question used an Intel Core i9-10920X CPU, while Apple only ships the Mac Pro with Xeon processors. Well-known leaker _rogame speculates on Twitter that the GPU is actually a Radeon RX 6900 XT, which may be misrepresented as Radeon Pro W6900X within Geekbench.
Image via Chishell