And when they couldn’t fit a dGPU in the 13-inch model, they instead used Intel’s premium Iris GPU configurations with larger GPUs and an on-chip eDRAM cache, becoming one of the only regular customers for those more powerful chips. Whereas many of Intel’s partners were happy to ship systems with Intel UHD graphics and other baseline solutions even in some of their 15-inch laptops, Apple opted to ship a discrete GPU in their 15-inch MacBook Pro. And from a performance standpoint, it’s arguably an even bigger deal than Apple’s CPU.Īpple, of course, has long held a reputation for demanding better GPU performance than the average PC OEM.

Like their CPU cores, Apple has been developing their own GPU technology for a number of years now, and with the shift to Apple Silicon, those GPU designs are coming to the Mac for the very first time. While the bulk of the focus from the switch to Apple’s chips is on the CPU cores, and for good reason – changing the underlying CPU architecture if your computers is no trivial matter – the GPU aspects of the M1 are not to be ignored. Section by Ryan Smith M1 GPU Performance: Integrated King, Discrete Rival

Graphics card in macbook pro m1