DL Cade has a great article on possible new features of the next Apple Silicon MacBook Pro. It is very good read, but a couple of things on graphics really stood out for me.
According to several different leaks, the M1X SOC will be available in 16- and 32-core variants that could offer performance on par NVIDIA’s GTX 1650 and RTX 3070, respectively, while sipping less than half of the wattage. If these rumors turn out to be true, the M1X will offer the most powerful iGPU experience on the market, offering more than enough power for most GPU-accelerated photo and video editing tasks.
However, even if the M1X meets these expectations, we would also love for Apple to bring back support for eGPUs. For now, only Intel-based MacBooks support eGPUs, but according to French publication Mac4ever, M1 Macs can detect eGPUs when they’re connected, just don’t have the necessary drivers to put them to use. This could simply be a holdover for Intel-based Mac users on Big Sur, or it could be an indication that eGPU support is coming for more “professional-grade” users of Apple Silicon Macs. We sincerely hope it’s the latter.
Both of these are exciting. The current M1 scared me without it’s external GPU support and while that might or might not be coming, the possible performance of the GPU cores is fairly impressive, especially if they really make one with a lot more graphics cores. I still hate the ram being shared, and soldered since it will be so expensive, but if you can get at least 128 GB you will likely be pretty damn powerful. All speculation now though.