15-Inch Apple MacBook Pro To Sport New AMD Radeon Pro 450/455 GPU

Apple’s hardware unveiling event came with even more surprises than people anticipated, largely thanks to the AMD Radeon Pro 450/455 ultrathin graphics chips that the 15-inch MacBook Pro will be sporting. Nobody knew about the chips because its reveal was saved until after the Apple event, and it’s one of the thinnest GPUs on AMD’s lineup.

The 450 and 455 GPUs are part of AMD’s Radeon Pro 400 series, Digital Trends reports, and it was just unveiled on Thursday following Apple’s hardware reveal. The GPUs are based on AMD’s 14nm FinFet technology, which makes the series the thinnest among the company’s graphic processors yet.

Just to emphasize how thin these chips are, they have been reduced to only 380 microns. Most ultra-thin GPUs are at 780 microns, which already make them quite thin, but it wasn’t enough for AMD. The 400 series power usage only stands at 35 watts, as well, which is in line with Apple’s commitment to more efficiency.

As for the VRAM, these GPUs pack 2GB, which doesn’t really put them in ultra-gaming territory. Then again, MacBooks have never been known as effective gaming laptops anyway, so this shouldn’t be a problem for the fans of Apple’s offerings.

In terms of overall performance, Apple is claiming that the 15-inch MacBook Pro offers an increase in graphics performance compared to its last generation by 130 percent, Mac Rumors reports. The computing power gets a huge boost as well, at two and a half times what the previous iteration was capable of.

Equipped with a 2.7GHz, 4-core, i7 processor from Intel, the 15-Inch model certainly packs a lot of punch. It also offers 16GB of RAM and can have a maximum storage capacity of 520GB. The entry level price for this model stands at $2,399 and is available in Silver color or Silver Grey.