Nvidia GPUs Are Finally Coming Back to MacBooks (Report)

Apple is rumored to announce new MacBooks in October, and there may be options with powerful Nvidia graphics cards. Bloomberg noticed three job postings on Nvidia's website that all reference the Macbook maker: a role for a software engineer says the candidate will "help produce the next revolutionary Apple products.”

This would be a big shift for Apple, which currently uses graphics from AMD. One configuration of the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, for example, uses a AMD Radeon R9 M370X card. The majority of MacBook models and configurations, however, use Intel's discrete graphics. Nvidia cards would likely only power high-end MacBook Pros, Mac Pros and iMacs.

Apple has previously only had discrete GPUs in productivity machines, but I'm curious to see if they could make the jump to gaming or virtual reality — two areas it is seriously behind on — with Nvidia's powerful and (somewhat) affordable Pascal GPUs. While you can download Steam and some games to MacBooks, the idea of doing real gaming on them has been a joke for years.

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The one big question here is if these jobs are supplementing a partnership that already exists or if they're for MacBooks coming next year or afterwards. If they're only first hiring now, it's possible that the rumored October Macs, should they actually exist, won't have Nvidia's graphics built in.

We'll find out when — or if — Apple announces new MacBooks later this year. Stay tuned.

[via Bloomberg]