AMD Radeon Pro 500 Makes Way to iMac, Supports Ray-Tracing Technology Designed For Engineers, Filmmakers, Artists

by Amrin Shaikh / Jun 07, 2017 02:45 AM EDT

Apple iMac Pro is slated to hit Apple Stores by mid next week.

AMD has a new client and probably the biggest client till now. Apple has integrated AMD Radeon Pro 500 in its next generation of iMac Pro. In the recent WWDC event, Apple has introduced refreshed iMac Desktops and iMac Pro that were integrated with AMD Radeon Pro 500.

Apple held its WWDC 2017 on Monday where it introduced the next generation of iMac desktops and iMac Pro. The event was heavily featured with the AMD GPUs including the new family of Radeon Pro graphic processors. Previously, AMD has supplied Radeon Pro 555 and 560 graphic cards for MacBook Pro 15.

After unveiling the refreshed iMac desktops and MacBook Pro, AMD's Senior Vice President and Chief Architect disclosed the benchmark to the public. He stated that "It is incredibly satisfying to see the capabilities of Radeon Pro 500 series in elegant form factors and enabling the amazing content creation, gaming, and VR experiences. Radeon Pro 500 Series graphics are enabling new generations of makers with compute-accelerated creative tools and new APIs, bringing their imaginations to life in ways like never before."

The latest AMD Radeon Pro 500 series is designed to target professionals like designers, engineers, artists, filmmakers and all those who are worried about efficiency and all-out gaming performance. When it comes to performance, the Radeon Pro 500 offers up to 5.5 teraflops supporting virtual reality and high-end gaming performance. This level of performance is provided by 36 compute units with 2,304 stream processors.

AMD Radeon Pro 500 offers a level of power operating efficiency that lets them maintain full performance in the confines of today's all-in-one devices like the new Apple iMacs. The Radeon Pro 500 family provides GPU acceleration for a number of applications including PhotoShop, Adobe Premiere Pro, Foundry Nuke, Mari, After Effects and Modo. The chip even supports ray-tracing rendering technology in Autodesk Maya and Maxon's Cinema 4D.

The entry-level iMac embedded with AMD Radeon Pro 500 will fetch $1,099 which will raise up to $2,299 for the 27.5-inch 5K iMac. The refreshed iMacs will be available for purchase in Apple Store.