New Mac configurator may point to different CPU and GPU options

Last week, Apple changed the way you buy Macs online, removing its previous lineup of customizable preconfigured options and instead allowing you to configure the specs directly from scratch.

At first glance, this seems a bit strange, and it definitely makes Mac selection a little more complicated for non-tech-savvy buyers, but this change could support the theory that Apple will allow users to separate CPU and GPU options when purchasing an M5 Pro or Max Mac…

New Mac configurator

You can always configure your Mac with a wide range of options. However, prior to last week, Apple had started the purchase flow by offering some standard configurations.

Previously, when you clicked the “Buy” button, you were first taken to a landing page from Apple’s online store. This landing page shows a variety of pre-built options with different chips, RAM, and storage options. You can choose a starting configuration by clicking Select and fine-tune your machine to your liking, or continue with the default configuration.

At least for the MacBook Air, I have a strong suspicion that the majority of people just chose one of the preset options and didn’t make any adjustments to the specs.

But now you have to make all the decisions yourself, starting from screen size to pre-installed software. It would seem like a throwback in Apple’s approach to simplicity.

This may be the reason

You can choose the processor for your machine, but you’re locked into Apple’s fixed combination of CPU and GPU cores. That’s because the two are tightly integrated into an approach known as System-on-a-Chip (SoC). What were essentially completely separate chips are now combined into a single, tightly integrated unit containing both circuits.

However, with the upcoming M5 Pro and Max chips, Apple is reportedly switching to a new chip packaging process that allows for more flexibility.

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that for the M5 Pro chip, Apple will utilize TSMC’s latest chip packaging process known as SoIC-mH (System-on-Integrated-Chips-Molding-horizontal) (…) to design the CPU and GPU separately to improve production yield and thermal performance.

One of the implications of this separation of the CPU and GPU within the package is that Apple will now be able to provide the option to configure the two independently.

This might make sense, for example, if you’re doing graphics-intensive work that isn’t very CPU demanding but requires as many GPU cores as you can get. In that case, we recommend choosing base CPU and maximized GPU.

Please note that there is no guarantee that Apple will provide this flexibility. But I thought the changes to the configurator were probably pointing in this direction. We might not have to wait long to find out, as the M5 Pro and Max versions of the MacBook Pro could launch this month.

Please call Vincent Yu