The MacBook Pro Upgrade You Didn't Hear About Today

Today amid announcements of a new MacBook Air, Mac mini, and iPad Pro, one upgrade seemed to slip through the cracks. Not that Apple would announce this sort of thing on its own, but still, there's more power to be had. There'll be new configuration options on Apple's 15-inch MacBook Pro starting late November.

This morning we received word of a pair of new components that'll be making their way to the MacBook Pro 15-inch laptop soon. In the mix are both the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 20 and Radeon Pro Vega 16 graphics processors. These processors were made to deliver better graphics in notebooks with "cool and quiet operation" as a pair of features in every unit.

According to AMD, these graphics processors were made to deliver performance in the following categories, specifically: "3D rendering, photo, video editing and other creative applications, as well as stunning 1080p HD gaming at ultra settings in today's top AAA and eSports games." Of course the MacBook Pro isn't exactly known for its widespread use as a gaming machine, but that graphics power is available if you're going to play Fortnite and such.

These processors run with VEGA architecture under the hood. According to AMD, the following is true. "The Vega GPU features a revolutionary memory controller capable of leveraging system memory, flash-based SSDs and new storage-class memory types to create incredible new possibilities for gaming, design, and compute analysis workloads," said an AMD representative. "With a dedicated High-Bandwidth Cache, the Vega GPU utilizes HBM2, the latest in graphics memory technology, to provide incredible levels of power efficiency and memory performance."

We'll let you know all the exact release details and pricing and all that good stuff when AMD / Apple makes it public. Until then, keep it tuned to the rest of our Apple Event coverage, including hands-on and first impressions for all the newest hardware.