13-Inch MacBook Pro With M2 Chip Outperforms Base Model Mac Pro Despite Costing Nearly $5,000 Less

[flottenheimer]

I still think the Mac Pro looks seriously cool though.
Especially with the silly-priced wheels.

Not that any of that really matters to Pro users, but still — just look at that thing!

 

[M3gatron]

They're also doing this at a much lower power draw which is the other thing I'm interested to see is what happens when they put that into the Mac Pro case with the cooling it provides.

Well it's simple: Nothing.
The M1 Ultra already isn't thermally limited so better cooling doesn't achieve anything.

Then if they did a GPU card that could potentially pull a few hundred watts on their own, you could end up with a beast of a machine.

Possibly but we don't know how well it scales and the architecture obviously has quite a few deficiencies because in many workloads the 3090 is more than 4 times faster and the 3090 only has 28,3 billion transistors and it's built on a way inferior node. The 4090 is rumored to break the 100 TFLOPS ceiling for example.
I don't think Apple will win any GPU wars in performance especially since rumors say there will be quite a battle between RDNA3 and Ada Lovelace.

 

[NT1440]

Well it's simple: Nothing.
The M1 Ultra already isn't thermally limited so better cooling doesn't achieve anything.


Possibly but we don't know how well it scales and the architecture obviously has quite a few deficiencies because in many workloads the 3090 is more than 4 times faster and the 3090 only has 28,3 billion transistors and it's built on a way inferior node. The 4090 is rumored to break the 100 TFLOPS ceiling for example.
I don't think Apple will win any GPU wars in performance especially since rumors say there will be quite a battle between RDNA3 and Ada Lovelace.

The Pro will not be using the Ultra chip.

 

[avkills]

Comparing the transistor count between a M1 and a dedicated GPU like the RTX 3090 is pointless since one is a system on a chip and one is solely dedicated to graphics processing.

If Apple wants to win in any GPU benches straight out with the new Mac Pro then they need to find a way to have a dedicated GPU chiplet or a PCI slot with a massive M1/M2 GPU/Media engine design. The PCI slot idea is better since they could allow use in the old Mac Pro. But this is Apple, so they will not do that because they don't care about you after you've bought.

Go ahead Apple, prove me wrong!

 

[M3gatron]

Not pointless at all taking in consideration that the GPU obviously takes the biggest portion of the die space.
So the M1 Ultra GPU has a few times more transistor than the already massive RTX 3090.
The idea is that the 4090 will be a formidable beast with over 100 TFLOPS of performance. Taking in consideration what Apple achieved with a much better node and way more transistors than Nvidia there's no way the can beat Green Team in performance no matter how much they scale the GPU architecture and especially since Nvidia itself will also move to 5nm.

Also it doesn't make much sense to spent money on a huge GPU that will sell in computer that addresses a niche market. The Mac Pro is Apple lowest volume product.

 

[avkills]

Not pointless at all taking in consideration that the GPU obviously takes the biggest portion of the die space.
So the M1 Ultra GPU has a few times more transistor than the already massive RTX 3090.
The idea is that the 4090 will be a formidable beast with over 100 TFLOPS of performance. Taking in consideration what Apple achieved with a much better node and way more transistors than Nvidia there's no way the can beat Green Team in performance no matter how much they scale the GPU architecture and especially since Nvidia itself will also move to 5nm.

Also it doesn't make much sense to spent money on a huge GPU that will sell in computer that addresses a niche market. The Mac Pro is Apple lowest volume product.

Actually it does make sense since Apple keeps spouting the importance of GPUs over and over and over again at just about every single event. Put up or shut up Apple, and if you can't put up then make peace with nVidia, let the drivers be written and allow usage of nVidia cards in OS X again.

 

[imnotthewalrus]

It's the optional $700.00 wheels that has caused this for Mac Pro. Maybe in the future, Apple will considering lowering the price.

DITTO