I think their model makes sense. Sure they can’t fill every market gap, but I would argue those in need of greater than 192GB of RAM or dedicated GPUs are a very small percent of the market, and not worth the headache for Apple to figure out how to make their SoC work for that buyer.
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Apple Executive Discusses New Mac Pro's Lack of Graphics Card Support
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Cool Apple truly knows best! "Customers Don't Know What They Want." -Steve Jobs "Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do." -Steve Jobs
While the new Mac Pro features six available PCI Express expansion slots for audio, video capture, storage, networking, and more, the desktop tower is no longer compatible with graphics cards. Instead, graphics processing is handled entirely by the M2 chip, which includes up to a 76-core GPU that can access up to 192GB of unified memory.
Apple's hardware engineering chief John Ternus briefly touched on the matter in an interview with Daring Fireball's John Gruber last week, explaining that expandable GPU support for Apple silicon is not something that the company has pursued.
"Fundamentally, we've built our architecture around this shared memory model and that optimization, and so it's not entirely clear to me how you'd bring in another GPU and do so in a way that is optimized for our systems," Ternus told Gruber. "It hasn't been a direction that we wanted to pursue."
Another limitation of the new Mac Pro compared to the Intel-based model is the lack of user-upgradeable RAM, given the unified memory is soldered to the M2 Ultra chip. In addition, the Intel-based model could be configured with up to 1.5TB of RAM, which is 8× as much as the 192GB maximum for the Apple silicon model.
There are certainly advantages to the new Mac Pro and its unified architecture. For example, Apple says the new Mac Pro is up to 3× faster than the Intel-based model for certain real-world workflows like video transcoding and 3D simulations. For video processing, Apple says the new Mac Pro's performance is equivalent to an Intel-based model with seven Afterburner cards. For overall CPU performance, the new Mac Pro's $6,999 base model is up to 2× faster than a 28-core Intel-based Mac Pro, which started at $12,999.
The new Mac Pro is available to order now, and launches in stores on Tuesday. Customers who don't need PCI Express expansion should consider the Mac Studio, which can be configured with the M2 Ultra chip for $3,000 less than the Mac Pro.
Article Link: Apple Executive Discusses New Mac Pro's Lack of Graphics Card Support
Thanks amazing Apple and sir Tim Cook
You realize people complained about the 2019 model. I don’t know how many people complained saying oh no, I could buy five windows computers for the price of one Mac Pro.
I agree with you that complaining will get Apple to change it, but only complaining from people in that market. Some gamer complaining about the Mac Pro not having GPU support isn’t going to make Apple consider it. Some dude posting in these forms complaining about it, isn’t going to get Apple to listen. The CEO of Disney complaining about it is going to get Apple to listen.
The lack of GPU and memory support make theism last Mac product. For too long I have been waiting for Apple to keep up with user expandability. My 2019 MacPro will be on my desk for some time to come. Going back to Windows is not something I ever thought would happen - total crap OS.
I think you have this backwards. Plenty of lower end models can handle this. If you buy a Mac Pro for this purpose you’re throwing away money.
Moar RAM, please. Until then, it's AMD or even Intel.
Okay, they just confirmed upgradable memory and GPU is not coming to Apple Silicon so now we can put that discussion to rest.
Let me clarify, I still think the built-in GPU is still gonna be awesome. It’s just 3 years from now you wanna upgrade it.
Can you give an example of your workflow where 192GB is not sufficient and causing so many roadblocks that you’re considering switching to windows?
With the announcement of the M2 Mac Studio, I bought a new 34" widescreen monitor for linear audio recording, and I was all set earlier this week to ditch my Trashcan Mac Pro, but really, really did not want to. When I compare my 2013 MacPro to the current Studio, they are pretty similar in a lot of ways, in terms of what they offer. Turns out, with some tweaking, I was able to get the resolution I want (for now) on the new monitor using the Mac Pro. So, I am going to hang onto it for another year or more, and see what that brings to the Mac Studio lineup. I might wait for the M3. the biggest issue is that I have so many peripherals (19) attached to the Mac Pro that it is getting harder to get them all to work with current software since MacOS stopped supporting my Mac Pro at Monterey.
The new Mac Pro has basically unlimited potential for those who still think they need something more than an iPad Pro.
Apple needs a reason to sell you a new rev of the Mac Pro every 1 to 2 years. So, next years model will likely max out at 256 GBd of RAM, then 384 the year after, 512 GBs, 640 GBs, 1024 GBs then… you get where this is going.
Agree.
The R&D cost will be higher than the profit of that niche market segment.
Smart business decision.
We use PCIe slots in our 2019 Mac Pro for Black Magic SDI cards and some audio interface cards. Apple alluded to these during the keynote briefly. While the use case is niche from a volume perspective many creative pro workflows still rely on these types of cards.
More ram is nice, but Apple Silicon ram is different from x86 ram.
Apple has no interest in supporting nVidia AI. They will only be pushing their own ML and AI and if that proves to be something that nobody else adopts, they won't care because it will be optimized for their own ecosystem.
There are cards for audio and video production that are PCIe based. There are also high-speed SSD storage cards. It's a small part of the macOS market, but not having them in 2013 cost them customers and why they added them back in 2019.
Exactly. Apple does not care to make a "general purpose" workstation because self-build systems can do it far cheaper and the Tier One OEMs like Dell, HPE and Lenovo offers options that scale far beyond what the Mac Pro could ever do. It's a market they can't compete in so they now choose to not do so.
Cause Apple is already smashing what AMD is doing in parts of the GPU realm. The first bench for Blender has just popped up and it shows the M2 Ultra almost doubling the performance of the M1 Ultra in a heavy GPU dependent application.
Nvidia of course is miles ahead in Blender because of RT Cores which are a big big benefit in raytracing task. But who's to say RT cores aren't coming to the M3?
Because Apple Silicon is not designed to interface with an external GPU. It is optimized to have CPU and GPU cores and memory all tied directly together on the same package with high-speed interconnects to provide strong performance with exceptional power savings at low thermal loads.
Apple has been filing patents that imply they are looking at interconnects to off-package GPUs, but if they ever bring such to market, it will almost certainly be to Apple GPUs, not nVidia or AMD.
awww it's cute - it's the modern take of the Apple G4 Cube
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They could have at least put the SoC on a swappable card. The Mac Pro is essentially a Studio + external PCIe enclosures in a single box. So let people keep the case + PCIe slots by making the SoC replaceable for the next generation Ultra.
Sure, the Studio + enclosures isn't as nice as a single box solution, but at least it allows to swap out only the Studio and keep the rest. The idea that Apple one day might have something to compete with RTX6000/8000 workstation cards or even A100 found in the Nvidia DGX stations is officially wishful thinking now.
Sure, the Studio + enclosures isn't as nice as a single box solution, but at least it allows to swap out only the Studio and keep the rest. The idea that Apple one day might have something to compete with RTX6000/8000 workstation cards or even A100 found in the Nvidia DGX stations is officially wishful thinking now.
They’ve basically exited the scientific computing world, and seem dedicated only to certain workflows like video editing.
I was really hoping for expandable RAM or up to large numbers like what was possible before, but alas my dreams of owning a Mac workstation are gone.
That said, people who do computing on very large data sets are in the small minority so I guess I can see how Apple made the decision to leave that edge case out.
I was really hoping for expandable RAM or up to large numbers like what was possible before, but alas my dreams of owning a Mac workstation are gone.
That said, people who do computing on very large data sets are in the small minority so I guess I can see how Apple made the decision to leave that edge case out.
They did a whole mea culpa about the trash can and then launch something now with the same limitations…
this makes sense to me. if you used a GPU for a "Pro" workflow, you'd be optimizing for the amount of VRAM available which is far less than 192GB. if you optimized for 192GB, you can't use the PCIe GPU. Apple doesn't want pros to be optimizing for limited VRAM GPUs when you already have an affordable platform (Windows) to do that stuff.
so there's no point.
so there's no point.