Apple Executive Discusses New Mac Pro's Lack of Graphics Card Support

[coolfactor]

Just proof that more is not always better...

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.

The architecture matters more than the specs.

A car with 10 wheels will not drive faster than a car with 4 wheels.

More RAM doesn't make a system perform better in and of itself.

 

[enb141]

I still think the new Mac Pro is still an overpriced machine.

Apple needs to come out with Mac Pro Mini.

View attachment 2216585

Doesn't needs to be cube sized, about 20 years ago, you could get a real sized, expandable Mac Pro for about $1300-$1500, probably $1800-$2000 actual money.

 

[blazerunner]

They’ll lose some customers but for most people that are in the higher end this will be fine. Apple have gone all in on their platform and frankly I think they’re doing it right.

They have nothing to lose if they just allowed a little more control for consumers that spend as much money on a computer as they do on a CAR. They USED to be a lot more of a respectable company when they had the Intel Mac Pros between 2006 and 2013. It's minimal effort on their end to offer some decent GPUs or at least get AMD on board (im not even going to get into how much of an embarrassment they are with their relationship with Nvidia).

The price is on the Mac Pros is disgusting; $3000 more over the Mac Studio just to get PCIe slots. That's a disgusting insult to everyone.

 

[ilikewhey]

What do you need the PCIE slots for in 2023? Genuine question. If graphics cards are out what is the use case for this machine? Mac Studio is probably better use of money. Seriously

outside of ssd and sound card expansion, nada lol

 

[singhs.apps]

Just the fact that the M2 Ultra is beating any Nvidia card with "RTX" attached to the name in an Raytracing application is crazy. The reason I highlighted the A100 is for the comment I replied to. There are other modern RTX cards that the M2 Ultra is beating.

Why should it be crazy?
Let’s play the label game.

Desktop class ‘ULTRA’ dual GPUs barely beat a previous gen, middling laptop RTX GPU. That’s crazy.

 

[coolfactor]

I hate Windows and have switched to Mac completely. But if I were in the market for a new PC and wanted to spend that kind of money, believe me... it would be something else. At that range, I want complete control over my investment, not proprietary nonsense.

BUT ... if the system that you buy does everything you need and lasts for several years without needing maintenance or upgrades, isn't that money well spent? I have a 2013 MacBook Air that continues to work just as well as on Day One... 10 years later.

We can be confident that Apple has done their research and they know how many people actually take advantage of upgradeability. The idea of upgradeability is nice, but if only 10% of customers actually leverage it, aren't 90% of upgradeable components sent out into the world being wasted? Wouldn't a well-engineered system that is highly optimized be a better path?

 

[BobSc]

I still think the new Mac Pro is still an overpriced machine.

Based upon what. Sorry, buddy, but your pronouncements hold no weight.
For people who need expansion slots, the MacPro is needed. And I promise you that no one who really needs this computer will have no problem with the price.

Apple needs to come out with Mac Pro Mini.

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What are you talking about? It already exists. It's called the MacStudio. I have two of them.

 

[CookItOff]

Why should it be crazy?

Cause all the RTX cards have dedicated raytracing cores meant to accelerate raytracing workloads. This along with Nvidia's OptiX API is the main reason they are so far ahead in applications that rely on raytracing, like Blender, Unreal, Octane renderer, etc. Apple's GPUs on the other hand don't...
In compute only workloads (non raytracing) we are starting to see less of a gap.

 

[enb141]

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?

A producer (you can check his video on youtube) said that he was using between 300 and 600 in RAM, so for him 192 is a no go.

 

[BobSc]

What do you need the PCIE slots for in 2023? Genuine question. If graphics cards are out what is the use case for this machine? Mac Studio is probably better use of money. Seriously

Didn't you even read the article? It indicates that there are multiple types of card that people use that will work in the MacPro. Seriously!

 

[uller6]

What do you need the PCIE slots for in 2023? Genuine question. If graphics cards are out what is the use case for this machine? Mac Studio is probably better use of money. Seriously

GPIB cards. Serial cards. Fiber cards. Extra scratch SSDs.

 

[singhs.apps]

Cause all the RTX cards have dedicated raytracing cores meant to accelerate raytracing workloads. This along with Nvidia's OptiX API is the main reason they are so far ahead in applications that rely on raytracing, like Blender, Unreal, Octane renderer, etc. Apple's GPUs on the other hand don't...

Why is RTX being held against Nvidia ? Isn’t Apple using its own SOC paradigm to its advantage…including ‘dual GPUs vs single GPU in your example?

Still sounds crazy?

 

[RalfTheDog]

I get why they would not want to use the GPU for display. There are already ARM drivers for CUDA. Then again, I have moved away from doing much of my computation locally. I am using a first generation Studio Ultra as a UI computer and am renting a few A100s online for my CUDA work. It would be kind of nice to be able to put a few high end desktop GPUs in a Mac and do some test work locally. Then again, I can always just add another Linux box or three.

 

[MallardDuck]

For native workloads, its incredible.

For a company that has invested a lot of effort into optimizing for Nvidia or AMD, and is primarily a windows user base, it makes adding Mac support cost-prohibitive.

It also rules out a ton of open source software, including a lot of LLM projects.

Apple really needs to fund an abstraction layer - not just stealing crossover and wine - for the GPU code. DirectX on Metal for example, built right into the OS.

 

[rpmurray]

... I see little reason why Apple would not refresh both Macs desktops at the same time ...

I would be more inclined to believe this if the iMac was not still stuck on M1.

 

[CookItOff]

Why is RTX being held against Nvidia ?

It's not, and I never said it was. I think what Nvidia is doing is amazing. Can't wait for Apple to have a version of RTX!

 

[RalfTheDog]

For native workloads, its incredible.

For a company that has invested a lot of effort into optimizing for Nvidia or AMD, and is primarily a windows user base, it makes adding Mac support cost-prohibitive.

It also rules out a ton of open source software, including a lot of LLM projects.

Apple really needs to fund an abstraction layer - not just stealing crossover and wine - for the GPU code. DirectX on Metal for example, built right into the OS.

CUDA would be fine. If they could just take an ARM CUDA driver and make it work on MacOS, that would be fantastic. Honestly, I don't care if the graphics cards can display or not.

 

[dgdosen]

Did they talk about lack of upgrade of the SSD? The kind where you might plug one in to the available NVME slot?

 

[hagar]

Moar RAM, please. Until then, it's AMD or even Intel.

Can you give an example of your workflow where 192GB is not sufficient and causing so many roadblocks that you’re considering switching to a Linux or windows machine?

 

[GrumpyCoder]

That would have added even more cost and complexity. So now it's $9999 instead of $6999 and the howling on this forum would be even more deafening.

Of course it would have been a little bit more expensive, but saved a ton as well in the long run. There's little reason to upgrade the case itself or PCIe connectivity. So we're looking at $4k for a Studio + around $1k per enclosure which can be kept and reused. The next upgrade cycle will then cost $4k vs $7k. Depending on how often one upgrades, paying an additional fee might be worth it.

Seems like Apple on its Gen 2 GPUs are already getting close. And this is with and application where having RT cores are a big advantage (Blender), which Apple Silicon GPUs don't have, yet (M3?). Kinda crazy what these iGPUs from Apple are pulling off in only Gen 2.

For the specific use cases they're designed for, sure. For others not so much. Old Intel Mac Pro is still running circles around the Ultra for specific video codecs. It's just that those are never mentioned in benchmarks showing off performance claims. Do a search on this forum and you'll see how people complained that the Ultra don't work as well for their video workflow due to codec, simply because it's not the workflow Apple designed for these SoCs.

Let's look at other use cases... run VGG16 training or inference on CIFAR-100 and witness how a rusty old 1080Ti runs circles around an Ultra. No one would compare these to RTX6000/8000 cards, leave alone A100 which are datacenter cards and really of not much use for 3D/video work as they have to use additional cards with display output. They're meant to be used in servers, ideally clusters and perform miserably otherwise.

 

[StupidOpinion]

take my paragraphs with a grain of salt. i'm talking out of my rear end.

apple silicon workstations are not ready for business. even if this new mac pro had options for discrete ram/gpu, no serious corporation would buy it. and by the time companies do start buying it, there likely would be unified memory of more than 1tb.

the question is whether or not apple wants to refresh the mac pro with modern intel CPUs and amd GPUs and the answer appears to be no. the sooner they kill off their business with amd/intel, the sooner the industry adapts to apple silicon. even if they did have one last run with amd/intel, would you even expect apple to support it for 10 years? by the time an M5 Extreme rolls around, would you expect intel/amd to keep up with it? it's also cheaper/easier for the apple engineers to not even bother supporting intel/amd if apple no longer sells their chips.

tl;dr: apple silicon mac pro sucks but even if it didn't, people wouldn't buy it anyway. by the time the apple silicon mac pro reaches maturity, it would probably be ahead of intel/amd/nvidia, so who cares about upgradable ram/gpu?

 

[Apple Fan 2008]

The thing is, the RAM is faaaaast

 

[Longplays]

I would be more inclined to believe this if the iMac was not still stuck on M1.

25th release anniversary of the 1st iMac is 2 months, 1 week from now.

Within 2-4 months Apple does not have any other Mac to upgrade before the iPhone

The only iPad that needs a refresh would be the 2021 iPad mini A15 Bionic.

Apple may take the opportunity to use the event to launch a refreshed iMac 24" M2 and a larger iMac with a M2 or M2 Pro with the base price of

- $1799 M2
- $2499 M2 Pro
- $3199 M2 Max
- $5199 M2 Ultra

For context the iMacs are the oldest unrefreshed Macs.

- 2021 iMac 24" M1 is over 2 years old.
- 2020 iMac 27" Intel is turning 3 years old 11 days before the 25th anniversary.

 

[Haiku_Oezu]

Ultimately it's not a machine that I was ever gonna buy so this decision doesn't impact me personally but I would be lying if I wasn't disappointed - it really makes it feel like for as much as Apple Silicon brings forth impressive performance and power efficiency it's meant to be at it's very core a locked down computing platform.

Does it actually matter? I guess as long as you can get your work done it really doesn't, but there's that lingering feeling that it could be much more flexible if it wasn't opposed to doing things "the old way".

 

[RalfTheDog]

25th release anniversary of the 1st iMac is 2 months, 1 week from now.

Within 2-4 months Apple does not have any other Mac to upgrade before the iPhone

The only iPad that needs a refresh would be the 2021 iPad mini A15 Bionic.

Apple may take the opportunity to use the event to launch a refreshed iMac 24" M2 and a larger iMac with a M2 or M2 Pro with the base price of

- $1799 M2
- $2499 M2 Pro
- $3199 M2 Max
- $5199 M2 Ultra

For context the iMacs are the oldest unrefreshed Macs.

- 2021 iMac 24" M1 is over 2 years old.
- 2020 iMac 27" Intel is turning 3 years old 11 days before the 25th anniversary.

How about a 27 inch screen with a place to bolt a Studio on the back? The screen might be a touch thick because, you would need to do some interesting things with the airflow.