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Apple Silicon Mac Pro Said to Feature Same Design as 2019 Model, No User-Upgradable RAM
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Folks are trained to think “If laptops have (some performance x), then desktops should have (some performance x*n)!”. That’s mainly because AMD and Intel have a business need to make poorly performing processors (mobile and desktop) to pad the bottom line. So, yeah, anyone can go out now and buy an Intel powered laptop that performs a few orders of magnitude below Intel’s desktops. That Apple has laptops that outperform most of the competitions ENTIRE lineups, desktop included… that’s not a place that folks really understand how to deal with.Maybe we are moving into a future where we do not need a higher desktop machine and bulky ones at that. Maybe we are holding on to what past products (Mac Pro) alluded to what power users need. Times are changing and its not just apple, but also windows in the ARM switch and small factor form. The fact that smaller foot prints and lighter products that provide the same power for high end users, should be a nice welcome for most people.
The accomplishment is that Apple’s broadly providing a fairly high level of performance regardless of what a customers buys… with differences coming in special cases such as GPU, multi core, thermal performance, ports, machine learning, etc. That the M1’s single threaded score is within a stones throw of an M1 Ultra’s single threaded score is not an anomaly, that’s what we should expect from Intel and AMD!
Before we knew anything about the first Apple Silicon systems, I looked at the iPhone and guessed that Apple Silicon would follow similar options. Basic performance would be similar across the range, with some coming with more RAM (only spelled out more on the M-series), and you’d have an amount of storage to choose. Beyond that, the primary difference between products would be the form factor, and port availability. And, that’s pretty much how it’s gone. My expectation is like yours, that the Pro will offer a different form factor and a different “port” in PCIe. We’ll see if that thinking hold out.
"Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence" - $6000+ Mac Pros 10x outselling $700+ Mac Minis by 10x and equalling sales of (presumably 24") iMacs is certainly an extraordinary claim but unfortunately even the ordinary evidence is behind a paywall.
Maybe it's true but without being able to check the methodology (or any evidence that 9to5Mac queried the surprising figure) colour me highly skeptical.
If those figures are true and $6000+ Mac Pros are flying off the shelves 10x faster than Mac Minis and almost as fast as $1500 iMacs then we know why Apple hasn't replaced the Mac Pro yet - you don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg!
I don’t think this one’s too much of a stretch. During Apple’s “mea culpa” around the Mac Pro, they spelled out the breakdown of what devices folks buy. They specifically named what percentage of laptops, iMacs (specifically) and Mac Pro’s they sell. They did NOT specify mini sales. I think one of the 5-6 people in anttendance asked about it specifically, and I think they said something that read like “The Mac mini is a computer we sell”, totally non-committal. That always seemed to me to say that the Mac Mini is Apple’s lowest selling system.
And yet, late last year every non-Apple reseller I looked on where out of stock (including Amazon)....
Well, why would they stock something that doesn’t sell? That’s even MORE of an indicator that it’s a low seller. If they get a case in and it takes months for that case to sell out, they’re not in a hurry to have another case on the shelves! They’d much rather sell through several cases of whatever mobile thing Apple’s selling.And yet, late last year every non-Apple reseller I looked on where out of stock (including Amazon)....
That is some serious copium.
The trashcan was a remake of the G4 cube - but worse. The design most certainly didn't work (just like the cube).
The cost to replace the functionality that Sir Idiot Boy ripped out was $2,000 at the time (I specced one of these out).
Do you like a rat's nest of cables?
Do you like multiple parts of your system depending on power bricks of questionable quality?
Do you like paying for a GPU that was never used?
Do you like the inability to replace a dying GPU because some idiot thought it would be a good idea to put the video ROM on the motherboard?
Do you like the inability to peg both the CPU and the GPU because Sir Idiot Boy never did learn the concept of heat dissipation?
It's is a damned good thing for Apple that they didn't sell that many of them - they were trash.
It isn't 1990 anymore. Single threaded apps went in the dustbin about 20 years ago. If you were on OS/2, 30 years ago.
The top of the line Mac Studio gives less than the performance as a Ryzen 5950x - a last generation consumer grade cpu. A Ryzen 7950x is almost double the performance - and again, that is a consumer grade cpu. To be competitive with threadripper - you have to go back to the 1st generation.
If you want to compare Intel - a 13th gen i5 will outperform it.
Blender? A laptop with a 3060 gpu is over 3 times as fast.
This is why I dumped Apple computers after 20 years.
Now, I am the typical apple user - iPhone & iPad, but doing real stuff on a PC.
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...that was in 2017 - the only Mac Mini on sale at the time was the unpopular (and outdated) 2014 version (no quad-core option etc.) The 2018 Mini was something of a re-launch, and then it was one of the first Macs to get a M1...
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Apple’s selling more Macs than then, most of them mobile, so that would still mean that, as a percentage of all Mac sales, the mini is going to be a very small slice of that. And, I’m just saying that it’s not hard to believe that they don’t sell a lot of mini’s.
Another way to look at this is that making an appealing desktop would boost sales. Lots of people are waiting for Apple to show their desktop creativity, but a solo Mac Studio release in 2022 meant a whole year was lost against other desktop models not seeing increased sales with updated models. So you end up with a lot more laptops being sold even if they were more popular.
Not really. Folks that NEED desktops, need desktops, there’s no getting around that. It’s just that there’s fewer folks that need desktops and the trend line is downward, not just for Macs, but PC’s in general. You’re referring to folks that simply want a desktop, but, in reality, are fine with today’s selection of mobile systems.
That there are former desktop only people buying laptops, is just another indicator why the mobile market is growing.
Then we have the air-in-one (iMac) that has the same appeal as a laptop for consumers. It's not mobile but can readily be transported and it just works where you stage it. Sorry if we are veering a bit to the sidelines, but I think the folks that really need desktops as you said, need some attention from Apple. A new Mac Pro would be nice to see finally.
Interestingly, both those sites, tho’ Max Tech more than Snazzy, have lately been more critical of Apple’s missteps, particularly noting the thermal throttling in the MacBook Pros and the performance scaling issues. It’s actually possible to piss off Apple fanboys. No one likes getting yoinked around or a bad deal.
I don’t doubt that there’s millions of people that like and prefer desktops and want to see a broader selection of them. From Apple’s side, they KNOW beyond a doubt that whatever they sell, they’re going to sell a minority percentage of the entire market. So, they’re focusing their efforts on the much larger market slice, the mobiles. And, their wide selection (13, 14 AND 16 inches at varying performance levels) shows that focus. 9% of that mobile market is much more than 9% of desktops, and that’s why we see, and will likely continue to see, a dearth of desktop products.
IMHO I think people should look at what kind of ecosystem Apple is pitching to businesses. Its way different then it used to be.
It seems like this last decade Apple has concentrated on making solutions that work for only a percentage of companies. Lots of emphasis that iPhones and iPads can do a lot. These aren't your traditional business/engineering/design/scientific examples. When I tour education sites like Stanford that use a lot of higher end computer products not something that a mobile warrior would use. Yes lots of Mac pros in use.
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My Mac Studio has more than enough ram. Just get max it out when you buy the Mac Pro to future proof it. No problem. If you want to play with ram buy a box without a Mac chip on it. Mac Silicon has been around long enough that most buyers are used to buying enough ram upfront.
Sapphire rapids release incoming in feb. These are the chips that would have been the natural next step for the mac pro if apple didn’t decide an iphone chip on steroids would be spot on for pros.
SR support 112 pcie 5 lanes and 4TB 8 channel ddr5 ram. Up to 56 cores.
That would have been pro. Preferably coupled with special versions of the 7900 xts or even instinct accelerators.
Now we are looking at subpar consumer level devices hyped up to the max. Let’s remember that already basic consumer level intel chips like a gen 13 i7 destroys a m1 ultra in heavy benches like cpu renderering and compute. And the gpu situation is all to well known.
SR support 112 pcie 5 lanes and 4TB 8 channel ddr5 ram. Up to 56 cores.
That would have been pro. Preferably coupled with special versions of the 7900 xts or even instinct accelerators.
Now we are looking at subpar consumer level devices hyped up to the max. Let’s remember that already basic consumer level intel chips like a gen 13 i7 destroys a m1 ultra in heavy benches like cpu renderering and compute. And the gpu situation is all to well known.
That is all true, but how much it matters is less unclear.
I hope that Apple wasn't picking between Intel and ARM, as clearly AMD was a better choice than Intel at the time, and probably still is.
This line I read about Sapphire Rapids includes this context (link):
Intel's chips have gotten faster, but WOW, do they suck a lot of power. Still 10nm chips!
Two things have happened, and they combined to looking bad for Apple's Pros:
1) I expect Apple planned on an M1 Quadra and M2 Quadra working to bring Apple ARM chips into the ballpark of high-end pro performance, but this didn't happen.
2) I also expect, Apple is fine with dropping the niche of a fraction of a small number of "pro" users that needed tons of RAM, scalable GPUs, and all the cores. The kicker is, not many pros really need computers to scale that high.
Between those two, Apple's ARM Pro plans look like they're floundering.
Hopefully the M3 Quadra happens and Apple will be "good enough" for the pro customers who don't leave the platform.
Linus Media Group and Mac Address do good work. Their criticism is constructive.
No. You are wrong. That is not the same.
"Unlike DDR4, all DDR5 chips have on-die ECC, where errors are detected and corrected before sending data to the CPU. This, however, is not the same as true ECC memory with an extra data correction chip on the memory module. DDR5's on-die error correction is to improve reliability and to allow denser RAM chips which lowers the per-chip defect rate. There still exist non-ECC and ECC DDR5 DIMM variants; the ECC variants have extra data lines to the CPU to send error-detection data, letting the CPU detect and correct errors that occurred in transit."
DDR5 SDRAM - Wikipedia
It's not.
You still need CPU supported off-channel ECC for end to end error correction and detection.
ECC is a must for everyone today and Intel is just hurting us by trying to make a mandatory technology premium.
Research shows we will have 1bit of average error per year per 4GiB ram. For a 32GiB machine that will be 8bit error per year and that means even the software are perfectly bug free you will still have couple of random crash every year or even worse data corruption for your files.
Super not cool for a 24x7 always on compute device.
And that goes skyrocket for workstation with 256GB/512GB/1TB or more RAM. Workstation are not built to finish their work in seconds and relying on stable uptime. 1 error per week makes it impossible to use.
That's why they cannot call a 128GB M1 Ultra "Mac Pro replacement".
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It is a huge concern. And it's normal that after years of Intel marketing it for premium people start to not understand how this thing works.
For multicore not that much - 95 vs 100 for the ultra. When you take power into consideration the final score is close - 88 for Ultra, 91 for 7950x.
Apple M1 Ultra vs AMD Ryzen 9 7950X: performance comparison
We compared Apple M1 Ultra (3.2 GHz) against AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (4.5 GHz) in games and benchmarks. Find out which CPU has better performance.
nanoreview.net