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Reading further down, he noted that the APCIe-GE MMIO addresses on the M2 Ultra are different from APCIe on the M2 Max and the Ultra appears to have a second root controller to handle the PCie slots with the first one handling handling the rest (as it does on the M2 Max MacBook Pro and Studio). I admit I am not sure what this means in terms of PCIe performance on the 2023 Mac Pro, but it sounds like it might alleviate some of the issues if the machine only had the single root controller as found on the M2 Max SoC.
It will be more interesting once we get a tear down and if we are lucky a block diagram on Mac Specs. This is in-line with that I expected Apple to pull after the first picture I saw of the Mac Pro interior.
 
Again, no. They will do what we need them to do when we buy them and will continue to run the software we need through the three years we expect to keep them. That means they are future proof.
3 years doesn't means future proof, and by reading all your posts, your future proof, in reality it is present proof.

No. I made clear that we do not replace/upgrade hardware in existing machines, so we would not swap cards a year or two from now. The cards we use right now support PCIe 4. In a year or two, Apple may have a new Mac Pro, with PCIe 5 and we may be able to buy cards that take advantage of it. At that point machines we buy will use that, however, like most actual businesses, we would not try to replace cards mid cycle. You model is how hobbyists work, not how real professionals work.
So this Mac Pro was designed for people with your needs, congratulations, you are the main target of this new generations Mac Pro.
Which matters not at all to me. They have more RAM that I do not need, nor would I buy, but lack Neural Engines and Unified Memory. Those are much more important for me than a spec that is irrelevant to me. Our 2019 Mac Pros were configured with 96GB, as that was all that our testing showed benefited our applications. That we could have spent $50,000 and bought machines with 1.5TB was irrelevant.
As I said above, this generation of mac pro are exactly what you need, but the poor guys that need more ram, are now out of the equation.

Which matters not at all to me, as we do not sell our old machines, we scrap them. Their theoretical use by some future theoretical user that would have no impact on our use.

That is not the common practice for businesses. Again, you are talking about hobbyists, who are not the target market for these machines.
Not hobbies but freelancers or similar, those people keeps their high end computers for more than 3 years.
It means that I would not buy these machines. Just as if I needed to run Windows, or have 4 PCIe x16 slots I would not purchase them. However, given that the max RAM one can buy for these machines is 192GB, it seems unlikely that over their three year life span, any of the software we use would require more than that. It is possible that some future version might be able to take advantage of more, but it would not require it. That means that these machines as purchased would continue to meet our needs for their full three year life span.
In your case you "dispose" computers every 3 years, so this time apple took 4 years between 2019 Mac Pro and 2023, in that "extra" year what you did?

What you did in the years of the trashcan?, back then you didn't had a real mac pro.

You keep talking about situations that do not affect actual business users. No one I work with evaluates a machine by saying will this be useful to someone else for some other purpose after I am done with it. In addition, I cannot think of any software we use that has ever required the max available configuration in order to function.
In your case and business no, but as I said before, what about freelancers or other business models.
Just to be clear how many 2019 Mac Pros did you purchase and how many of them were purchased with over 192GB? If you have no real world experience with this, we are we even discussing it?
0, 0, Because I'm curious, is nice to know people that use this expensive computers and get paid by themselves in matter of months.

I also would like to meet someone that uses 1.5GB RAM. in my case 64GB is all what I'm going to need for the next 4 or 5 years.
 
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My thoughts on this are as follows:

1. If you compare what you get from the $7000 base model 2023 Mac Pro and what you got from the $6000 base model 2019 Mac Pro, the former is a way better value. You were never going to get anywhere near 24 Xeon W cores, 64GB of RAM, and anything even remotely as powerful as even the 60-core GPU that the base model M2 Ultra has for $7000 on the 2019 model. Not to mention the base SSD capacity is doubled (though, for Apple's rates, you'd hope so).

2. However, if you compare the $7000 base model 2023 Mac Pro and the $4000 base model M2 Ultra Mac Studio, the former is an extremely poor value. Two extra fans, two extra thunderbolt ports, one extra 10GbE Ethernet port, internal USB-A and SATA ports, and PCIe expansion is not worth $3000. That's really not how the computer industry works.

3. Apple was never going to have memory expansion separate from the SoC choice. However, not having the SoC be socketed was a poor choice for a machine the primary purpose of which is unfettered aftermarket internal expansion.

4. If Apple's claims that the M2 Ultra is more powerful than the 28-core Xeon W that one could max out a 2019 Mac Pro with are true, then the lack of CPU options isn't terrible. You have one choice and that choice bests every 2019 Mac Pro CPU option. What more do you need on the CPU front?

5. If the M2 Ultra with 76 GPU Cores beats out the best MPX AMD GPU combination that you could stuff in a Mac Pro, then that's one thing. However, I'd imagine that there are some workloads where you want multiple GPUs; one to do your rendering, and one to display the system's output. If software sees this as two M2 Max GPUs and will allow for that kind of split-task workloads, cool. If the 76 (let alone 60) GPU core option does this and beats out the best that you could've stuffed into a 2019 Mac Pro in terms of MPX modules (Dual W6800X Duos?), even better. I'm guessing it can't. But if it can, then my "what more do you need?" question stands for GPU power too. All of that sounds pretty iffy so far. But I'll reserve judgement until people get their hands on 2023 Mac Pros.

6. A maximum of 192GB of RAM is one fourth the 8, 12, and 16 core 2019 Mac Pro's maximum RAM capacity and one eighth that of the 24 and 28 core models. While, 192GB is a staggering amount of RAM, I can't imagine that there weren't 2019 Mac Pro customers that needed 256GB or more. Yes, unified memory is more efficient memory. But RAM is still RAM. I could totally buy that an M2 Ultra will beat out a Xeon for CPU performance and most of the AMD configuration options in play from 2019 all the way until this week. But, I'm not buying the notion that 192GB of RAM will suffice for those that needed 256GB of RAM, let alone 768GB of RAM, let alone 1.5TB of RAM. I can buy that the 2023 model is superior in performance to the 2019 model in every way. But unless the use case is fine with 64-192GB of RAM, this is the one area where this machine is a clear downgrade.

7. A fully maxed out 2023 Mac Pro is a Tesla Model 3's worth cheaper than a fully maxed out 2019 Mac Pro. Sure, most of that is Afterburner, Xeons, and Radeons and a lack of RAM options. But still. That's something.

8. The SSD kits for 2019 Mac Pros and the SSD kits for the 2023 Mac Pros are different. This makes sense. Though, it seems ridiculous that the SSD kits for the 2023 Mac Pros can't be used with the 2023 (or 2022) Mac Studio, just as it's ridiculous that the SSD kits for the 2019 Mac Pros can't work for the iMac Pro (or higher capacity 2020 27" iMacs, for that matter). Then again, I've never been a fan of this whole "SSD controller lives on the SoC" convention that Apple has moved the Macintosh to.

9. It seems like PCIe expansion is the real reason to buy a 2023 Mac Pro over a 2023 (M2 Ultra) Mac Studio. There may be other reasons to, but I can't imagine any of them are worth the extra $3000. The Rack Mountable option seems like it would serve well in a datacenter rack or in an audio cabinet. Though, for $3000, I'm sure one can find a rack-able solution that accommodates a Mac Studio that still leaves most of that left over.

10. It's totally possible that an "Extreme" chip or (other higher-tier Mac Pro chip that plugs the gaps between features the highest end 2019 Mac Pros had and what the highest end 2023 Mac Pro) has could still materialize. Apple kept adding GPU options to the 2019 Mac Pro throughout its four year reign. Incidentally, they might wait until the M3 generation to add that. Or it might just be that a future Ultra SoC will get there and that, this one just happens to be a downgrade for those that need higher-end options. I'm not saying I'm hopeful of this. But there's no reason why it can't happen.

11. Regardless of how small customer base is, Apple has no reason not to (a) keep the Mac Pro as up to date as the Mx Ultra Mac Studio and (b) introduce updates more frequently than once every 4-6 years.
 
Apple was never going to have memory expansion separate from the SoC choice. However, not having the SoC be socketed was a poor choice for a machine the primary purpose of which is unfettered aftermarket internal expansion.

I would not be surprised if each generation of M SoC+memory package uses a different layout for how it connects to the system board, just as Intel and AMD change sockets with each generation. So you might very well need to replace the entire system board for M3 (especially if it also improves to PCIe Gen5).


The SSD kits for 2019 Mac Pros and the SSD kits for the 2023 Mac Pros are different. This makes sense. Though, it seems ridiculous that the SSD kits for the 2023 Mac Pros can't be used with the 2023 (or 2022) Mac Studio...

The connectors look the same for the Mac Pro and Mac Studio SSD modules, but since the former is under a cover, I do not know what the PCB layout is in comparison and they might not be electrically compatible. It is kind of interesting that Apple never (to my knowledge) offered an SSD upgrade kit for the Mac Studio since it would have been a potential revenue source.

Early reviews of the M1 Mac Studio noted that Apple populates only one SSD slot in the 512GB to 4TB configurations and the second SSD slot is only populated at the 8GB configuration (with two 4TB modules), so perhaps the system is designed to only recognize the second slot if there is a 4TB module in the first slot? If true, then post-sale upgrades would not really be possible except to add another 4TB module to an existing 4TB factory configuration (the 1TB/2TB/4TB/8TB Mac Pro kits were meant to be installed in pairs so they included two SSD modules).
 
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Thoughts from a Mac Pro user


Thoughts from a Mac Pro [audio engineer] user:

"The GPU specs look amazing... I don't use any of that..."

It'll be interesting to see how the new Mac Pro Apple Silicon GPUs compare to workstation GPUs from NVidia and AMD.

If the Apple Silicon GPUs are as fast as RTX 4090 or Quadro-class GPUs... then great! Problem avoided!

But we'll have to see.
 
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I don’t think so. I much prefer getting viewpoints from pro users that the Mac Pro is actually aimed at.

I would rather wait to see a white paper & PCIe subsystem block diagram for the 2023 ASi Mac Pro; and some actual field reports once folks get their hands on these units...

The video is just a bunch of conjecture & supposition parroting a string of clickbait YouTube videos...
 
How about making a guess as to how many people you think you are discussing? My guess is they sold under 100,000 a year total, and if 1% of those had more than 192GB I would be shocked (that is probably under 4,000 people).

Inflation adjusted the 2019 machine was more expensive with less RAM and SSD.

I know in the studios and visual effects houses with whom I work, there are already more 2023 Mac Pros on order day one than were purchased over the whole life of the 2019 Mac Pro.
Because they can afford SO many more than the 2019's.... and so can everybody.
 
I much prefer getting viewpoints from pro users that the Mac Pro is actually aimed at.
The folks it’s aimed at like it because it’s what they want at the price they want to pay.

Anyone that doesn’t like the features or doesn’t like the price, it’s fine, it’s not aimed at them. Luckily for Apple, the unit sales are so low, everyone that bought one in 2019 could skip this system and Apple would still sell the 50-100,000 they always sell.
 
Rumors were flying a few months ago that the Studio would be a short-lived product, surreptitiously discontinued once the Pro arrived. Now one wonders if the Pro won't ultimately be the product getting discontinued. With their entire hardware model centered around the SoC, Apple will clearly never make a traditionally modular PC again. And with upgradability fully out the window, the Studio looks a lot more like the product Apple actually wants.
 
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Rumors were flying a few months ago that the Studio would be a short-lived product, surreptitiously discontinued once the Pro arrived. Now one wonders if the Pro won't ultimately be the product getting discontinued. With their entire hardware model centered around the SoC, Apple will clearly never make a traditionally modular PC again. And with upgradability fully out the window, the Studio looks a lot more like the product Apple actually wants.
That's my guessing they will phase out Mac Pros sooner or later.
 
Rumors were flying a few months ago that the Studio would be a short-lived product, surreptitiously discontinued once the Pro arrived. Now one wonders if the Pro won't ultimately be the product getting discontinued. With their entire hardware model centered around the SoC, Apple will clearly never make a traditionally modular PC again. And with upgradability fully out the window, the Studio looks a lot more like the product Apple actually wants.

Based on sales volume alone, Apple would sooner discontinue the Mac Pro than the Mac Studio.
 
No one is phasing out the Mac Pro. They'll be coming out eventually with the Mac Pro Ultra that will have the entire system on a chip on replaceable cards. Plus work out the expansion memory bottlenecks. They just couldn't do it and have it ready to go, now.

Then "everyone" can have their $50,000 Mac Pros again and be happy happy happy. While the rest of us will trade in our $11,000 mac pros every couple of years for new Apple Silicon.

It's not rocket science.
 
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Why? Does it perform better than thunderbolt and external PCI? That's all I'm concerned with. And I only have one UAD card.

Because PCI express uses 16 lanes, thunderbolt uses 4 lanes, so if you need to 4 cards you are ending up with 1 lane each (4/4=1), but in PCI express you are gonna have 4 lanes (16/4=4)

https://eclecticlight.co/2022/04/30/explainer-thunderbolt/

So for people like you that only need one card that uses 4x tops at PCIe 3 then thunderbolt should be more than enough.
 
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Because PCI express uses 16 lanes, thunderbolt uses 4 lanes, so if you need to 4 cards you are ending up with 1 lane each (4/4=1), but in PCI express you are gonna have 4 lanes (16/4=4)

https://eclecticlight.co/2022/04/30/explainer-thunderbolt/

So for people like you that only need one card that uses 4x tops at PCIe 3 then thunderbolt should be more than enough.
Thanks. But how would a thunderbolt bus with other things on it (monitors, hubs, various drives) work as well as internal PCI?
 
Thanks. But how would a thunderbolt bus with other things on it (monitors, hubs, various drives) work as well as internal PCI?

Because those other things are not saturating the bus, in that specific case, but that doesn't means it can't be saturated.
 
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