First Benchmark Result Surfaces for Mac Pro With M2 Ultra Chip

[Stiksi]

Mac Pro’s marketing plan is simple: wait 4 – 7 years, however long it takes to get a decent percentage in the CPU benchmark improvement slot in the ad and then do nothing until the next time. Do not drop the price at all over the years. Make the bare minimum effort in upgradability. It’s not even upgradability, you get some new functions but the performance is locked. The Pro fits a smaller and smaller niche with each new model.

 

[ValO]

Dang, $3k for PCI slots. Apple really does hate us don't they?

Apple should at least have clocked it higher /faster and make use of the more capable powersupply and cooling.

 

[burgerrecords]

Apple should at least have clocked it higher /faster and make use of the more capable powersupply and cooling.

I don't believe it's that simple. Different designs benefit from additional cooling in different ways. For example, you can throw more cooling at various AMD ryzen desktop processors and it barely moves the needle as far as what you can do with the clock speed.

 

[CWallace]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1668600825869107200

@mdriftmeyer

Looks like a beast of chip and I am sure it will have a beast of a price since it seems to be designed for use in $100,000-plus servers.

Makes a $7000 Mac Pro look like a deal, doesn't it?

 

[blazerunner]

For reference, here is the 28-core Intel Mac Pro:
View attachment 2217508

So, compared to the old Mac Pro (on this one test), you're getting a much needed CPU upgrade.

The problem with getting excited about this is here is GB's averages for the i9-13900KS:
View attachment 2217513

I don't even know what Xeon to compare to as trying to navigate those was a bit of a mess, but the 13900KS with 4 less cores and less threads is offering a SIGNIFICANT improvement in CPU performance.

Most of my experience with Mac Pro users have been people who rely on CPU performance above all. Data sciences running simulations, for example. The limitation of 192GB of RAM over the previous Mac Pro's 1.5TB combined with a better, but still not top of the line CPU makes me think the Mac Pro wasn't supposed to be this way. For all intents and purposes, it's a Mac Studio with internal PCIe. The amount of people who want a Studio with some external cards seems like an extremely small portion of the people who were buying Mac Pros. I feel like most customers at this point would either just invest into the Mac Studio as a much more compact and space saving workstation, or they would've moved onto custom Linux and Windows builds with these better Intel CPUs (provided they aren't using macOS exclusive software).

I feel like with TB4 that many of these PCIe cards outside of graphics cards can reach their full potential as well.

If you're someone who ends up buying a Mac Pro for a reason other than "I need macOS/macOS software", I'd be really curious as to why the Pro over the Studio or a more modular Intel/AMD PC.

That 13900k setup is going to cost a lot... LOT less as well. You also get a proper GPU with it..... AND you can still Hackintosh it with the right motherboard as well.

There's NOTHING to really get overly excited about with the Mac Pro or Mac Studio.

 

[Apple Fan 2008]

That 13900k setup is going to cost a lot... LOT less as well. You also get a proper GPU with it..... AND you can still Hackintosh it with the right motherboard as well.

There's NOTHING to really get overly excited about with the Mac Pro or Mac Studio.

Except the M2 ultra is faster…

(P.S I despise the new Mac x,x naming)

 

[BigHit]

Gonna be real...is the ability to have internal RAID SSDs really worth that extra $3000? That's $3000 just for the ability to put RAID SSDs in there. For that price you can just buy RAID enclosures that come with over 32 tb of storage already in them

And BlackMagic cards are slowly on their way out as rack mounted BlackMagic boxes are performing better than the cards do.

Ok, where shall I start …. External enclosures will connect via Thunderbolt which is limited to a maximum of 2800MB/sec burst and circa 2500MB/sec sustained throughput. Internal SSD Raid (depending on card, NVMe’s used & Raid level) will give you circa 5500MB/sec to 11,000MB/sec. PCIe Gen4 should offer nearer 20,000MB/sec (but I’ve not had a chance to test that). If you can’t think why anyone might need that type of performance you are not understanding companies and use cases for a Mac Pro market.

Having lots of cards connected via Thunderbolt via external chassis isn’t ideal or best practice in a mission critical environment (extra power and cables to manage, extra rack space used up). I’m a BIG fan of Thunderbolt, but for many in the core market the Mac Pro’s are aimed at we would prefer not to use it if possible.

BLackmagic cards / devices are great (again I’m a big fan), but the core market that buy Mac Pro’s are more likely to want AJA or DeltaCast equivalent cards that cost x3, x4, x6 the cost of the BM card. Higher throughput 50Gige, 100GigE Ethernet cards, FC cards etc exceed the throughput of Thunderbolt 4. Hopefully Thunderbolt 5 with 80Gb - 100Gb throughput might be certified in time to be ‘included’ in M3.

I could go on. The companies that buy Mac Pro’s are used to complete systems costing £20k, £25k and lots more for specific uses. The 192GB unified ram limit isn't an issue for a LOT of these companies or use cases. 192GB of potentially AS GPU addressable Memory and the capability of AS to encode and decode huge numbers of 4k and 8k ProRes and HEVC video streams concurrently without taxing the CPU or GPU at all is huge, leaving the CPU and GPU free to process audio and video calculations, effects etc. Yes, NVidea GPU’s are more powerful at some tasks, but when you carry out many ‘ ‘real world’ multi-task actions the M2 Ultra is going to perform better. Not everyone that uses Mac Pro’s needs 3D rendering performance!

I hope a future M3 or M4 Extreme option is possible for those that need the performance, I also hope AS GPU options appear and ray tracing makes it to future AS chips….BUT the Mac Pro is a very good option for many use cases.

Note I’ve tried to avoid using the word ‘Professional’!! As this is a subject word these days!

 

[magdogg]

That 13900k setup is going to cost a lot... LOT less as well. You also get a proper GPU with it..... AND you can still Hackintosh it with the right motherboard as well.

There's NOTHING to really get overly excited about with the Mac Pro or Mac Studio.

Totally agree with this.

 

[tomtad]

Surely this is a stop-gap. There is clearly a niche set of Intel MacPro users holding on to their machines because of the lack of PCI support with any other Apple silicon Mac. Now, many of them have an Apple silicon option, which will force many of the PCI device manufacturers in the direction of Apple silicon support as well.

My guess is that the M3 line of chips is delayed, and the hardware design team was putting all their efforts into Vision Pro.

Exactly my thinking. There’s something odd about this, like they’ve waited for the M3 to be ready and it’s been further delayed so they’ve thrown this out there to just complete the Apple Silicon transition.

 

[MegaBlue]

Except the M2 ultra is faster…View attachment 2217565View attachment 2217566

The i9-13900KS, the flagship model, however, is performing better, and with less cores.

Keep in mind this is a consumer retail chip - Mac Pros didn’t use Core, but they used Xeon, so the comparable Xeon may even be faaster and will support much more RAM.

 

[herocero]

Can anyone share some examples of popular PCI Expansion cards that would justify the extra $3,000...? I feel like I'm missing something here.

ProTools cards, pro (aka film, television, streaming) capture cards, the new generation accelerators from AMD like the ones that used to go into Intel mac pros. There, I saved you a google search.

These aren’t “popular,” which is why you pay a premium for pcie expansion.

 

[Scott6666]

SSD storage. 100GB NICs. Audio cards for scoring entire symphony orchestras. Video cards for working with 8K and higher video streams.



It is expensive, but one can spend into five-and-six-figures on SSD, audio and (non-GPU) video PCIe cards to fill those slots.

SSD storage. 100GB NICs. Audio cards for scoring entire symphony orchestras. Video cards for working with 8K and higher video streams.



It is expensive, but one can spend into five-and-six-figures on SSD, audio and (non-GPU) video PCIe cards to fill those slots.

Very common. Will sell tons. And yet they can’t build a 32” iMac because they won’t sell enough.

 

[User 6502]

This Mac makes no sense and there is no reason whatsoever for it to exist, especially at that price. Pure robbery.

 

[tripsync]

Yes. Yes they do. This is what I have been trying to tell y'all about the moves they do with the iPhone regarding USB-C and the lack of alternative app stores/sideloading and their constant attempts to kill Right to Repair.

Uh no. USB-C iPhone is a nightmare for the environment if iPhone goes portless in a few years. Most users don't care about sideloading and right to repair. Making that a law makes everyone pay for it in some way.

 

[Flight Plan]

What is your workflow?

I’m assuming you’re self employed? I’ve worked in colleges, and ESPN. Never once upgraded RAM on anything other than low end laptops.

ESPN had a policy of buying what was actually needed to produce content, not hobbyist twiddling with hardware which seems completely nonsensical for a company to do by policy….

I worked for a company that actually DID (on a one-time basis) add memory to the laptop fleet for those devices less than halfway through their 4-year lifespan. I'm guessing it may have been 30,000+ in number. Anything close to normal hardware refresh cycle was just left alone.

There was a team of people doing the fulfillment on that. Policy was to never allow a user to open his or her own computer case. We also blocked USB storage device usage, partly to prevent "bios tweaking" by the so-called "power users". For some reason, the power users had the most trouble tickets for broken or unbootable machines. Until the big lockdown. Oh, the whining and gnashing of teeth; you'd think the company was employing wolves!

 

[dmr727]

There's NOTHING to really get overly excited about with the Mac Pro or Mac Studio.

I think there's value in the Studio, because the form factor suits Apple's silicon philosophy pretty well. Unless your use case absolutely requires bleeding edge performance, I think the Studio is very competitive compared to a similar sized NUC PC.

 

[McG2k1]

why is apple bragging about being twice as fast as an Intel chip from 4 years ago? Or was there a newer revision or something?

 

[vegetassj4]

This reminds me an old song:

Shot through the heart
And you're to blame
Apple gives Pro a bad name (bad name)

I play my part
And you play your game
Apple gives Pro a bad name (bad name)
Apple gives Pro, ah!

She says, "We've gotta hold on for PCI slots
It doesn't make a difference if they make it or not
We've got the Studio and that's a lot to love
We'll give it a shot"

 

[Apple Fan 2008]

I think there's value in the Studio, because the form factor suits Apple's silicon philosophy pretty well. Unless your use case absolutely requires bleeding edge performance, I think the Studio is very competitive compared to a similar sized NUC PC.

Yeah the Studio is the more exciting one out of the two.

 

[now i see it]

I’ve got a feeling that what they really wanted to do was taking too long - so they pushed this crippled thing out just to have something available

 

[Starflyer]

Can anyone share some examples of popular PCI Expansion cards that would justify the extra $3,000...? I feel like I'm missing something here.

We use a Sonnet xMac Studio which is a $1500 rack mount solution with 3 PCI slots that we use with black magic cards for a banner wall and broadcast graphics. so 4 more PCI slots and faster speed vs TB3 sounds about right.

 

[deconstruct60]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1668600825869107200

@mdriftmeyer

Chuckle. Gerard Wiliams went to Qualcomm ... to NOT make a large server SoC . If he was still making a server SoC then Arm wouldn't be suing Qualcomm.

That move as largely a farce to get to a huge 'win the lottery ' payout. And got it. And no back to making laptop and phone chips.... just a lot wealthier now.

 

[Apple Fan 2008]

This is the dumbest headline I've ever seen.

 

[Apple Fan 2008]

The inside is interesting. And...

HOLY SOC BATMAN!!!

 

[Moof1904]

They are, in the end, a profit making company with a duty to shareholders.

What saddens me is how "duty to shareholders" has become, for so many companies, a higher priority than "duty to customers."