I never would have thought a few years back that Apple could do away with discrete GPU's in Macs, but the original M1 surprised me how capable it was and that was just with 8 GPU cores. Now we see the M1 Ultra with 64 GPU cores, and massive 2.5TB/s inter-processor bandwidth, along with what Metal3 provides. This is still pretty early in the evolution of whats next.
Adoption is going to be a major roadblock. There’s just no way developer would flock to develop AAA title on Mac without major incentives and a stabilised (as in, no major game-breaking change after each year) Metal API, preferably with cross compatibility. Mac is still a niche gaming market, even more than Linux, thanks to the steam deck.
yep, my mantiz egpu is just sitting in the corner collecting dust since i gone m1, it would be nice to put that into use.
Why would anyone want to do that when they can comment without taking all their valuable time to actually read the post?
What kind of cards everything I use for audio now is external using Apollo X racks. The days of sticking in processor cards for Protools is long gone.
Hmmm sounds a bit overpricedIn less than 10 years I'll be able to pick up one of these Intel units for less than $100
Depends on what you do. My Mac Studio competes with my 3080 Ti and is much better than it in some work (purchased both systems before the 40xx series was even announced).
Realistically I wouldn't bet the next Mac mini, even if it lets you configure to a M2 Pro, is going to offer a 64GB option. To some degree it makes sense they make that a Max/Studio option.
That was always going to be the case considering the Ultra Studio starts at $4K and the previous Mac Pro started at $6K. It's possible they drop the entry-level price a bit since they're saving on the Intel Xeon tax, but I doubt it.
I wouldn't hold my breath for add-on/external GPUs unless they come from Apple, pretty sure slapping a 4090 or 7900xtx in a M2 Ultra Mac Pro is out of the picture.
They would be fools not to leverage current AMD GPGPUs and upcoming MI300 and RDNA3 custom ASIC designs, right along with updated PCIE5 slots to keep OEM cards, a new Afterburner and more as options.
oh yeah for sure, i don't mind an apple gpu if it means i can use my egpu again, using the egpu was the only time i felt macs were on par with my gaming pc's performance.
You got 12 years out of a MacBook Pro and yet your next laptop won't be a Mac? I just don't understand this thinking.
This. Either Apple finds a way to support ray tracing (RT) with a new MP or they fail. Apple controls both the OS and all the hardware, so personally I look to see a creative new hardware/software way to support RT. We will see.
To achieve gross power for $1k less you need to forget the Mac OS and build your own toaster oven using PC parts...
Anyone in the scientific/engineering pro market that’s NOT using the hardware that most cross platform libraries are tuned for (Nvidia, Intel) are already conceding that top performance isn’t important to them, macOS compatibility is (except for those cases where Apple’s SoC offers world beating performance due to the unified memory structure). As a result, anyone that wants peak Mac performance will likely have one option every 2-3 years that offers peak Mac performance (based on a SoC made from combining multiple CPU/GPU’s from their mobile line). They won’t likely ever see a solution with even 512 processors, but it WILL be the fastest Mac they can buy.
What about it? It's present on multiple Apple devices including your iPhone. Do you have a particular issue?
Really? Not being into audio, I wouldn’t know, but are there any big names focusing on internal expansion? Or are they offering onboard and outboard solutions similarly?