Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR Launched Three Years Ago Today
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I remember when entry-level Mac Pros were actually affordable.
Thunderbolt 4 is first of all pretty old. Secondly it wasn't as much of a spec bump but rather a minimum specifications change. The (low) top bandwidth of 40gbit/s remains the same with TB4, hence why external enclosures for GPUs don't really have anything to gain by going TB4, given all popular eGPU-boxes use four PCIe (3.0) lanes already.
You not finding a difference for a 3070 Ti contradicts a lot of other people's findings. Not to mention the topic is on Mac Pro where I/O concerns aren't solely focused on just GPUs.
It would be difficult to take advantage of its modularity since it's not compatible with most hardware out there, not even Apple hardware. Nvidia GPU? Nope. Regular SSDs? Nope. Replace the CPU for an M1 CPU? Haha nope.
At least you can add the wheels... oh wait, also nope because that needs to be done by Apple in the factory.
That's exactly why I bought and kept my 5,1 for so long. The Mac Studio and 7,1 are nice but the fact I can't pop in a few new SSD's or upgrade the GPU without spending quadruple the worth of my car upfront is an automatic deal breaker. The 5,1 originally came with a HD 5770 and can go all the way up to the 6900XT over a decade later for crying out loud..
it's not old. apple barely adopted it last year and finalized before that
wrong. bandwidth is technically the same, sure, but tb4 allows for dynamic bandwidth allocation, freeing up 18Gbs of bandwidth (normally reserved for videos) for EGPUs. it literally allows substantially more bandwidth. TB4 enclosures will benefit
plenty of articles show only about 10% drop on tb3 egpus (subjectively, that's not that much when we're talking 144hz gaming). and we have no idea how well TB4 egpus will perform.
playing overwatch 2 using 3070ti as an internal card saw 120+ fps on ultra settings. egpu, saw it hovering around 110.
Perhaps, but far from ideal. And there will be performance hits.
Like one 16x slot is taken up by a 4x NVME controller card that splits the bandwidth of the 16x slot to give full 4x speed for the 4 NVME SSDs I have on the card. And that's all on just one slot alone. Not possible to maintain the same performance if in a TB enclosure at all.
There's advantages to having everything neatly in one tower enclosure. I'm already reminded of the 6,1 trashcan days with people posting pics of their machines with tons of enclosures for things connected to it. Hardly appealing.
I agree the 7,1 isn't for most general use folks, but it wasn't built for that mass market.
Eagerly waiting to see how the future Mac Pro with Apple Silicon will be.
Mac Studio Ultra is serving me really well but I’m super-excited to see what the 2023 Mac Pro delivers.
In the process of ordering 6 of them at work. dual 16 core CPU, 192GB RAM, Dual 64GB RAM GPU’s, 2TB SSD.
Was way too expensive. Some people wanted a repairable device that wasn't going to destroy the bank... sadly we are still stuck with our classic Mac Pros.
Meh that’s beating a dead horse to win an internet debate.
TB4 is just a rebranded TB3 With faster USB support. It’s still the same TB bandwidth as TB3, not good enough.
TB will always be X4 lane. GPUs and SSDs are not only quickly saturating PCIe 4 and TB4 they are moving quickly to requiring more bandwidth.
Graphics on Macs going forward using Unified Memory Architecture. An eGPU over X4 lane can’t interface with UMA or use the full bandwidth UMA needs to move graphics data around to the system memory and CPU.
Workstations need to have slots if pros need full bandwidth optimised systems. Nobody can reasonably doubt this.
If the next Mac Pro has memory slots and upgradable GPU they will have slots that interface directly with UMA, not PC standard style slots.
performance hit is negligible. especially true now on TB4 where dynamic bandwidth allocation exists (no need to dedicate 18Gbps for just video now).
anecdotal
mac pro users don't really care about looks. they care about convenience. small trash can can be grabbed by one hand. accessories are easy to disconnect/connect and transport. you could possibly fit everything inside a mac pro tower if that helps you out.
i'm not talking mass market. i'm talking about the people who bought a Mac Pro tower.
Last edited:
wrong. creative departments with many edit bays move their machines a lot. hence, Apple built $700 wheels because they know creative departments will buy it regardless of the price.
Not really.
Except it now has dynamic bandwidth allocation, freeing up 18Gbps that was normally reserved for video for TB4 devices
GPUs? Nope. My 3070ti only loses ~8% performance in practical gaming via TB3 vs internal. Maybe benchmarks show worse numbers but IRL performance is negligible.
Also GPUs are requiring more and more power. You're stuck with 1.4 kW on the Mac Pro. eGPU can have its own separate PSU.
You cut out and ignored the two major parts of my post just to win an internet debate.
Graphics will be using UMA on the Mac Pro and you cannot have an eGPU interface with UMA. It’s not supported on Apple Silicon anyway.
eGPU is dead horse stuff. It filled a small niche around two years ago and then people got tired of it. It was janky, inconsistent and unreliable on Macs and PCs.
And that’s a fair point, but that also means by design, all Apple computers going forward will only be able to have memory increased directly from Apple, at any price they fell like setting. You could be paying for a 6 grand and up computer with zero upgrade options, even less then the trash can Mac Pro. I don’t think it matters how powerful it is at launch, after a couple of years it’ll be outdated but you won’t be able to change that, without giving more thousands to Apple of course.
A very nice way to lock customers in, but I feel it’ll just drive more Pro customers away from the brand. I can’t imagine how much 96GB of Apple memory would cost, soldered on the board. And I assume it’ll be none ECC too.
Last edited:
Adaptable, can have cheap parts like Xeon chips and memory, can fill all those internal HDD bays plus PCIE cards for faster storage, can install GPUs still more powerful than anything in a current Mac. And you can buy them cheap. Just a shame you have to mess about to get the latest Mac OS on them. But they can run the latest Windows 11 still right?
It’ll drive some away, yes, but most people no longer do internal expansion anyway. It’s become increasingly niche.
Would you swap though if the only way you could install more memory, was to buy it from Apple at point of purchase of the machine, at Apples pricing? Currently they charge 800 dollars for a 64GB upgrade on the Mac Studio.
Posters in here would suggest otherwise. Plus most companies have IT departments who will buy a base spec, and then upgrade RAM and storage etc themselves as it’s cheaper. I don’t think it’s niece at all.
Posters in here hardly represent the world at large.
IT departments would much rather place a machine into leasing for three years, then get another one.