It is a cool design in general. With Apple Silicon, that design might actually be able to handle the thermals. The only main issue was upgradability. That would have been a cool stand in for the Studio. I always liked having a good upgradable desktop, makes me sad to see where the Mac Pro is at today. It's way way overpriced for what it is. The only way I could see the price being where it is at is if you could upgrade the CPU module for a number of generations for much cheaper while keeping the same chassis.
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Mac Pro Buyer's Guide: Comparing the Generations
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I would not be surprised if the majority of owners of M2 family Macs doing video work are using ProRes, which the M2 family is really good at working with.
That being said, since Apple is part of the AVC, it does stand to reason that they will eventually add hardware encode and decode support for AVC in a future generation of M series SoC.
I highly suspect that they are hiding something from us. I believe they just did a pre-release of the Mac Pro.
To be fair, the Mac Studio is the "trashcan" with a decade's worth of technical advances.
Perhaps they will use something like an R1 in the "compute modules" that surfaced in the iOS beta code.
I am really interested to know what is inside the R1. If it is primarily a GPU, could it be the mythical "Lifuka" Apple GPU rumored way back in 2020 just before the M1 was announced?
Mine has dual 3.46 ghz Xeons. I also upgraded to Ventura with OpenCore.
What a sad day. The transition from an upgradable to a disposable philosophy is finally complete, after the first MacBook Air with soldered RAM kicked it off all the way back in 2008.
With laptops it's tolerable (barely), with desktops it's not. My next desktop won't be a Mac but will instead be on Linux.
With laptops it's tolerable (barely), with desktops it's not. My next desktop won't be a Mac but will instead be on Linux.
No one is really mining with GPUs anymore. The craziness of 2020-2022 is gone.
and the Mac Studio is a Mac Mini Pro at best... so what does that really make the Mac Pro?
Credit: ChatGPT
| Mac Pro (Apple silicon Tower, 2023) | Mac Pro (Intel Tower, 2019) | Mac Pro (Intel Cylinder, 2013) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design | Tower design | Silver tower design | Space Black cylindrical design |
| Chip | Apple M2 Ultra | Intel Xeon W | Intel Xeon E5 |
| CPU | 24-core | Up to 28-core | Up to 12-core |
| GPU | Up to 76-core | Up to AMD Radeon Pro W6800X Duo with 120 compute units | Up to Dual AMD FirePro D700 with 64 compute units |
| Memory | Up to 192GB unified memory | Up to 1.5TB | Up to 64GB |
| Memory Upgradeability | Non-upgradeable | N/A | User-upgradeable |
| Media Engine | Dedicated media engine for hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW with two video decode engines, four video encode engines, and four ProRes encode and decode engines | N/A | N/A |
| Neural Engine | 32-core | N/A | N/A |
| PCI Express Expansion Slots | Seven | Eight | N/A |
| Thunderbolt Ports | Eight Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports | Up to 12 Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports | Six Thunderbolt 2 ports |
| USB Ports | Three USB-A ports | Two USB 3 ports | Four USB 3 ports |
| Headphone Jack | 3.5 mm headphone jack with advanced support for high-impedance headphones | N/A | 3.5 mm headphone jack |
| HDMI Port | HDMI 2.1 port with support for multichannel audio output | Up to two HDMI 2.0 ports | HDMI 1.4 Ultra HD port |
| Display Support | Support for up to eight 4K displays, six 6K displays, or three 8K displays | Support for up to 12 4K displays, six 5K displays, or six Pro Display XDRs | Support for up to three dual-cable 5K displays or six Thunderbolt displays |
| Wi-Fi | 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6E | N/A | 802.11ac Wi-Fi 5 |
| Bluetooth | Bluetooth 5.3 | Bluetooth 5.0 | Bluetooth 4.0 |
| Weight (Tower) | 37.2 pounds (16.86 kg) | 39.7 pounds (18.0 kg) | 11 pounds (4.9 kg) |
| Weight (Rack) | 37.9 pounds (17.21 kg) | 38.8 pounds (17.6 kg) | N/A |
| Starting Price | $6,999 | $5,999 | $2,999 |
True, except that the "Trashcan" looks so much nicer.
Same here. The Mac Pro is disappointing in every respect. Not even sure whom it is aimed at. To me as a dev it just screams: go away
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I get cheese grater owners love their machines but is it really a beast though?
I get the expandability is huge. But in terms of computing power, some iPhones are starting to match those geekbench numbers whilst consuming a fraction of the power.
Storage transfer speeds can be matched by USB 3/Thunderbolt. And Ethernet is largely falling into niche use with the advent of faster wifi
Eventually, you guys will have to find alternative solutions surely.
How on earth is the 2023 Mac Pro futureproof. I have a 2019 version. The things I’ve upgraded are ram and graphics. These things aren’t upgradable in the new model. So how is this system “future proof” absolutely false claim.
Interesting not a single mention and discussion of ECC Memory. Mac Pro 2019 had it, now, assumed missing capability in Mac Pro 2023? $7K+ and no ECC Memory, working backwards, and not "professional". I'll wait for the M3+ECC Memory (assuming it has ability for more than 192GB)