Apple's identified use case for the 2023 Mac Pro are:
Would having ECC memory benefit any of those use cases?
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Mac Pro Buyer's Guide: Comparing the Generations
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Apple's identified use case for the 2023 Mac Pro are:
Would having ECC memory benefit any of those use cases?
Seems nothing more than Apple having ability to make the statement of all Apple Silicon devices. I'm sure there is someone out there where the Mac Pro 2023 has 'value' but to the 99.999999999999 percent of everyone else buy the Studio M2 Ultra (if you need that), and spend your $3,000 plus on your family, trip, fancy dinners, ... or flushing it down the toilet if it pleases you.
I honestly would not hold my breath for seeing ECC memory supported in Apple Silicon. One, I am not even sure the LPDDR modules that are used are available in ECC form and second, Apple supported it in the Intel Mac Pros because the Xeon systemboards and chipsets they were getting from Intel included it.
Yes. I might recommend doing some serious research on ECC memory and advantages, or not. Google has some great research on the subject. ECC memory absolutely should be on this Mac Pro 2023 hardware at that price point. It's absurd.
Supporting ECC Memory on Intel Xeon is not a requirement, that was an active choice the Systems Engineering People made at Apple to support. It was a very good choice.
UAD still makes audio DSP cards that would (should?) work in PCI-E and with MacOS.
But sheesh, you'd still need an audio interface, so if you're living in the Planet UAD ecosystem anyhow, then I'd just as soon use an external Apollo audio interface at this point.
I'm not doing a MacPro. The iPhone, MBP, and iPad models are all getting too expensive. In fact, I'm thinking of increasing my upgrade cycle from 2 years to 4. And the shame of it is that I COULD afford to upgrade every year if I wanted to. I'm just allergic to spending that kind of money, particularly when Apple doesn't make anything modular, and hasn't done so for many years now. I've maxed-out my last 3 iPhones, my last 2 iPads, and my current MBP, all because I didn't want to have to make another purchase due to not enough memory or not enough drive space, etc.
Besides that, I'm going to have to be able to afford an $80,000 car by 2035 if I don't want to have to walk through crime alley on my way to the grocery store. Those are the signals I'm getting. Message received, loud and clear. 😥
I don't have a horse in this race, the last time I bought a "pro" Mac was an XServe over a decade ago when I worked for a company that actually utilized one. With the M-Series chips, I can *kind of* understand why you wouldn't be able to add in additional graphics cards, though wouldn't put it past somebody like Sonnet Technologies to figure out an aftermarket solution. What I'm having a much harder time understanding is the lack of upgradeable RAM in a supposed "pro" series machine - is it a limitation of the M-Series chip that it can't address over a specific amount of RAM (or doesn't need RAM the same way Intel processors do)? Something about the motherboard configuration that would create gross throughput inefficiency if the RAM had actual slots? Or just capturing revenue up-front on these purchases rather than letting them go to aftermarket manufacturers?
You are to some extent right, most 5,1 users do have a love affair with their machines.
That being said, I have used this machine for 13 years, upgrading and expanding it every few years.
Many bottlenecks in the original configuration could be vastly improved.
GPU: RX 580 well optimised for Final cut pro. Renders my colour-corrected 4k clips incredibly fast. (not for gaming)
96 GB RAM: Not the fastest, but you never run out of it. Triple channel configuration makes a surprisingly big difference.
12 cores @ 3.46: The weakness is the single-core but multi-core is seldom the bottleneck.
10Gbe Ethernet: check
USB 3,1 card: check
Fast NvME: check, cheap and simple to upgrade from 4 to 16 TB as needed. CRUCIAL P3 SSD M.2, 4.0TB = 200 USD
Massive internal storage: check, I got 40TB of for long terms storage and Timemachine. Seagate 8TB for 150 USD
This is why we love these machines.
But, it is coming to an end. 8K video is probably what will make me change............
oh for god's sake - VIDEO & FILM PRODUCTION is the most obvious one for even the layperson. Then's there's all the high end specialsit work in 3D, STEM work, etc
I have both a 5.1 & a 7.1. Yes, the 5.1 continues to plod on, no problems as long as we stay realistic about the work loads - still runs very well for audio production. The 7.1 on the other hand vastly outperforms it for film production (obviously), also runs win 11 & a number of applications that want intel. No rosetta emulation required for all those plug-ins & VIs.
I'll be staying with the 7.1 for quite some time yet & there is no reason to think it wil not continue on like my 2010 5.1. The 5.1 has stopped at Mojave & do boubt will be the same for the 7.1 at some point, but i see no particular development there from Ventura onwards & adding iOS widgets etc. The only thing the OS updates really do in my experience is make various software titles /drivers etc NOT work & therefore waiting for vendor updates, often paid for (very unike the Win environment, where everything just tends to keep going).
A 5.1 running on Mojave & loccked down with the same apps, continues to run just as it did years ago. Ditto I imagine for the 7.1. The new Mac Pro is bizzare rubbish - 7 x PICEs & no GPU support. What Apple propellor-head thought that could be sold with usual flappy-mouth American 'Awsome guys' and 'reaching out'? Please ....
Good article. Nice to have the Mac Pro finally updated to Apple Silicon
Where are the 2023 Mac Pro reviews? We have reviews for the M2 Ultra Studio, but I want to see it compared to the 2019 Mac Pro in real world tasks. The reviews I’ve seen for the Studio have only compared it to other Apple Silicon Macs and some PCs.
Hope Apple Reads these Comments....
looking at the VFX industry
We wanted Nvidia supported cards...
And more RAM than 196GB, (currently using 256GB on Linux PC)
Fingers crossed for an M3 update....
looking at the VFX industry
We wanted Nvidia supported cards...
And more RAM than 196GB, (currently using 256GB on Linux PC)
Fingers crossed for an M3 update....
The current version was just to formally close the transition from Intel.
They might build a serious machine later - or they might not, if the Studio sells well enough.
If you need to run e.g. a SAP Hana installation you would obviously do it on Intel/Linux (or even POWER) -
having that beautiful case in your server rack, just won‘t cut it
I owned a 2010 Mac Pro and, for Intel systems, it was a workhorse. I had upgraded the CPUs, I think to 8 core so Activity Monitor showed 32 virtual cores (hyper threading) I can't recall how much RAM but over 24GB and SSD boot drive.
I replaced it with a 1st gen M1 Mac mini and the mini does, literally, everything about 2x the speed of the 2010 Mac Pro. The benchmarks I ran side by side for real-world tasks wasn't even close, the M1 won evert test (except heat output) by a mile).
BTW: I replaced it because even with all those processing cores it still took an age and a half to do simple things like load web pages or launch apps. There's just about zero justification for working on a system that old unless you just don't care about getting things done. That said, unless you are truly taking advantage of, and need, the internal expansion options of the Mac Pro tower you should just get a Mini or Studio.
The m1 mini is a great machine as long as you avoid the base config. 8Gb ram and 256 GB SSD is silly.
Once you are at 16GB ram and 1TB SSD, which should be the minimum spec for 2023, the price has doubled.
The RX 580 8GB GPU in my MacPro is faster than the baseline m1 mini GPU.
Metal Benchmark
| AMD Radeon Pro RX 580 = 52863 Apple M1 GPU = 31554 |
The AMD is 67% faster
Geekbench 5 Multi CPU Benchmark
Dual X5690 = 6973
Apple M1 GPU = 7415
The m1 CPU benchmark is 6% faster
Geekbench 5 single CPU Benchmark
Dual X5690 = 671
Apple M1 GPU = 1711
The m1 CPU benchmark is 154% faster
So, for single CPU-intensive tasks, the m1 is much faster, for multi-core, no big difference.
For anything requiring GPU-intensive work, the MacPro is still more capable.
But this is not why I keep using mine. I have a lot of data and am not too fond of NAS systems.
The ability to upgrade to 16TB of very fast NVME for 800 USD is amazing. I would get 2TB for this price at Apple.
8TB SSD costs 2'800 USD 😠
Again, the new minis are great machines. I did buy one for my son.
My Mac Pro 4,1 -- which the wife has now co-opted -- continues to run like a champ. Upgraded to a 6-core Xeon CPU (used from eBay), 32GB RAM (salvaged from a Dell Precision workstation), SATA SSD, USB-3 PCI card, Sapphire RX850 8GB video card, running 5,1 firmware and macOS 12! It's 14 years old and still a daily driver.
"The new Mac Pro maxes out at 192GB of memory. The previous model supported almost eight times this amount"
Not almost but exactly 8x.
Not almost but exactly 8x.
Takeaway: If you need/want Apple Silicon, get a Mac Studio which has the same power as the Mac Pro but much less expensive and smaller, and you dont get scammed by Apple.
With the launch of the new Mac Pro, Apple has finally completed the transition to Apple silicon across the entire Mac lineup. Over the past decade, Apple has only released three new Mac Pros and the latest version starts at $6,999 – the highest starting price of any Mac Pro model to date – making it all the more important to consider if now is a good time to upgrade or even if an older model will suffice for your needs.
The 2023 Mac Pro is the first of its kind to feature Apple silicon and all previous models had Intel processors. While the machine loses support for eGPUs, it is around twice as powerful as the previous top-tier Mac Pro while maintaining a mostly modular design with seven PCIe slots. Even so, some first-time Mac Pro customers or users of the 2013 model may be able to obtain a 2019 Mac Pro second-hand or from a third-party retailer for a substantially lower price, so it will be important to weigh up exactly what was added with each new version of the machine.
See the breakdown below for each new feature, change, and improvement that was added with each Mac Pro compared to its direct predecessor:
Mac Pro (Apple silicon Tower, 2023)
- Apple M2 Ultra chip
- 24-core CPU
- Up to 76-core GPU
- Up to 192GB unified memory
- Non-upgradeable memory
- 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
- 32-core Neural Engine
- Seven PCI Express expansion slots
- Eight Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports
- Three USB-A ports
- 3.5 mm headphone jack with advanced support for high-impedance headphones
- HDMI 2.1 port with support for multichannel audio output
- Support for up to eight 4K displays, six 6K displays, or three 8K displays
- 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6E
- Bluetooth 5.3
- Weighs 37.2 pounds (16.86 kg) as tower or 37.9 pounds (17.21 kg) as rack
- Starts at $6,999
Mac Pro (Intel Tower, 2019)
- Silver tower design with lattice pattern and three impeller fans
- Intel Xeon W processor
- Up to 28-core CPU
- Up to AMD Radeon Pro W6800X Duo GPU with 120 total compute units
- Up to 1.5TB memory
- Up to 8TB storage
- Eight PCI Express expansion slots
- Up to 12 Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports
- Two USB 3 ports
- Dual 10 Gb Ethernet
- Up to two HDMI 2.0 ports
- Support for up to 12 4K displays, six 5K displays, or six Pro Display XDRs
- Bluetooth 5.0
- Weighs 39.7 pounds (18.0 kg) as tower or 38.8 pounds (17.6 kg) as rack
- Started at $5,999
Mac Pro (Intel Cylinder, 2013)
- Space Black cylindrical design with thermal core, single impeller fan, and illuminated ports
- Intel Xeon E5 processor
- Up to 12-core CPU
- Up to Dual AMD FirePro D700 GPU with 64 total compute units
- Up to 64GB memory
- User-upgradeable memory
- Up to 1TB storage
- Six Thunderbolt 2 ports
- Four USB 3 ports
- Dual Gigabit Ethernet
- 3.5 mm headphone jack
- HDMI 1.4 Ultra HD port
- Support for up to three dual-cable 5K displays or six Thunderbolt displays
- 802.11ac Wi-Fi 5
- Bluetooth 4.0
- Weighs 11 pounds (4.9 kg)
- Started at $2,999
Upgrade to the 2023 Mac Pro?
In most workflows, the M2 Ultra chip should offer a massive performance improvement over the Intel Xeon W processors offered in the 2019 Mac Pro, especially in CPU-intensive tasks. Early benchmarks indicate that it delivers around two-times faster overall CPU performance than the fastest Intel-based Mac Pro with a 28-core Xeon W processor.
For machine learning processes, the 2023 Mac Pro has a significant advantage with the M2 Ultra's 32-core Neural Engine. Likewise, its dedicated media engine offers considerable benefits in video editing workflows.
The new Mac Pro can support 8K external displays for the first time. It also has newer Wi-Fi and Bluetooth specifications, as well as two USB-A ports and support for high-impedance headphones.
If you're looking for a high-end, future-proof machine that harnesses the best available performance with Apple silicon, as well as its more modern specifications, it will be worth opting for the new Mac Pro.
...Or Stick With the 2019 Mac Pro?
Not all 2013 or 2019 Mac Pro users should upgrade to the 2023 model. Most notably, the 2019 Mac Pro features an Intel chip. While support for Apple silicon is now much better in professional workflows than it was upon its launch in 2020, some niche applications and legacy software may still work better on an Intel architecture. Likewise, some users may wish to dual-boot Windows via Boot Camp and this is not possible on the new Mac Pro.
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Article Link: Mac Pro Buyer's Guide: Comparing the Generations
Otherwise, get an old Intel Mac Pro and upgrade the RAM, wifi card if you cant/dont use ethernet, CPU and GPU. Apply new thermal paste to the cpu and gpu. Then, install a new OS like Ventura or Monterey via OCLP to kick Apple's planned obsolescence in the face. If the Mac Pro is quite old, upgrade the usb ports to minimum USB 3.0 for better speed. Lastly, overclock the CPU and use liquid cooling/get bigger heatsink to withstand the extra heat. Now you have a great desktop setup which will be working great and plenty powerful for years to come.