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What's Happening With the Mac Pro?
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Thunderbolt 5 tops out at 64 Gb/s for networking and/or PCIe 4. That is quite a bit less than 100Gb/s (SMPTE 2110 requires dual ports, so a 100Gb/s SMPTE card would require 200Gb/s or PCIe 4 by 8).
Apple announced immersive live streaming. That will require 2 8K streams at 120Hz (one for each eye), requiring at least 100Gb/s and cannot be carried on Thunderbolt 5.
While as someone who works in this space, sees lots of problems with it.
That shows single core performance of 1,052 and multi core of 15,305. By comparison, an M3 Ultra offers single core performance of 3,221 and multi core of 27,749.
M5 Ultras should handily beat both of those scores.
Ok, it is 1/3 the single core performance of an M3 Ultra and just over 1/2 the multi core.
You can demand anything you want, but Apple would offer you either replacement with a current generation system, or at best, a pro-rate refund (which would not net you much at this point).
The M-chip development paradigm is a non-upgradable disaster - once you buy a M-Mac, it’s a dead end. So a M-chip Mac Pro is absolutely pointless anyway.
And no: there are virtually NO uses for PCI slots besides GPUs.
And no: there are virtually NO uses for PCI slots besides GPUs.
I think thats a weak excuse for not supporting upgradeability.
I can take a PC case from 30 years ago and put the latest motherboard and processor in it.
The processor has different pin outs, fine put them on a daughterboard = problem solved. I can't imagine Apple would want to support fully replacing the main board, but a lot of what is on the main board will not be changing from one M series to the other.
I'm just saying this is possible, there is nothing technically challenging about it, if Apple was serious about supporting Pro users who want the form factor and the ability to slot PCIe devices in, then it can be done.
Pointless? No. The intended buyer replaces them at 3-5 years and stays current with io standards and codec support.
People buying what’s clearly a media production powerhouse and then sitting on a 10 year old cpu platform with no support for emerging codecs, current memory standards, current pcie standards, etc. are… silly.
The original buyers of pro machines generally buy the spec required at the outset and run the machine until its predetermined life cycle is reached then upgrade to current platform.
They aren’t sending techs out to replace Ram and CPUs. Or, even more ridiculous, having the production department staff do it.
I get it. I’d love a big box Mac I can buy at 3-5 years old and self upgrade too. That’s not the target market. The target market is new buyers. Not secondhand buyers.
The slots in the Mac Pro are for customization to a workload. Not “upgrading” several years down the line.
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There was a time when Apple stores sold eGPUs that worked with Intel Macs.
Don’t know if they would support their proprietary chips in the future.
Don’t know if they would support their proprietary chips in the future.
Would appreciate if Apple made Mac Studio cooling solution adequate before killing the Pro once again. Someone in their management didn’t get that a professional computer should be able to handle 100% load, and stay cool and quiet while doing so, even if it means overkill heatsinks and slightly lower profit margins overall.
I still want new Mac Pro, it's hard to match speed, simplicity and reliability of all needed hardware in one professional machine.
Apple should leave workstations to Puget Systems or the others like them and Apple focuses on consumer devices like laptops, phones, Mac mini and the like.
They need to just get out of the expensive desktop market.
This is where my two machines can run flat out and make barely a noise. They never run hot, even in warm conditions. Dependable. They justified their cost - and running windows natively saved me having to get another windows desktop.
Also at the point to replace an Apple laptop. It might get replaced with a Windows machine.
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The 2019 MP is solid but OS support is looking bleak after Tahoe. Long as youre happy with no more support post 2026, you good
Right now the 2019 is highly dependent on where you live. They’re a big heavy box and shipping internationally sucks. Heaps on eBay in the USA. None locally in Australia for cheap for example.
If you need to ship it, It’s a lot of money to drop on an EOL machine right now with no future os support.
Unless you truly need the slots, Id buy a studio instead.
CPU wise unless you need a huge number of threads anything m series will slaughter it in interactive responsiveness. The jump from even an i7/i9 from 2020-2022 (which clock higher than Xeons and are running a later intel architecture) to M1 in terms of responsiveness is huge.
Even under heavy load, I've had an M1 Pro with memory pressure in the red, 100% CPU and it still felt reasonably snappy for UI response.
If you need to ship it, It’s a lot of money to drop on an EOL machine right now with no future os support.
Unless you truly need the slots, Id buy a studio instead.
CPU wise unless you need a huge number of threads anything m series will slaughter it in interactive responsiveness. The jump from even an i7/i9 from 2020-2022 (which clock higher than Xeons and are running a later intel architecture) to M1 in terms of responsiveness is huge.
Even under heavy load, I've had an M1 Pro with memory pressure in the red, 100% CPU and it still felt reasonably snappy for UI response.
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The other thing that seems useful with these machines would be the ability to run ARM versions of Windows and Linux. I want to run macOS most of the time, but I’d like to be able to run Windows and Linux occasionally without need for separate hardware. It’d be great if Apple re-launched Boot Camp for this purpose.
Comparing apples and oranges though. That single NVidia card is drastically more capable than the studio. Get a low end or last gen NVidia and it’ll still cream the Mac. I’ve nothing against Apple, but they are what they are. If it’s powerful enough for your use-case then great, but denying that there are more appropriate systems out there isn’t achieving anything.
If there is no M5 Ultra Mac Pro, then it isn’t on the back burner, it is dead.
The choice to not build an M3 Ultra Mac Pro can be understood, but the same can’t be said for M5 Ultra.
My *guess* is it is not dead, and it will have high-bandwidth networking capabilities beyond the constraints of the Mac Studio. But it will have the same M5 Ultra as the Mac Studio — the thing that is on the back burner isn’t the Mac Pro itself, it’s exclusive Mac Pro silicon.
The choice to not build an M3 Ultra Mac Pro can be understood, but the same can’t be said for M5 Ultra.
My *guess* is it is not dead, and it will have high-bandwidth networking capabilities beyond the constraints of the Mac Studio. But it will have the same M5 Ultra as the Mac Studio — the thing that is on the back burner isn’t the Mac Pro itself, it’s exclusive Mac Pro silicon.
I thought so too. I bought a second M4 Mac mini to cluster with my existing one that is a home server to run larger models for my dev work. Was devastated RDMA didn't work with TB4 once I set up Exo. Was a shame because I got it for $399 at Best Buy from a Micro Center price match. I ultimately had no use for it so I returned it. Sticking with my 3090 Ti server. Just wanted something that sips power.
Imagine having those four Mac studios inside a Mac Pro chassis! Each machine on a graphics card sized board with a heatsink all cooled by the mac pro fans as usual, all using a Thunderbolt 5 (or better) interconnect. Each board would still have the integrated memory and a small amount of storage, with room for traditional HDDs and SSDs on the extra PCI Express slots. You could start with one processor and add more as needed.Not only that, the cluster functionality of Thunderbolt 5 seals the deal. https://appleinsider.com/articles/2...-boost-from-new-rdma-support-on-thunderbolt-5
Not only that, the cluster functionality of Thunderbolt 5 seals the deal. https://appleinsider.com/articles/2...-boost-from-new-rdma-support-on-thunderbolt-5
This. It's pretty clear they gave those loaner Studios to float the idea that this could be a viable Mac Pro replacement. Now they're gonna look at sales figures and customer feedback to see if it's good enough.
With macOS 27 dropping Intel support in September, the future of hackintosh doesn't look very bright.
You can work on Tahoe for many years without any problems. And you get new equipment. Mac Pro is already outdated, and its performance does not justify its price.
Not true. Storage (both HBA and on-board NVMe cards), video and audio I/O, and networking (100Gb, etc.) normally come on PCIe cards, along with custom-built interface boards for specialized hardware. And Apple could certainly make GPUs work, too, but they have (so far) chosen not to do that.
With RDMA, and so many other advancements, I can see the Mac Pro being phased out. However, there are some extreme limitations of RDMA. So I was thinking, perhaps something entirely different is being planned. There was a mock up back in the 80s of a Modular Mac, it might have even been codenamed "Johnnygold" after the apples. This could be the future of the Mac Pro. You buy the tower, as of now, and it comes with 1 compute unit. The compute unit has your full Ultra or Extreme SoC, RAM, Storage, etc, and 1 or 2 PCI-e 16x slots. But there are new slots, with or without corresponding bays (so you don't have to open the machine). You can then buy units that are just SoC, memory, and minimum storages, that you can slot into the MacPro, and let you expand the capabilities. Because they can use their own interface, even PCI-e 16x, it is far faster than Thunderbolt 5, and use can use this machine to build an LLM cluster, on an other application that would be improved with more cores and more memory. Building a powerhouse. And as things improve, you could even swap out modules, with the base system staying the same, but replacing an M5U module with an M6 or M7 down the line, with some minor limitations based on not being the same generation.
TEG
TEG
There are people willing to pay up to $100,000 or even more for an HP Z8 G5 with multiple high end GPUs and tons of RAM and storage. So there is a market for that. Some people really need that power, but some are just very rich and want to best computer that money can buy. Apple could easily offer a Mac Pro with four M5 Ultra for example. Of course you can build a cluster of four Mac Studios, but some people want it in a single case.