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Makes me wonder, how quick an M6 ultra with 1tb Ram will become an average consumer product… too soon?
 
Something that can compete in 3D rendering with an Nvidia card would be nice, given the price tag…!

Rendering doesn't matter. Viewport performance does. Most pro's use Render farms. Even a high end 5090 pales in comparison to a render farm like Rebusfarm. I have a Mac Pro 2019 with Vega Duo ( and a 4080 based PC ) and my last project rendering on both those would have taken 2 weeks 3 days Solid rendering 24 hours a day. It took 1.2 hours on the Farm. It took longer to download the EXR files.
 
I don't know!

The only Mac Pro I ever saw in actual use was a recording booth for a full orchestra that my ex played in. It had x4 PCIe cards with 8 analog inputs per card, and they would record all 32 channels at every performance, then mix. Is there anything else than can do that?
Pretty much every run of the mill PC/Mac or laptop could do that. There's Thunderbolt or USB 3 interfaces with more than 32 channels.
 
The only Mac Pro I ever saw in actual use was a recording booth for a full orchestra that my ex played in. It had x4 PCIe cards with 8 analog inputs per card, and they would record all 32 channels at every performance, then mix. Is there anything else than can do that?
One would normally use something like the Behringer X32, I believe, which also allows recording all channels via USB/DAW. In terms of bandwidth, even USB 2 should easily handle 32 audio channels.
 




Mac-Pro-Three-Generations-Feature.jpg

While there was a strong case for extensive PCIe expansion with the Intel-based Mac Pro in 2019, because it supported MPX modules and third-party graphics cards, that is no longer the case since the transition to Apple silicon.
Why do people act like graphics cards are the ONLY thing one can use PCIe slots for? They're not.

I expect this sort of rhetoric from an angry MacRumors poster that never actually used their other PCIe slots for anything else and, therefore, didn't understand why anyone else would either. But, from the writing staff? Really? Have we all just become THAT consumer-ized here?

It's not just about graphics cards. The thing still needs slots. And no, video card expansion is not coming back. Get over it.
 
I don't know!

The only Mac Pro I ever saw in actual use was a recording booth for a full orchestra that my ex played in. It had x4 PCIe cards with 8 analog inputs per card, and they would record all 32 channels at every performance, then mix. Is there anything else than can do that?
uh, only 32 ch ? thats nothing. can grab a couple TB3 or USB C interfaces and do that all day long, especially at 48K. thats a protools rig using old HDX cards, yawners. You can do this on pretty much anything these days even a well optioned laptop. to do 192K need fast SSD storage, but it was done 20 years ago on spinning RAIDS. 96K is a little more challenging but basically in any case its just shuffling bits from interfaces to storage.
 
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Considering that almost every single slot is occupied on my M2 Ultra Mac Pro, there is totally a market for the Mac Pro.

- m.2 SSD RAID
- Dante NIC
- ST2110 board
- SDI Board
- 10G Ethernet card

Maybe the Mac Pro doesn't make sense for you, but it makes sense for a lot of people.

I have only one slot available, the rest are occupied.
I wouldn't trust all that stuff to Thunderbolt, to risky.
 
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From with see here, Mac Pros need to support 1TB of ram because Intel did. Or more than the 192-GB that the M2 supports.

I’ll be happy with a M4 mini because I don’t need a barn heater like the G5 Quad. Even in winter.
 
Why do people act like graphics cards are the ONLY thing one can use PCIe slots for? They're not.

I expect this sort of rhetoric from an angry MacRumors poster that never actually used their other PCIe slots for anything else and, therefore, didn't understand why anyone else would either. But, from the writing staff? Really? Have we all just become THAT consumer-ized here?

It's not just about graphics cards. The thing still needs slots. And no, video card expansion is not coming back. Get over it.
+1. If you "can't think of a reason" for this machine to exist, then it's not a product for you. There's plenty of use cases for people who do the work and have the budget.
 
Considering that almost every single slot is occupied on my M2 Ultra Mac Pro, there is totally a market for the Mac Pro.

- m.2 SSD RAID
- Dante NIC
- ST2110 board
- SDI Board
- 10G Ethernet card

Maybe the Mac Pro doesn't make sense for you, but it makes sense for a lot of people.

I have only one slot available, the rest are occupied.
I wouldn't trust all that stuff too Thunderbolt, to risky.
Not only that but you'd be compromising it's performance going over thunderbolt. An NVMe RAID will bottleneck out of the box over thunderbolt.
 
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After switching to Apple silicon by adopting the M2 Ultra chip in 2022, the Mac Pro is widely expected to receive an upgrade to the as-yet-unannounced M4 Ultra chip this year.

Mac-Pro-Three-Generations-Feature.jpg

Apple last updated the Mac Pro in June 2023, adding an M2 Ultra chip and officially completing the transition away from Intel chips. Apple will refresh the Mac Pro in the summer of 2025, according to Mark Gurman. Like the Mac Studio, the next Mac Pro will skip the M3 series. Instead it will be equipped with the highest-end version of the M4 chip, codenamed "Hidra." Based on the description of the chip, it could be positioned as an "Ultra" or "Extreme" chip. Gurman has said the M4 Ultra chip in the next Mac Pro will "probably" have up to a 32-core CPU and up to an 80-core GPU, which would be double the M4 Max's up to 16-core CPU and up to 40-core GPU. It could also support up to 512GB of memory, a notable increase over the current 192GB limit.

By the time the M4 Ultra Mac Pro is released, the current Mac Pro design will be over five years old. While there was a strong case for extensive PCIe expansion with the Intel-based Mac Pro in 2019, because it supported MPX modules and third-party graphics cards, that is no longer the case since the transition to Apple silicon. Likewise, though reviewers praised the Apple silicon Mac Pro's performance, questions have been raised about the device's purpose and high price point. It is also noticeable that by the summer of 2025, the current Mac Pro will be three years old.

Throughout 2022, there were rumors about Apple developing an "M2 Extreme" chip that doubled the capabilities of the M2 Ultra chip for superlative performance. The chip option was apparently cancelled because "[b]ased on Apple's current pricing structure, an M2 Extreme version of a Mac Pro would probably cost at least $10,000—without any other upgrades—making it an extraordinarily niche product that likely isn't worth the development costs, engineering resources and production bandwidth it would require." Considering that Apple was weighing up an all-new top-tier Apple silicon chip prior to the release of the current model, it isn't out of the question that the company could revisit the idea in 2026 or beyond.

Likewise, before the release of the Apple silicon Mac Pro, there were a multitude of rumors about the company redesigning the Mac Pro to feature a similar but more compact enclosure that was "about half the size." This smaller, redesigned Apple silicon model that was once believed to be in development could move forward after the release of the M4 Ultra version in 2025.

Apple could also revitalize the Mac Pro by offering new optional MPX modules that integrate with the Apple silicon architecture, such as a next-generation Afterburner accelerator card. Of course, it is also possible that the product line could ultimately merge with the Mac Studio. For now, Mac Pro rumors center on the long-awaited upgrade to the M4 Ultra chip later this year.

Article Link: Where Does Mac Pro Go Next After M4 Ultra?
I don't think the M4 Ultra is coming at all, more likely will be the M5 Ultra, as for the Mac Pro Extreme, No Chance
 
uh, only 32 ch ? thats nothing. can grab a couple TB3 or USB C interfaces and do that all day long, especially at 48K. thats a protools rig using old HDX cards, yawners. You can do this on pretty much anything these days even a well optioned laptop. to do 192K need fast SSD storage, but it was done 20 years ago on spinning RAIDS. 96K is a little more challenging but basically in any case its just shuffling bits from interfaces to storage.

Nice! This was 12 years ago or so and audio/video isn't my field. I had no idea analog audio bandwidth was so low, comparatively-speaking.

How about latency, though, with USB?
 
OK, I'll be the one: I want to see a Mac Pro that implements some form of Thunderbolt 5/PCI cross-connect fabric backplane interconnection accepting multiple Mac Studio motherboards offering PCI slots and power supply (/supplies, redundancy) to accommodate. Make it such that adding mobos starts to offset PCI slots. Commoditize the Studio/mini Pro mobos such that they are 'insertable'.

A 8u Rack in a 4u box. Or a LLM cluster in a box. Something akin to the Apple Jonathan project from the early '80s, but all internal to the current Mac Pro chassis (or engineered to fit a 4U rack).
 
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I reckon the Mac Pro was designed when an M2 Extreme was still expected from the chip team. Obviously that never happened, maybe an M(something) Extreme can happen and the Mac Pro will find its market, but without it it’s just a bit lost.
 
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