That fact that the SOC Ram is shared between the CPU and GPU is actually massive advantage. It’s really efficient and show me an AMD or nVidia GPU that can address 192GB ram. I know the AS GPU’s are not as powerful as the top line discreet GPU cards but the AS SOC does have other ‘less obvious’ advantages. The 1.5TB of ram that could be specced for the Intel Mac Pro really is a non-issue. Literally no one needs that amount or could afford it. OK maybe 0.0001% of very niche users might have a genuine use case for anywhere remotely near that amount of Ram 🤭
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With M2 Ultra Mac Pro, Apple Completes Apple Silicon Transition and No Longer Sells Intel-Based Macs
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Thunderbolt is the complication on Asahi and eGPU (and they are actively working on it), straight PCIe should be accessible.
This seems like wild speculation, but I'd love to see some evidence if this is the case. If it was possible, Apple would be completely stupid to not allow AMD drivers to work. If they think in the long term ASi integrated GPUs will be superior, they can still prove themselves without intentionally blocking GPU capabilities of the PCIe slots. From what I understand the hardware is simply not capable of it in any OS.
different use cases yes.
some pros of Blender can render scenes with 192GB of unified memory that weren't possible before
Motherboards have been supporting PCI-e 5.0 to futureproof for anticipated GPUs that will deliver that expected throughput in the next 12 to 18 months, but given this is Apple Silicon, it will not support discrete GPUs whether Intel, Nvidia or AMD. To my knowledge, all their examples of compatible PCI-e hardware were essentially specialty audio cards. Since these are not as demanding (even a year or so from now) as such next gen discrete GPUs, I doubt there is cause for investment in the more expensive 5.0 standard of this type of hardware when the roadmap of the Mac Pro does not involve discrete GPUs.
What? No that's not what I'm saying. Heatsink and the giant case is overkill for the M2 Ultra.
The Mac Pro, at least in its 2019 incarnation, is specifically meant for very niche cases. The users who would spend $6000 USD on a base machine have very specific use cases, and those often involve needing huge amounts of RAM, the ability to expand I/O and storage options, and multiple GPUs. For all of those other users that's what the Mac Studio is ultimately for.
Wouldn't it be possible to do dual M2 Ultra and make them act as one? M2 Extreme or whatever people has been talking about that is worse than Ultra. I mean if it's possible to do dual M2 Max and make them act as as one to become M2 Ultra. 🤔
that's right
it's more or less a $4000 pci adapter
maybe some improved performance due to thermals....
LMAO that's ridiculously stupid of Apple but I should have expected no less from this greed addicted company. HARD NO from me on the Mac Pro then. Nobody should be buying that. And with the Apple Vision priced at $3,500 it seems as if Apple is trying to NOT sell products.
There is zero reason why the hardware would be incapable of it, it's a PCIe slot, if the OS has the ability to use the card it will be able to drive a display from it. Apple doesnt want to use discrete GPUs they don't make right now in MacOS, it breaks their tight integration with their SoCs unified memory model, so it's not supported in MacOS, but another OS could address the card just fine. There's plenty of PCIe cards you can toss in a 2019 Mac Pro that MacOS cant use but booting Linux or Windows you can *right now* (including Nvidia GPUs)
Hell, I've put GPUs in Dell servers that dont natively support discrete GPUs, they won't show boot screens but when the OS/ESXI boots it can use the card. Same principle.
Main limiter I can see is actually the same as putting GPUs into unsupported servers: getting any extra power rails needed to the card. I don't know if the new MP has direct sockets for 6 pin 75w or 8pin 150w cables for ex, but you can pull at least *some* power from the SATA connectors, about 54w per dedicated connector (I do that on my 2010 Mac Pro actually for my USB3 card) and the slot itself should supply the full 75w there. A sub 200w card should be easily powerable by pulling from other places if there's no dedicated rails.
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Apple really doesn't want AMD or Nvidia GPUs having oranges to oranges comparisons with a ASi igpu.. There are lots of anecdotal comparisons of 2019 MP owners with AMD 6800xt's being 3x faster at 3d or ML than their much newer M2 mac. Apple are more than comfortable punishing their pro users for years while Apple tries to catch up.. and not letting pro users have a bandaid eGpu to weather the transition.
But why develop and already developed and seemingly functional case for the sake of making a new case? This costs $$ and these machines generally dont go into small spaces so size generally isnt an issue, if form factor was smaller then there would be less space for whatever cards people might want to put inside them -- sure ATM (perhaps never) can you put a double wide GPU or 2 inside, but having space around a dedicated SSD card with multiple SSDs that run hot isnt a bad solution IMHO. The more you cram in there the hotter the insides. Yup looks baren now but some will fill those slots.
I also see the TB and HDMI cards are are in slots - I wonder what that slot type is - PCI?
There are also 2 internal SATA ports and a USB A as well - all in all there are lots and lots of options for what can be put inside these things and those that needs those options know way better than most as to what to populate these empty slots for.
For those that want grunt but no slots then studio it is, for those that dont need that much grunt then mini it is. Sure these devices dont cover every base but if you put a finger in too many pies the end products are disjointed, confused and often many end up being too gimped - looking back at you performa, quadra eras
Why design any of it at all? Just use off the shelf case then? It's more than likely they will redesign it for next iteration just like they did with the M1 MacBooks in 2020 -> M1 MacBooks 2021
Apple used the original “cheesegrater” enclosure, with modifications, through 3 years of Power Mac G5 and 5 different generations of Mac Pro– roughly 10 years. The sales volume is so low on these that they will likely continue to use the existing enclosure for some time to offset some of the engineering and manufacturing costs.
Apple has no problem killing form factors after 1 generation if they don't make sense. iPhone 5C, fat iPod nano, and 2013 Mac Pro come to mind.
Right, but now we're onto the 2nd generation of the enclosure here. Apple would certainly have known that the Apple Silicon transition was going to happen at the time that they first developed this enclosure.
The one missing feature that surprised me was having 2x Ethernet but no fibre, not even as an option, because for the kind of high-bandwidth use cases that justify a Mac Pro it’s becoming the norm (and even ordinary corporate networks are getting “wired” with fibre).
Eh, Fibre is common for backhauls now, but not super common to the desk yet. It’s still copper at folks desks, and the Mac Pro is mostly aimed at workstation use
Well no, Mark Gurman's rumors were pointing initially to the new Mac Pro case being much smaller but was cancelled.
Shooting for overkill is not the problem. Apple is being lazy with the mac pro or trying to save money which is a bad look.
Even though they gave no indication that this is the case, it makes sense and I want to believe it.
We also need more support for more PCI and graphics cards if they are going to make that the one and only distinguishing factor. And we need proper Windows support. Hopefully all this is coming but the keynote was already two hours.
If you want to boot Windows, there’s no reason at all to buy this computer. Apple isn’t going to make that happen on this platform.