and they will make it compatible only with the top Apple Silicon machine at AUD$20,000 - stuff the users.
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MP All Models 2023 Mac Pro! [MERGED]
- Thread starter OW22
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I highly doubt it's a technical reason. I would think Apple and NV aren't on speaking terms for the past decade and Apple probably wanted to dump AMD as much as they wanted to dump Intel so probably also not on speaking terms.
Possibly because the drivers would need to be signed by Apple in order for the OS to load them?
Hands on with Apple's new Pro Macs -- Mac Pro & Mac Studio
During Apple's annual developer conference, it showed off new versions of the Mac Pro and Mac Studio — each equipped with M2-series chips. And I got to test them out ahead of their debut.
appleinsider.com
More lying propaganda about the new Mac Pro being cheaper when it’s more expensive. These degenerates ignore that the Maxed out 7,1 came with ecc RM, 1.5tb when maxed out and GPUs that crush the m2 ultra. Just lying sacks of … stuff.
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What an apologist he is. Obviously someone who should not be reviewing the Mac Pro.Hands on with Apple's new Pro Macs -- Mac Pro & Mac Studio
During Apple's annual developer conference, it showed off new versions of the Mac Pro and Mac Studio — each equipped with M2-series chips. And I got to test them out ahead of their debut.
More lying propaganda about the new Mac Pro being cheaper when it’s more expensive. These degenerates ignore that the Maxed out 7,1 came with ecc RM, 1.5tb when maxed out and GPUs that crush the m2 ultra. Just lying sacks of … stuff.
I miss the good ol' days when the announcement of a new Mac Pro would make me think, "How exciting! What can I create, and how much faster can I create it, with this new generation of power? Where's my wallet?"
The 2023 Mac Pro is not that.
The 2023 Mac Pro is not that.
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Well, for 1k more than the 2019 Mac Pro you get:Hands on with Apple's new Pro Macs -- Mac Pro & Mac Studio
During Apple's annual developer conference, it showed off new versions of the Mac Pro and Mac Studio — each equipped with M2-series chips. And I got to test them out ahead of their debut.
More lying propaganda about the new Mac Pro being cheaper when it’s more expensive. These degenerates ignore that the Maxed out 7,1 came with ecc RM, 1.5tb when maxed out and GPUs that crush the m2 ultra. Just lying sacks of … stuff.
- 24 CPU cores vs 8 (massive difference here, should be at least 3x faster. Even the 2019 28 core won't match the M2Ultra CPU)
- M2Ultra GPU is much more powerful than the base GPU in the 2019. We have yet to see if M2Ultra can match the high end AMD GPU, but if the M2Ultra is approx 2x that of M2Max it should be close.
- 64GB RAM vs 32GB RAM
So for 1k more, you are getting a whole lot more and to configure the 2019 to similar specs would more than double the price of the base 2023.
Haha .. efficiently. Not with the massive power hungry Intel CPUs and AMD GPUs
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No.
Promise Pegasus R4i 32TB RAID MPX Module for Mac Pro - Apple
Apple Store Search Results
www.apple.com
If you check the compatibility section of the page on the Apple store . It only lists the MP 2019
[ The J2i lists both. So it is highly likely is not a lagging website update oversight. ]
A MPX module nominally pulls power from the MPX connector ( up to around 500W which the R4i has absolutely zero need of anything that high). Pretty likely that Promise built the R4i to leverage some power from that connector. The standard PCI-e bus provides 75W. While, conceptually Promise could have built something like the R4i totally inside a 75W budget ... they probably didn't.
Sonnet Technology has a new 8 drive M.2 card.
M.2 8x4 Silent Gen4 PCIe Card - SONNETTECH
Eight M.2 NVMe SSD slots on a PCIe 4.0 x16 card. Silent operation. Add your own ultra-fast SSDs for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Slap in some PCI-e v3 (because cheaper these days) 4TB M.2 SSDs and end up with the same 32GB raw capacity as a R4i that just soaks up It requires a single 6-pin AUX power cable (i.e., completely independent of the MPX connector). Takes up one slot width versus the R4i hogging up 4 width ( two double wides). The bandwidth/speed/latencies differences..... no contest.
It is only slightly more than a R4i ( $2,300 ) vs 800 + 8 * 250 = $2,800 .
The gap between what SSD pricing per TB were in 2017 and 2023 (and forward) is huge. In 2016-17 investing four spinning rust drives (HDDs) made some sense on a $/TB basis.
Apple is completely stuck in a time. They have been $400/TB for more than several years.
The R4i was an Apple "we hate wires" experiment that was outsourced to Promise. Promise did most of the work building the product, but extremely likely Apple gave them the constraint to leverage the MPX connector to deliver a substantive amount of the needed power. ( HDDs do tend to have a power surge spike when first spinning up and "real" RAID embedded controller ( and RAM and whatever else Promise needed) has a power budget also.
If Promise had built the R4i with a 6-pin AUX connector it would still be viable. They did not . So it isn't.
Sonnet has a far more affordable card for U.2 drives.
Fusion Dual U.2 SSD PCIe Card - SONNETTECH
Two U.2 NVMe SSD slots on a PCIe 3.0 x16 card. Add your own U.2 SSDs for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Again if just leverage the now "older" and declining in price PCI-e v3 7.8GB U.2 drives ( around $500-700) . 2* 200 + 4* 500 = $2,400. Two slot width and have some more data center oriented drives. [ there are new PCi-e v4 U.2 out now and also E3 EDSFF is the new standard format that will pick up more adaption over time. but if looking to just to top the speed of the R4i as opposed to other modern SSDs... don't need the bleeding edge U.2/E3 drive. ]
In 2023 the R4i like product that was trying to save on costs, but willing to blow 4 wide slots could be something like a R8i. Eight 2.5" 4TB SATA SSDs with QLC NANDs chips to drive the costs way down. Would be generally just as 'slow' (versus modern SSDs) as the R4i but probably cheaper. And the power for the SSDs never hits those spikes that possibly drive the R4i to need AUX power.
I suspect Apple put them back in stock because there will be a small surge in MP 2019 sales. ( happened also when Apple sneak peaked the 2013 and pre-announced discountinuation of XServe. ). Some folks are going to run out and buy stockpiles of 'spare parts' as brand new systems/modules.
LOL. Kind of wonder if Apple sales didn't had hand them that chart. Every major system feature present in the table EXCEPT storage.
To go from the entry 1TB Apple storage to 8 TB it is a $2,200 increase. Folks are screaming about the $3K price gap. Well if you need 8TB inside there is a big reduction there. If can get 8TB addtional ( so now have aggregate 9TB inside) for $500 then 3,500 - 2,200 = $1,300 gap. It is alot smaller now. If drink the Apple kool-aid that 1TB is $400 ( Apple's $400/TB nominal pricing) then down to just $900. And have more data storage inside the system.
If need 16TB or more inside the gap basically disappears. Studio can't do it.
I extremely doubt though that Apple wants to explicitly start to point out that there are paths around their SSD pricing. ( Most folks know they exist but Apple is going to 'play dumb' and not point out the problems their $400/TB pricing for SSDs creates. )
Similar with the "needs more than six TB ports". It think Apple needs more than six TB ports more than overwhelming vast majority of end users to. "After you buy those 4-5 XDR displays to attach to your Mac , you'll need some TB ports left over". ( so piling another more than several thousand dollars to that Apple purchase order).
If you go to Apple's sales marketing page for the Mac Pro right now
Mac Pro
Mac Pro with M2 Ultra combines our most capable Apple silicon yet with PCIe expansion for the ultimate in workstation-class performance.
www.apple.com
Apple spends more time talking about the wonders of the 'Space Frame' than they do about the value add utlity of the PCI-e slots. [ there were some rapid-fire examples they threw out in the keynote , but here where they have time to explain things ..... NOTHING. ]
For example they could have had a tagline of "there are over 50+ PCI-e cards that work today on the Mac Pro". ( probably true because 50+ already work in Thunderbolt PCI-e enclosures with other M-series Macs already). And even just simply putting the same examples had in the keynote up one the screen again. There is no picture on their sales marking packages with a card installed but their own I/O cards ( which really don't count. The TB card is proprietary and pragmatically necessary (not going to nominally run the system without one).
That is a very substantive reason why there are lots of folks saying "I can't see the difference" . There are only Apple cards installed in both Studio and MP in all of Apple's examples.
It would have been less drawn out too - latest Intel chips, Radeon W7900 or derivatives - maybe even a duo version and we would have a monster.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the Studio could have its storage upgraded, but it was an in-store service booking?
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With most professional audio hardware being able to operate over USB and Thunderbolt nowadays, and withProTools HDX systems becoming increasing niche and actually able to operate fine with a Thunderbolt PCI Expansion chassis , I think you should look more towards PCI based storage and video/picture editing as a usage case.
Outside of the internal drive, there's no way to get uncapped NVME speeds for external storage without putting them on a PCI card. You're lucky to get 2500 MB/ps on an external Thunderbolt NVMe enclosure using a drive rated for 7000 MB/ps and any drive over 2TB in such an enclosure runs the risk of throttling of shutting off due to thermal issues.
So, if you want to work with video and want to run 16TB of unthrottled NVME drives, PCI expansion in your best option.
I meant efficiency in terms of time. I should have just said “faster”. Updating my original post as it was not clear.
When it comes to Mac Pros I don’t worry about power consumption, I just want maximum performance - the ability to do more, faster. With the same CPU as the Studio, the 2023 Mac Pro is a total flop in this regard.
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When I'm spending $16K on a computer, efficiency is about speed - don't care about a big power supply or a hefty GPU. Ability to readily upgrade it is useful as well. For me efficiency is also the one machine being able to swap between MacOS and native Windows 11 Pro for Workstations.
We could also be thinking of a Threadripper Pro with a 48GB Radeon Pro W7900 and ability to have up to 2TB of ram.
Have you seen how efficient recent Intel CPUs are when you run them slightly below maximum performance? It's quite surprising how little performance you lose when like halving the power.
Sure, the $7000 ASi MP has a far better CPU and GPU than the $6000 2019 - but that's not really the point. The point is that the $7000 ASi MP has exactly the same CPU, GPU & RAM as the $4000 Mac Studio - moreover, even after you've maxed out the CPU, GPU and RAM on the new MP, it is still $3k more than a Studio with exactly the same CPU, GPU & RAM. (& the only practical SSD difference is that Apple arbitrarily refuses to sell SSD upgrade kits for the Studio).
Nobody would have picked the base 2019 MP on the grounds of its "stellar" CPU and GPU performance. If you wanted that level of performance with 128GB or less of non-ECC RAM you could get it in an iMac for half the price and get a screen worth about $1000 thrown in. The point of the MP - and the argument for the $3000 mark up over a faster iMac - was a Xeon-class processor* massively expandable RAM, ECC* RAM, and a huge amount of PCIe expansion including a choice of multiple super-powerful discrete GPUs. In short, a lot of the cost of a base Mac Pro was paying for all those "Up to"s.
The ASi Pro has whittled that down to just the ability to add non-GPU PCIe cards and a couple extra TB3 ports (we'll have to wait and see where Apple have managed to magic up a bunch of extra PCIe lanes from and what the actual bandwidth of these slots and ports is really like). No RAM beyond 192G, no more than 24 CPU cores, no more than 72 GPU cores (which need ASi-optimised software to deliver).
Yes, there's a sub-niche of the already niche 2019 MP who need PCIe expansion for specialist a/v cards, super-fast networking and extra storage - and a sub-sub-niche of those for whom external Thunderbolt won't cut it (even though that's come a long way since the Trashcan days). That's the market for the 2023 MP, and I'm not going to speculate whether those people think its worth the price. Trouble is, though, I think Apple are counting on that sub-sub-niche being so locked into MacOS workflows that it's cheaper to pay $silly for a Mac Pro than face the HR and downtime costs of switching to PC or something in the cloud.
However, its really no skin off Apple's nose that Apple Silicon isn't brilliant as a Xeon/Threadripper-killer - because it's doing just great in iPads and MacBooks that sell by the shipload, its pretty central to the $3500 ski goggles (which Apple clearly see as the next halo product to succeed the iPhone) and scales up well as far as the Studio. The "powerful personal workstation" market is probably shrinking rapidly, being eaten by increasingly capable laptops and SFF systems at one end and "pay for what you need when you need it" cloud solutions at the other.
(* I'm not sure if "Xeon" or ECC are relevant to Apple Silicon but they were absolutely 'premium' features of Intel systems that formed part of the justification for the price difference c.f. Core-i, non-ECC systems like the iMac).
I can't say as I have not heard anything about it since the initial release of the M1 Studio. At that time Apple would replace the internal SSD with one of the same capacity but they would not upgrade it. Perhaps that's changed.
Assuming for the sake of argument you are correct then being able to do so would negate this benefit of the Mac Pro.
There is no 'technical' explanation. There are ARM servers that use PCIe GPUs. You can put any GPU in the PCIe slot. But it will do nothing without GPU drivers, which Apple hasn't written.
Nvidia's GPU drivers would need to be digitally signed by Apple to work in macOS, and Apple won't sign them.
Your DisplayLink adapter isn't a GPU - all the work is done on the host machine, in software, and just sent over USB to be converted to DP etc. There is no hardware acceleration / VRAM on the dongle and performance is consequently poor.
Unified memory means the same memory is available to both the CPU and GPU. Data therefore never has to be transferred from one to the other, as in traditional architectures. This is very efficient in some ways, but has a number of downsides. Apple could implement a solution with Metal to allow the use of a dGPU. Unfortunately, Mac Pros probably account for 0.5% of Mac sales, and Apple aren't keen to complicate the Metal API for one computer.
There are various possible reasons this wasn't done sooner. One is that the Mac Pro is a low priority, and they concentrated on the other machines first (and the 2019 MP was fast, very expandable and reasonably new). Another is that the M1 Ultra used a cutting edge manufacturing technique and they wanted to use the chip in one model initially. Another is that they had intended to sell a 4-way-Max 'Extreme' alongside the 'entry level' Ultra, but hit problems making it and rather than have further delays, just released the one model this time.
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AFAIK you can buy like-for-like replacement modules in the US via the new DIY repair scheme, but you have to supply a Mac Studio serial number and it won't sell you upgrades. Whether you can work around this depends on which YouTube video you believe - maybe Apple actively blocks upgrades from working, maybe people reporting failure are trying to use invalid combinations of modules (it is pretty clear that, because these are controller-less modules you have to match module types to slots and can't just add any old module to your spare slot). Otherwise it's an expensive experiment, both in terms of cost and the risk of your Apple ID ending up in Apple's naughty book.
Except the cost of the upgrades is insane and is only likely to make sense in a "We installed 200 1TB Mac Pros without doing the research and its cheaper to pay $1000 a pop to upgrade them in situ than tear them out and replace them" or "having SSD upgrades available is a tick box in our procurement rules" situation.
It might even be a logistics thing based on the high unit price: E.g. third party distributors/service providers might need a couple of Mac Pros in stock for urgent orders/replacements - and rather than guess which SSD sizes you will need it would be more efficient to stock (say) several 1TB MPs and just one of each upgrade kit.
For most MP customers the storage upgrade solution would be to add PCIe SSDs, which could be anything from a cheap single M.2 adapter to ridiculously large/fast x16 SSD card.
I take this to mean nothing has changed since the Studios initial release.
Understood it's expensive but apparently it is an option in the Mac Pro whereas it's an artificial limitation for the Studio.
True, but it does cost more. And no ecc Memory ever. Also no ram expansion ever. Oh and your gpu won’t be as good as a lowly 6800xt. So…Now do the maxed version he was talking about and tell me how honest that is.
Also and importantly, they didn’t say it’s a better “value” but that it’s cheaper. Just dishonest.
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Comparing the 2023 Mac Pro to the 2019 Mac Pro is foolish. They're no longer identical systems. One wouldn't compare the price of a maxed out Mac Mini Pro to the base model 2023 Mac Pro. Why would one do so between then 2019 and 2023 Mac Pros? Because they both have the same name?
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There IS a really significant difference in storage upgradability, but it’s for a very niche market. The Mac Studio can ONLY take Apple’s controllerless modules (even if Apple WOULD sell upgrades, they are proprietary, and I’m sure they’re heavily patent protected). The current maximum capacity is 8 TB, and it would be at Apple pricing, with a theoretical possibility of 16 TB if Apple decides to go that way (the chips are available to go to 8 TB per module).
The Mac Pro, on the other hand, has an internal capacity of 200 TB of PCIe storage with all but the first 8 TB available at market pricing. 8 TB in Apple slots is the same as the Mac Studio (probably, although not certainly, the same modules). The remaining 192 TB is in the six PCIe slots - quad NVMe PCIe cards are inexpensive commodity items, and SHOuLD be driverless. Six such cards, each with four 8 TB SSDs, should work - the power and signal both seem to be sufficient.
The reason this is so niche is that there are a number of solutions for putting bunches of NVMe drives on a Thunderbolt bus that do the same thing. OWC makes several, with the most modern being the Mercury Pro Duo ($229 for the box plus $129 each for four-drive sleds, of which it can take two). Around $500 to handle eight NVMe drives (the PCIe cards to handle the same eight drives in a Mac Pro are probably $350). It’s very fast (~2500 MB/second), although the PCIe cards with fast drives would be faster. The Studio with a M1 or M2 Ultra chip has six separate Thunderbolt busses (there are actually EIGHT, but there’s no way to reach the last two, which aren’t connected to ports), so multiple storage enclosures won’t conflict.
The only reasons to use the Pro for storage are either if the difference between ~2500 MB/s and ~4500 MB/s matters (PCIe cards aren’t going to hit Apple’s 6000-8000 MB/s either) OR if you like the look of a single Mac Pro $2500+ better than the look of a Mac Studio and some Thunderbolt enclosures.
The Mac Pro, on the other hand, has an internal capacity of 200 TB of PCIe storage with all but the first 8 TB available at market pricing. 8 TB in Apple slots is the same as the Mac Studio (probably, although not certainly, the same modules). The remaining 192 TB is in the six PCIe slots - quad NVMe PCIe cards are inexpensive commodity items, and SHOuLD be driverless. Six such cards, each with four 8 TB SSDs, should work - the power and signal both seem to be sufficient.
The reason this is so niche is that there are a number of solutions for putting bunches of NVMe drives on a Thunderbolt bus that do the same thing. OWC makes several, with the most modern being the Mercury Pro Duo ($229 for the box plus $129 each for four-drive sleds, of which it can take two). Around $500 to handle eight NVMe drives (the PCIe cards to handle the same eight drives in a Mac Pro are probably $350). It’s very fast (~2500 MB/second), although the PCIe cards with fast drives would be faster. The Studio with a M1 or M2 Ultra chip has six separate Thunderbolt busses (there are actually EIGHT, but there’s no way to reach the last two, which aren’t connected to ports), so multiple storage enclosures won’t conflict.
The only reasons to use the Pro for storage are either if the difference between ~2500 MB/s and ~4500 MB/s matters (PCIe cards aren’t going to hit Apple’s 6000-8000 MB/s either) OR if you like the look of a single Mac Pro $2500+ better than the look of a Mac Studio and some Thunderbolt enclosures.
Can you expand upon your PCIe speed calculations? I have an HP Quad Z Turbo drive with 4 x 512GB SSDs and it's currently achieving 11GB/sec read speeds. I imagine I would reach the 16GB/sec PCIe 3.0 bandwidth if I were to move up to 1TB drives (this assumes 1TB drives are faster than 512GB drives which testing appears to show that's the case). 4.5GB/sec seems awfully slow.