MP All Models 2023 Mac Pro! [MERGED]

[GrumpyDonkey]

Lol never underestimate the hopium. There was some quite wishful thinking on price even despite the fact the price of the Mac Studio was already known, and the Mac Pro couldn't be cheaper than that.

People have been spouting it since the transition from Intel to AS was announced and not one has it happened. Whilst it always good to have hope in your sole and not soap in your hole. When was the last time Apple offer real bang for the buck? 2008 and 2009 Mac Pro's. It's been 15 years of overprive mediocre hardware and almost as long with terrible Mac OS updates.

No one epxects Apple computers to be cheap, but they are taking the urine that little bit more every release cycle.

 

[avro707]

The new one isn't good value either, in Australia the base model is A$11,999.00.

At least the wheels are a bargain at A$600...

The full spec one is A$20,008.00.

The best option if I need to upgrade would be to stay on Windows 11 Pro for Workstations and put in Radeon Pro W7900 and probably upgrade CPU to W3275M.

 

[randy85]

People have been spouting it since the transition from Intel to AS was announced and not one has it happened. Whilst it always good to have hope in your sole and not soap in your hole. When was the last time Apple offer real bang for the buck? 2008 and 2009 Mac Pro's. It's been 15 years of overprive mediocre hardware and almost as long with terrible Mac OS updates.

No one epxects Apple computers to be cheap, but they are taking the urine that little bit more every release cycle.

To be fair, the M1/M2 Macbooks and Mac Minis have been good value and a real step up from the Intel equivalents. In the midrange you could make an argument either way that the MAX/ULTRA products are either expensive or reasonable for the performance you get.

It's just on the high-end workstations they're struggling to compete. The $50k Intel Mac Pros were obscene and lacked a refresh to keep up and this M2 Mac Pro seems a little pointless next to the Studio...

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Im super insulted they raised the price of the Mac Pro $1000 over the 7,1 and $3550 over the studio for 6 lousy slots, when it, the 8,1, is a piece of **** offering less. They are simply gouging their customers. And gave a big FU to its pro/enthusiast customers not supporting 3rd party GPUs.

Yet, the Mac press shovels lies and propaganda burying that the machine is MORE expensive while offering less with bs like this:

M2 Ultra cheap? The most expensive Mac Pro is surprisingly affordable

Compared to the 2019 Mac Pro, the new M2 Ultra Apple Silicon workstations feel, well -- dare I say it? -- downright inexpensive.

www.zdnet.com

Fully-specced Apple silicon Mac Pro more affordable than last version that maxed out at over $50,000 - 9to5Mac

Does the Vision Pro price seem a little steep? It’s just a fraction of a maxed-out Apple silicon Mac Pro...

9to5mac.com

Unveiling the new Mac Pro: astounding specs, priced low

Time has a way of humbling our demands for technological advances, and in 2019, a maxed-out Mac Pro would set you back $53,000. Today, Apple announced a long-awaited update to the pro-level desktop computer, with more impressive specs and a much more modest price tag.

appleinsider.com

In 2019, our build consisted of several performance components, such as graphics cards and afterburners. Those components now live in Apple's dedicated silicon, the M2 Ultra, with performance that eclipses Intel-based Macs.

Um no, you lying bastards. You do not get a 6800duo in apple silicon. The duo sill absolutely DESTROYS the M2 ultra in most graphics tests. You also do not get 1.5TB of RAM. Insanity.

A marvel in apple propaganda and one of many reasons why the Mac/tech press is dead.


I'm skipping this machine. Praying that its replacement will support GPUs and at least it would have PCI 5 and extreme CPUs...

 

[orionquest]

The Pci tax

Yeah seriously. It's basically a Studio M2 Ultra with PCI slots shoved into the same Mac Pro case.

 

[Ethosik]

when the 5090 comes out it will smoke any apple chip, as the 4090 does now. but at least you can upgrade your 4090 with out buying a whole new machine for the AS M3 in 18 months.

My problem with PC hardware though is it heats up any room that it's in. My i9 13900k and 4090, even on idle, makes my office HOT after an hour or so. Even with my AC on it struggles to keep my office cool.

 

[vadimyuryev]

Yeah, sure, i get it. Let's see how the machine purrs with the right (if the same as mp 2019) cooling, there should be not a hint of throttling at all....if I remember well, there was a video (

) that was showing the m1 ultra is not using it's full potential...

Yep, we're not expecting any throttling at all. Here's how the M1 Ultra in the Mac Studio performed under full CPU & GPU load. Temps actually went down because frequencies went down. Something else was throttling the system, not the temps at all.

 

[AnimeFunTv]

I dunno if you guys even looked inside. There ARE Pci-e Power terminals on the board just like on the Intel Xeon MacPro. So looks (Possible) for an aftermarket GPU's to be powered. Now obviously is still not confirmed that Apple will provide drivers for aftermarket GPU's.... Maaaaaaaaybe they'll let AMD/Nvidia create drivers? This is just my two cents.

 

[prefuse07]

I dunno if you guys even looked inside. There ARE Pci-e Power terminals on the board just like on the Intel Xeon MacPro. So looks (Possible) for an aftermarket GPU's to be powered. Now obviously is still not confirmed that Apple will provide drivers for aftermarket GPU's.... Maaaaaaaaybe they'll let AMD/Nvidia create drivers? This is just my two cents.

View attachment 2213230

I'm thinking they will bring Apple GPUs by way of those compute modules that were rumored but we heard nothing of today.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

You will not like the Apple SSD kit price tags. I think 1TB is $1k.

Apple knows that the Mac Pro will sell that poorly as previous Mac Pro buyers do not want/need PCIe slots.

Those who wanted that expandability were riding on the economies of scale of those who had no choice but to buy an unwanted feature to get the most powerful Mac.

Now with the Mac Studio power users have a choice.

I and many others are left with no choice. Need real GPU power? Leave the Mac. No 3rd party GPUs, no Apple GPUs, no eGPUs.

 

[mcnallym]

I feel like they wanted to do more with it, but perhaps the 'Extreme' chip which wasn't meant to be on this occasion. What we've got is something that ticks the box for AS Mac Pro (a completion of the transition) and leaves the door open for something more impressive with M3.

I personally wouldn't spend an extra £3K for the form factor and slots over the Mac Studio, but if you're a large company and it keeps your workspace cleaner then maybe it's not that bad. After all, for many workflows it's better at £10K than the previous Intel one at £50K.

3k gets you the PCI-E slots presumably not on the end of a TB Bus.
1700 gets you an Xmac studio from sonnettech that gives 3 PCI-E slots on the end of a TB bus.
1099 if go the echo 3 desktop.

i guess if actually want the pci e slots and not a seperate box and not on tb then might not be such a bad price afterall,

if using hdx cards etc is 3k overall such a big deal with the returns earnings.

I don‘t know but perhaps others can give more information regarding this.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I dunno if you guys even looked inside. There ARE Pci-e Power terminals on the board just like on the Intel Xeon MacPro. So looks (Possible) for an aftermarket GPU's to be powered. Now obviously is still not confirmed that Apple will provide drivers for aftermarket GPU's.... Maaaaaaaaybe they'll let AMD/Nvidia create drivers? This is just my two cents.

View attachment 2213230

Let me make this a touch easier to see:

 

[JayKay514]

I feel for those of you who were let down by this announcement.

That said, there's a lot of Pro users in other areas for whom this will be fantastic.

• Audio engineers / recording studios - even with the M1 Mini, we saw remarkable multitrack recording power. M2 Ultra will turbocharge that yet again.
• Users of Universal Audio (UAD) DSP cards will be able to migrate to Apple Silicon, so they can run all their plugins and UAD's Luna DAW which requires their hardware for realtime audio monitoring.
• Similarly, Avid ProTools users can use their HDX cards to enable DSP-powered aspects of that DAW.
• General 2D arts will be pretty fantastic on it - it'll be a killer machine for HDR photography flows, video and cinema work.
• CAD / design / rendering / architecture stuff!
• I expect everyone with a desk cluttered with external capture cards, SSDs etc. will be happy to be able to put those into PCIe slots.

Let's also not forget that this is a jump to PCIe 4.0, which is 2x the speed of the previous generation. (I suspect that Intel's delay in implementing PCIe 4.0 is why Apple had to invent the MPX module and connector as a workaround.) 4x speed on this system will equal 8x speed on the old one, 8x = 16x, and 16x = 32x by comparison.

As it has two x16 slots, that's like having four on the old MP 7.1, or 2x 32x, and four 8x slots, equals eight on the old one. So that's a lot of bandwidth for peripherals. I expect there will be some kind of compute card or AS GPU to make use of it, mostly because Apple's certainly betting that the new MP will be needed for developing apps and content for Vision Pro.

Lastly, given how power-efficient the M-series chips are, if it has roughly the same thermal management as the previous Mac Pro, that gives the M2 Ultra a lot more thermal headroom vs the Studio. I look forward to seeing the benchmarks.

 

[Tyler O'Bannon]

People are hating on it but here’s what will happen:

1. The current machine will service a large population of MP users needs.

And

2. It will only get better from here.

Not only will base ASi chips get better (M3 family, M4 family, etc.), but MP will get more frequent updates with each chip release, and more advanced silicon as time goes on (it’s own even higher end chips and/or expansion modules of CPU and GPU).

The last 3 years have presented external challenges that have prevented apple from fully doing what they wanted to do.

They will get there.

 

[avro707]

I dunno if you guys even looked inside. There ARE Pci-e Power terminals on the board just like on the Intel Xeon MacPro. So looks (Possible) for an aftermarket GPU's to be powered. Now obviously is still not confirmed that Apple will provide drivers for aftermarket GPU's.... Maaaaaaaaybe they'll let AMD/Nvidia create drivers? This is just my two cents.

Doubtful, that would make be Apple backing down from the war with NVidia.

 

[danwells]

Is there anything separating this machine from an M2 Ultra Mac Studio with a PCIe cage attached over Thunderbolt? I don't see any difference at all. It has the same CPU, RAM, GPU and storage options, all for exactly $3000 more (US pricing).

Where I'm not exactly sure is whether there are certain special-purpose PCIe cards that will work internally, but not in a cage - or that will be much faster internally than in a cage? The obvious one would be GPUs, which both max out Thunderbolt buses all too easily and stress the power supplies on many cages - but it is confirmed as of a few hours ago that external GPUs still don't work on Apple Silicon. Is there anything else - something that actually IS supported on Apple Silicon, where internal PCIe is better than a cage?

If not, that's the most expensive card cage in the world... There are perfectly valid reasons for using a card cage, some of them not all THAT special-purpose. In addition to audio and video interfaces, PCIe cards stuffed full of NVMe drives are a comparatively inexpensive route to a ton of fast storage. All of the above work very well in an external card cage - and card cages range from a couple of hundred dollars (for one slot) to ~$1600 (for three slots plus a space for your Mac Studio, all in a rack mount form factor with plenty of power) or ~$2100 for a six-slot configuration.

There are a few edge cases where Apple's "card cage"is more capable - one is multiple double wide cards. The Sonnet 3 slot cages have all their slots set up as single width - they'll take a double card, but it'll block the adjacent slot. Apple's internal cage will accept up to four double cards without blocking any slots. The second is power - the Sonnet triple cage provides 300W of power across three slots (all three cards can draw 75W each, plus there's one 75W aux connector). Apple seems to provide 750W across six slots (75W x6 plus 300W in auxiliaries), with the ability to send more than 150W total to a single card.

The other possible place where it's more capable is that it's PCIe 4. The Sonnets aren't yet - not sure if that's a matter of time or if Thunderbolt would be a bottleneck?

How many cards are not GPUs, but are either double-width, REALLY power hungry or PCIe 4? I think the number is small, but it may be non-zero. Their users are the niche market for the new Mac Pro.

 

[blackquartz]

Seems to me the new Mac Pro is dead on arrival.

 

[JimmyG]

No TB5?! Oofah. This machine will be old well before its time.

No accompanying 8K/60 HDR, oop, XDR monitor announcement to go with this?! What the hey, Apple.

 

[blackquartz]

People are hating on it but here’s what will happen:

1. The current machine will service a large population of MP users needs.

And

2. It will only get better from here.

Not only will base ASi chips get better (M3 family, M4 family, etc.), but MP will get more frequent updates with each chip release, and more advanced silicon as time goes on (it’s own even higher end chips and/or expansion modules of CPU and GPU).

The last 3 years have presented external challenges that have prevented apple from fully doing what they wanted to do.

They will get there.

Yeah? Achieving the 3090 comparable power when? 2029? Generally speaking most choices taken on this product are driven by marketing, which is sad and frustrating since the product originally was so much full of promise, potential and we bought into that.

Saddest part is they do have everything they need to give us far better and more capable hardware, hell, even the fricking AMD cards are ready, theres a PRO w7900 variant already in the market but Apple opted released DOA hardware once again.

Like someone said, seems like Apple just doesn't want to be embarrassed by third party GPUs.

 

[InuNacho]

• General 2D arts will be pretty fantastic on it - it'll be a killer machine for HDR photography flows, video and cinema work.
• I expect everyone with a desk cluttered with external capture cards, SSDs etc. will be happy to be able to put those into PCIe slots.

Nope not me. My "ole' faithful" 2010 Mac Pro was full of 3.5 drives.
You know whats great? Some big fat 12TB+ drives for slow storage of finished projects.

With Apple the beauty of this Mac Pro is that your 3.5 drives are OUTSIDE the computer!

 

[arw]

Just crossposting it here as well.
Looks like the top/8th apparent PCIe slot isn’t actually PCIe (electronically) but (for now) something exclusive to Apples Thunderbolt card.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-9-1-what-if.2391629/post-32219879

EDIT: @deconstruct60 explains it in more detail. Basically a 6-port Thunderbolt pass-through card.

 

[profcutter]

I’ve done professional video production. I don’t understand this machine at all. What’s the point? I’d rather have the studio with the a cage or thunderbolt peripherals. PCIe4 seems…. An odd choice.

 

[jscipione]

I was wrong about PCIe slots, bravo Apple for that. Otherwise I was pretty much spot on, it’s a Mac Studio on steroids, no m3. Yes the M2 Mac Pro has PCIe slots but without discrete GPU support it is close to pointless. And the price went up from the Intel model… outrageous. If this was $3,999 instead of $6,999 it would be a great machine. iMac Pro was $5k, Intel Mac Pro $6, M2 Mac Pro $7 which means Apple is over pricing these machines by a lot. May the Intel Mac Pro continue to reign as the greatest Macintosh ever made for years to come, even if it was overpriced from the get-go as the new one.

 

[Adult80HD]

I feel for those of you who were let down by this announcement.

That said, there's a lot of Pro users in other areas for whom this will be fantastic.

• Audio engineers / recording studios - even with the M1 Mini, we saw remarkable multitrack recording power. M2 Ultra will turbocharge that yet again.
• Users of Universal Audio (UAD) DSP cards will be able to migrate to Apple Silicon, so they can run all their plugins and UAD's Luna DAW which requires their hardware for realtime audio monitoring.
• Similarly, Avid ProTools users can use their HDX cards to enable DSP-powered aspects of that DAW.
• General 2D arts will be pretty fantastic on it - it'll be a killer machine for HDR photography flows, video and cinema work.
• CAD / design / rendering / architecture stuff!
• I expect everyone with a desk cluttered with external capture cards, SSDs etc. will be happy to be able to put those into PCIe slots.

Let's also not forget that this is a jump to PCIe 4.0, which is 2x the speed of the previous generation. (I suspect that Intel's delay in implementing PCIe 4.0 is why Apple had to invent the MPX module and connector as a workaround.) 4x speed on this system will equal 8x speed on the old one, 8x = 16x, and 16x = 32x by comparison.

As it has two x16 slots, that's like having four on the old MP 7.1, or 2x 32x, and four 8x slots, equals eight on the old one. So that's a lot of bandwidth for peripherals. I expect there will be some kind of compute card or AS GPU to make use of it, mostly because Apple's certainly betting that the new MP will be needed for developing apps and content for Vision Pro.

Lastly, given how power-efficient the M-series chips are, if it has roughly the same thermal management as the previous Mac Pro, that gives the M2 Ultra a lot more thermal headroom vs the Studio. I look forward to seeing the benchmarks.

You can just save $$ and buy a Studio for "general 2D arts" and CAD/design architecture stuff though. Heck, its what I did today when this snoozefest of a MP was announced. The only real need/use for those slots now is specialized add-in cards like capture cards and audio production cards.

I'm hoping we see much more frequent updates to these now and not years and years with silence. I'd also love to see some Apple add-in cards like ANE compute cards, but who knows at this point. At least they've left a crack in the door open for that.

 

[Melbourne Park]

It seems to me that Apple's architecture can never support external or add on GPUs. That seems a surprise to many here. But its pretty obvious since Apple shares its RAM with its VRAM. Surely that has been known by everyone here for a considerable time?