MP All Models Everyone's complaining about the Mac Pro's 192 GB RAM limit and no video card support. Do older MPs with 1.5 TB RAM outperform it?

[Longplays]

When users of a certain use case dwindle to the point it cannot be economically serviced further then any business sadly let go.

AMD/Intel >7.5 million/year workstation business. Apple sadly has ~75,000/year.

 

[Longplays]

Big difference between Trash Can and Apple Silicon: Apple Silicon actually works and doesn't overheat 😂

And has PCI slots.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

And has PCI slots.

Also has ports that aren't crap like Thunderbolt 1 and 2 were

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Big difference between Trash Can and Apple Silicon: Apple Silicon actually works and doesn't overheat 😂

No difference in the arguments though. “If I don’t need or want it, I don’t think you should be able to get it”.

 

[impulse462]

And has PCI slots.

Yeah sure...PCIe slots that can't be used for 80% of the things people want them to be used for but ok, sure have the physical slot and scream to the mountain tops about how revolutionary it is (talking about apples marketing not you here)

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Yeah sure...PCIe slots that can't be used for 80% of the things people want them to be used for but ok, sure have the physical slot and scream to the mountain tops about how revolutionary it is (talking about apples marketing not you here)

Also not slots. It has slot. Because after you put in one 16lane storage card there are no more lanes left for any other cards.

 

[impulse462]

Also not slots. It has slot. Because after you put in one 16lane storage card there are no more lanes left for any other cards.

I hadnt really paid attention to that, but that is the most Apple thing I've read in a while lmao.

 

[Longplays]

Yeah sure...PCIe slots that can't be used for 80% of the things people want them to be used for but ok, sure have the physical slot and scream to the mountain tops about how revolutionary it is (talking about apples marketing not you here)

Apple's identified use case for the 2023 Mac Pro and these are:

• Music production
• Video transcoding
• 3D rendering
• Animation

Apple last did business with Nvidia in 2012. It did not work out so a RTX 4090 wouldn't work with any macOS version of the past decade. If you need it you can get it through GeForce NOW.

Core i9 is not a Xeon.

What is the financial incentive to go the extra mile for ~20% of impacted ~75,000 Mac Pro users that are up in arms over the CPU, dGPU, eGPU, RAM and SSD?

People are up in arms over a $1k bump to cover worsening economies of scale what more than that to to fund the R&D expense for said modularization?

Apple can live without ~15,000/year Mac Pro sales when it means a net gain.

So either buy/keep a 2019 SKU or go Dell/HP/Lenovo.

Dell moved 3.1712 million workstations last year vs Apple's ~75,000.

I am not being mean but I am putting numbers in relation to user demands.

Ya'll aint that many.

 

[impulse462]

Apple's identified use case for the 2023 Mac Pro and these are:

• Music production
• Video transcoding
• 3D rendering
• Animation

Apple last did business with Nvidia in 2012. It did not work out so a RTX 4090 wouldn't work with any macOS version of the past decade. If you need it you can get it through GeForce NOW.

Core i9 is not a Xeon.

What is the financial incentive to go the extra mile for ~20% of impacted ~75,000 Mac Pro users?

Thanks for the links I wasnt actually aware of them. Music production/Video transcoding I can get due to the accelerators, but other than their friends at pixar, I have a hard time believing major animation/rendering studios will use ASi mac pro in its current iteration given nvidias dominance in pure compute/TFLOPs using their GPUs.

Also I'm not entirely sure why you mentioned core i9 or 4090, neither of which are workstation class products (nor which I use since I dont play games).

Inspite of all this, the past version came with a Xeon and the ability to install nvidia gpus and other OS's as well as having support for the 4 mentioned use cases you linked above. I'm not entirely sure what your argument is here.

 

[avro707]

The whole topic is just stirring up a flame war.

The solution is just to use Windows 11 Pro for workstations going forward and sidestep the Apple block on GPU drivers for modern graphics cards.

Our 7,1 machines have enough ram capacity at the maximum, the 28c CPU is also okay - if we add W7900 Radeon Pro then that’s enough to keep it going strong for years to come.

What’s annoying is we are told that we actually shouldn’t have bought this computer but instead got a PC workstation and a Mac Studio. Never mind that previously the one computer could do the duties of both. And this coming from people who clearly aren’t owners of multiple Mac Pros.


If Apple would put driver support for the latest Radeon GPUs in MacOS a lot of people wouldn’t be complaining. We could get away from expensive MPX modules and onto faster newer GPUs.

 

[Longplays]

Thanks for the links I wasnt actually aware of them. Music production/Video transcoding I can get due to the accelerators, but other than their friends at pixar, I have a hard time believing major animation/rendering studios will use ASi mac pro in its current iteration given nvidias dominance in pure compute/TFLOPs using their GPUs.

Knowing how Apple markets anything helps provide an idea what they designed it for.

SkyWalker Sound also use Mac Pros.

Also I'm not entirely sure why you mentioned core i9 or 4090, neither of which are workstation class products (nor which I use since I dont play games).

If you do a keyword search of 4090 for any threads relating to Mac Pro you'd see so many gamers whinning about lack of 4090 & Core i9.

I scratch my head and wonder.... "why are you i9 & 4090 users here?"

Inspite of all this, the past version came with a Xeon and the ability to install nvidia gpus and other OS's as well as having support for the 4 mentioned use cases you linked above. I'm not entirely sure what your argument is here.

Per Apple.com the last Mac Pro that supported any Nvidia GPU was the Early 2009 model.

That was over 14 years ago.

 

[vinegarshots]

Apple's identified use case for the 2023 Mac Pro and these are:

• Music production
• Video transcoding
• 3D rendering
• Animation

Apple last did business with Nvidia in 2012. It did not work out so a RTX 4090 wouldn't work with any macOS version of the past decade. If you need it you can get it through GeForce NOW.

Core i9 is not a Xeon.

What is the financial incentive to go the extra mile for ~20% of impacted ~75,000 Mac Pro users that are up in arms over the CPU, dGPU, eGPU, RAM and SSD?

People are up in arms over a $1k bump to cover worsening economies of scale what more than that to to fund the R&D expense for said modularization?

Apple can live without ~15,000/year Mac Pro sales when it means a net gain.

So either buy/keep a 2019 SKU or go Dell/HP/Lenovo.

Dell moved 3.1712 million workstations last year vs Apple's ~75,000.

I am not being mean but I am putting numbers in relation to user demands.

Ya'll aint that many.

Geforce Now is for gaming. It doesn't do anything for people who need an Nvidia card for business use.

 

[impulse462]

Knowing how Apple markets anything helps provide an idea what they designed it for.

LucasFilms also use Mac Pros.

If you do a keyword search of 4090 for any threads relating to Mac Pro you'd see so many gamers whinning about lack of 4090 & Core i9.

I scratch my head and wonder.... "why are you i9 & 4090 users here?"

Per Apple.com the last Mac Pro that supported any Nvidia GPU was the Early 2009 model.

That was over 14 years ago.

I don't think you're following what I'm saying. I own a 2019 mac pro and use an nvidia gpu from 2018 (titan rtx) running on another operating system. so yes technically its not officially supported, but I can still run it due to its versatility.

I agree that gamers whining about core i9 and 4090 dont really belong in these threads and I have never suggested I want to see those components in a mac pro which is a workstation not a gaming computer.

Also while that marketing video is cool, its just that - marketing. Almost all these renderings are done on render farms with clusters running linux. If they want to show off locally how people do things, sure fine thats one use case at one company.

But again you're missing the point that the previous gen can run other GPUs and operating systems even if not officially supported by apple, which is something I'm literally doing right now. If you can't get that, I think this discussion is over for me at least.

 

[Longplays]

I don't think you're following what I'm saying. I own a 2019 mac pro and use an nvidia gpu from 2018 (titan rtx) running on another operating system*. so yes technically its not officially supported, but I can still run it due to its versatility.

*Emphasis my own...

You're not tied to macOS.

Dell can service your needs better than Apple as they have the economies of scale millions of workstations a year rather than under 100,000.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Early benchmarks suggest Apple M2 Ultra could be slower than Core i9-13900KS, RTX 4080

Starting off with the CPU scores, the M2 Ultra notched up 2,809 points in the Geekbench 6 single-core benchmark and 21,531 points in the multi-core tests. This...

www.techspot.com

 

[Longplays]

Early benchmarks suggest Apple M2 Ultra could be slower than Core i9-13900KS, RTX 4080

Starting off with the CPU scores, the M2 Ultra notched up 2,809 points in the Geekbench 6 single-core benchmark and 21,531 points in the multi-core tests. This...

www.techspot.com

@impulse462 comparing a Ultra to a i9... see :-D

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

@impulse462 comparing a Ultra to a i9... see :-D

Yea, doesn’t go well for the ultra.

 

[avro707]

You're not tied to macOS.

We are here because Apple built the 7,1 and gave it the ability to use other operating systems natively.

Do you have a 7,1 or predecessors?

 

[impulse462]

*Emphasis my own...

You're not tied to macOS.

Why are you even here? 😅

Dell can service your needs better than Apple as they have the economies of scale millions of workstations a year rather than under 100,000.

This is a valid question...I'm perfectly aware that I can get a Dell workstation, which are great machines, although a little boring for me. In this case I'd just make my own linux box.

If you want the true answer: When i was a kid in my computer lab they had powermacs and then 06 mac pros. they were things of beauty. I started building computers in high school cuz i played a lot of games at the time but I always wanted an original cheesegrater. When 2013 rolls around I heard rumors about the new mac pro so I waited for that and lo and behold and I couldn't put a GPU in it, despite its cool aesthetics. the 2019 mac pro coincided with me being in grad school doing ML research so it was a huge breath of fresh air getting a desktop workstation class mac that can be customized via hardware and software. I guess that breath of fresh air is really a last gasp of air.

You make sound points from the business side of why NOT to make a mac pro, but i feel like for a desktop workstation class product the decisions made are the antithesis for people like me, no matter how in the minority I am I guess.

 

[Longplays]

This is a valid question...I'm perfectly aware that I can get a Dell workstation, which are great machines, although a little boring for me. In this case I'd just make my own linux box.

If you want the true answer: When i was a kid in my computer lab they had powermacs and then 06 mac pros. they were things of beauty. I started building computers in high school cuz i played a lot of games at the time but I always wanted an original cheesegrater. When 2013 rolls around I heard rumors about the new mac pro so I waited for that and lo and behold and I couldn't put a GPU in it, despite its cool aesthetics. the 2019 mac pro coincided with me being in grad school doing ML research so it was a huge breath of fresh air getting a desktop workstation class mac that can be customized via hardware and software. I guess that breath of fresh air is really a last gasp of air.

You make sound points from the business side of why NOT to make a mac pro, but i feel like for a desktop workstation class product the decisions made are the antithesis for people like me, no matter how in the minority I am I guess.

My apologies for overstepping my bounds if I come across that way.

I appreciate the candidate response you gave.

I felt compelled to explain why businesses like Apple do what they do.

I'm like you, on the similar boat but with the iMac 27".

Apple decided to not refresh it with the iMac 24" but it was pointed out on MR that it is possible that the 27" wasn't that popular but considering there was the iMac 27" Core i9 & iMac Pro Xeon then it makes little sense.

I am hopeful that a refreshed model will be out 2 months from now for the 25th release anniversary. I do not mind if the RAM & SSD cannot be upgraded but when my use case changes then I'd replace it after 4-6 years.

 

[goMac]

Also I'm not entirely sure why you mentioned core i9 or 4090, neither of which are workstation class products (nor which I use since I dont play games).

M2 Ultra is not workstation class, so the comparison is fair.

 

[tubuliferous]

The Mac Pro could have 5000 cpu and 10000 gpu cores and I still wouldn't be able to load 512gb-1TB of orchestral samples in my DAW template.

Yeah, good point. The demand for hundreds of gigabytes of RAM in a Mac is pretty narrow at the moment, but for those who actually do utilize hundreds of gigs of RAM, the new Mac Pro is disappointing.

It's pretty clear this Mac Pro is not the Mac Pro Apple wanted to release but it had to sell something just to keep to the Apple Silicon transition schedule. About two years ago there were rumors of a planned Mac Pro with 64 CPU cores, 128 GPU cores, and 512 GB RAM. While such rumors must always taken with a grain of salt, it's reasonable to believe that target is achievable on Apple Silicon, and it's downright bizarre for the CPU/GPU/RAM specs of the real-world Mac Pro to identically match the specs of the concurrent Mac Studio. Something must have gone wrong with Apple's more ambitious Mac Pro plans (with the just-released machine a stopgap on the way to something more firmly top-tier).

On the side topic of the 76-core GPU and the lack of GPU modularity (mentioned elsewhere in this thread), it should be noted that while the M2 Ultra GPU will surely post impressive numbers considering energy draw, it is still massively outclassed by current-generation of consumer-grade Nvidia hardware in terms of raw performance. A hypothetical 128-core Apple Silicon GPU would probably be competitive with Nvidia's top consumer-grade hardware.

Hopefully sooner rather than later Apple will release the Mac Pro it actually wanted to sell us.

 

[orionquest]

It boggles the mind that the apple aplogists cant seem to understand with the mac pro 2019 you could customize your computer based on your needs...what is so difficult to understand about that?

if you're like the composer previously mentioned, you dont buy an expensive GPU and spend money on RAM. If you want to do AI/ML or 3D work you spend money on a GPU and can install a different operating system.

With the 2023 mac pro you literaly cannot to do either of those. its 0/2 for these common workloads for the type of person buying this computer. the new computer has LESS functionality than the old version with 2 real world examples. how is that hard to understand?? how is it hard to understand people being upset that a new more expensive computer does LESS than the old model?

how is "go buy another vendors computer" an acceptable answer if previous versions of the computer could do more? take off your apple fanboy hat for once and try to answer that question.

Ding ding ding...

Apple is really forcing users into a corner, basically welcome back to Apple of the 80's and 90's were it was all proprietary.

I bet some, or a lot, of high end users are going to go elsewhere for their custom needs and won't bother with whatever comes next M3, extrerme whatever, what's the point when you can't do anything unless it's blessed by Apple, and that is no professional way to work. Who wants to sink money and time into product with such a narrow use case and who knows what inflexible options will be forced upon you next.

As well as this unifed arch works efficiently, it seems to be showing some weakness in the higher end. Or maybe Apple should not have implemented it across the board and still offered the Mac Pro as a truely explandible Mac of all components. But part of me guess's this unifed arch doesn't allow that, and it's part of it's shortcomings.

 

[MallardDuck]

I'm sure Apple didn't compare its AS Mac Pro to a top specced out Intel Mac Pro. But I'm curious since everyone is complaining that we only get 192 GB RAM max here...does anyone have a Mac Pro with anywhere close to 1.5 TB RAM and if so how does that compare in benchmarks to the new Mac Pro? What about with a top end GPU installed?

For workloads built for the video card, it runs circles around the new machines.

 

[Wizec]

If only Apple was able to deliver a M3 Extreme that allegedly tops out at 384GB memory... would that be satisfactory?

No, we need the M4 Plaid edition to get to 1TB + of RAM 🤭