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Disappointed with Mac Pro 2023?


  • Total voters
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NT1440

macrumors Pentium
May 18, 2008
15,092
22,158
Looking at nVidia's skyrocketing valuation on the backs of ARM datacenter SoCs coupled with "AI" accelerator compute modules, it might be worth a look for apple, but I just don't expect Tim's Apple to branch that far away from consumer devices and services when they've made so much money in that niche.
Oh I don’t expect it either, I just see feasibility. If anything were to happen on that space I’d think it would be more in line with supplying their data centers to reduce power consumption.
 

JouniS

macrumors 6502a
Nov 22, 2020
638
399
Yep. There's preciois little market between the M2Ultra and the datacenter/renderfarm market. Could apple potentially sell a lot of SoCs to datacenter if they really pushed on that front?
There is a market: the one where a workstation is effectively data center hardware on your desk. You use it to develop and test software that will run in the data center, and for quickly running small jobs that need higher-end hardware. You could do all that in the data center, but the productivity gains from not having to deal with the infrastructure and bureacracy of doing things in the cloud / HPC cluster can be substantial.

For some reason, Apple has never cared about that market. From their perspective, a professional has always been someone who works with something visual or with sound, not someone working with data.

I'm not sure if Apple is capable of making competitive data center hardware for external users. The people working for Apple can, but Apple as a company probably not. The corporate culture of a company making consumer devices may be incompatible with the demands of that business.
 

Stevenyo

macrumors 6502
Oct 2, 2020
310
478
I was aware of the AS transition when I bought my 2019 MBP 16" Core i7 but was assuming a modest ~20% performance bump.

It did not occur to me that the transition would be from 14nm to 5nm chips and that SoC improvements on latency, power consumption, battery life, performance per watt, raw performance and making Mac logicboards as tiny as iPhone ones were the net benefit.

If I knew that then I'd have ceased any purchase of Mac notebooks from 2015-2020.
For me it was realizing my iPhone Xs was better at some video tasks than my fully loaded 2015 MBP. And then that an A12x iPad Pro was a much better computer than any 2016-2019 15" MBP in every measurable way. It lasted far longer on battery, it was quiet and cool to touch. It was a powerful photo and video editor, etc. So I knew I wanted iPad guts in a Mac, or I might as well just switch to an iPad and hackintosh tower and save several grand. But that 16" intel was mighty tempting. If I ever found a good refurb deal on one with the 9980hk and 5600M GPU I probably would have lept on it. As it is, I bought and returned refurb 9980hk + 5300m models several times in late 2020. So much more capable than what came before, so close to being my ideal laptop, but at that point the M1 was out and I decided to wait for the AS MBP. (Still a bit of regret, I ended up owning both the M1Max and a compact PC gaming laptop when the intel 16" would have done both jobs passably)
 
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Stevenyo

macrumors 6502
Oct 2, 2020
310
478
There is a market: the one where a workstation is effectively data center hardware on your desk. You use it to develop and test software that will run in the data center, and for quickly running small jobs that need higher-end hardware. You could do all that in the data center, but the productivity gains from not having to deal with the infrastructure and bureacracy of doing things in the cloud / HPC cluster can be substantial.

For some reason, Apple has never cared about that market. From their perspective, a professional has always been someone who works with something visual or with sound, not someone working with data.

I'm not sure if Apple is capable of making competitive data center hardware for external users. The people working for Apple can, but Apple as a company probably not. The corporate culture of a company making consumer devices may be incompatible with the demands of that business.
exactly. It would require setting up an entire new division that runs totally differently and when there are still consumer markets to access, why would you bother?
 

MichX

macrumors newbie
Jun 7, 2023
1
0
View attachment 2213755
If you can remember back in 2013, a trash can Mac announced and a lot of Mac Pro users were so furious about how Apple create a workstation. As a result, a lot of pro users left Mac system and Apple left the pro markets for several year until iMac Pro or Mac Pro 2019 release. This time, it's happening again.

View attachment 2213756
Mac Pro 2023 lack so many things and it does NOT promise anything. When I saw it when Mac Pro 2023 announced, it just reminded Mac Pro 2013.

CPU
Up to 24 core is not good. Mac Pro 2019 already supported up to 28 cores and currently, it can go as high as possible up to 128 cores for workstation computers. Beside, there are reasons to support dual CPU in order to support more PCIe lanes.

GPU
Apple GPU's performance is still fundamentally bad. Yes, it's bad. Both M1,2 series aren't even close to RTX 30 series which is based on Samsung 8nm, not TSMC 5nm. RTX 40 series are TSMC 5nm based and it's clearly not comparable. Since M1 Max/Ultra, Apple stopped comparing their own chips to Nvidia instead of Intel Mac because they know their GPU performance is just bad. Beside, the power consumption is too limited as well. Since M1 Ultra has similar performance to RTX 3060, I highly doubt that M2 Ultra is close to RTX 3090. RTX 4090's bandwidth is already way beyond M2 Ultra's 800GB/s and those workstation GPUs are way beyond that. Whoever defends Apple GPU's performacne, you never used RTX 40 series and workstation series. This is why Nvidia is dominating GPU performance for a while.

On the other hand, Mac Pro 2023 supports only one M2 Ultra which is a joke. Mac Pro 2019 supports up to 4x highend workstation GPU and others can go beyond that. Apple did not make M2 Extreme or something better instead of re-using M2 Ultra for so called workstation. No, M3,4 can not save Mac Pro as long as it's SOC and not expandible.

View attachment 2214594
Apple GPU is powerful? Since M1 Ultra cant even close to RTX 3090 but 3060, which is a hard fact, I dont think M2 Ultra is still close to RTX 3090.

RAM
Nope, you cant even upgrade it and expand beyond 192GB of RAM which is WAY less than what Mac Pro 2019 can provide which is 1.5TB of RAM. Unified memory is not a magic and the RAM size still matters. Yes, that's a lot of VRAM but the truth is, Apple GPU itself has a poor performance, the bandwidth speed is way slower than both highend and workstation GPU, and PC can also expand VRAM with more GPU as well. This is a huge limitation and disappointment since Mac Pro users ever since heard the first rumor that Mac Pro will not have upgradable RAM.

Price
Really? $1000 more for less features? Apple justified their transition from Intel to Apple Silicon by reducing the price dramatically as they dont need to purchase both CPU and GPU components which can save a lot of money but in reality, Apple increased way more than before. For example, upgrading RAM is extremly expesnive and yet the memory chip itself is really cheaper than you think. Beside, Apple Silicon uses less memory chips than normal RAM. Dont forget that Mac Pro series started from around $3000 price range and Apple increased the price up to $7000.

PCIe slots
You cant even use either AMD or Nvidia GPU. PCIe slot is only gen 4 while others are using gen 5 and MPX module is gone! What are we suppose to do with PCIe slots?

What a mess
Mac Pro 2023 proves that Apple can NOT make a powerful AS chip for Mac Pro, they seriosuly dont care about Mac Pro and Pro markets, and they just ruined it. It just reminds me Mac Pro back in 2013 when Apple proudly announced it and it turned out it was a failure. At this point, because of Mac Pro 2023, the 3D and AI software which requires high GPU performance will either not support Mac or ditch Mac system. Dont say this is not for you, that's the worst excuse to make and we know what Apple did with Mac Pro 2013. Quite a lot of youtubers already disappointed about Apple's move toward Mac Pro 2023 so I'm not the only one complaining about this.

Clearly, Apple Silicon Mac is doomed with its performance and workstation. They better bring a real Mac Pro or this is a huge mess forever just like Mac Pro 2013 did.
+ Author miss the point this MacPro does not support ECC RAM which is crucial for professional and complex data compilation against data corruption
 

falainber

macrumors 68040
Mar 16, 2016
3,539
4,136
Wild West
Mac Studio flies with FCP. Trashcan flew with FCP as was written to work with the extra GPU that the trashcan provided.

Apple has optimised FCP for its hardware

If youa users main need was FCP then the current macs are great.

However very people of the people that complain about the Mac pro are FCP users.
I am not very familiar with video production industry. Do those who use FCP also need to run something else? I would expect so but I have no first hand information. In any case, FCP alone probably is not sufficient to sustain Mac Pro.
 

mcnallym

macrumors 65816
Oct 28, 2008
1,210
938
You’re telling me that PCIe adds $3K?
I doubt that.

two x 1099 for two Sonnettech Echo III Destop Chassis that are PCI-E v3 and on the end of a TB bus each internal and no TB bus. So only 800quid for lower latency and higher bandwidth slots (if you need them) and if you don't you buy the Studio.
For my situation, the entire point of PCIe is to add Thunderbolt ports and fiber IO. Using a Thunderbolt port to go to PCIe will not get me more Thunderbolt bussing. Everything will be off the same thunderbolt buss from the computer.
As can see then I was actually responding your question about 3k for PCI-E slots. And showing you how would get to 3k. As well as being slower would also be 3 chassis as well for your 2.2k so there is only 800 in effect. If using TB to get to PCI-E not suitable then actually adds even more value to the Mac Pro over the Studio doesn’t it.

so not understandino why quoting me in that post. Not sure what it has to do with adding 3k over a studio.
 

ophh1

macrumors member
Oct 7, 2016
63
278
I guess when M3 Ultra comes out Apple will just use the M2 Ultra as the baseline SoC for Mac Pro and then you can configure it to M3 Ultra.

And when M4 Ultra comes out, Apple may use M3 Ultra as the baseline or even keep the M2 Ultra but drop the price.
 
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joevt

macrumors 604
Jun 21, 2012
6,963
4,259
Don't you mean the 2019 Mac Pro. There is no such thing as a 2021 Mac Pro.

And prove to us that the PCIe slots on the 2023 Mac Pro are actually full bandwidth slots; oh right you can't. Saying it is so because Apple marketing says it is is not actual proof.
Yes, I meant Mac Pro 2019. 2021 is the date on the Mac Pro Overview document.

I think if Apple says a PCIe slot is twice as fast as a PCIe slot in the 2019 Mac Pro then it means the slot is full bandwidth. So we can assume that there is at least one PCIe 4.0 x16 connection to the CPU. Or it's a high possibility. The alternative interpretation is that there is a PCIe 4.0 x16 connection to the PCIe switch and this bandwidth can only be used to communicate with other PCIe cards connected to the same PCIe switch which I believe is not a feature that most people need or use.

Is there any PCIe Thunderbolt cards out there? I believe the protocol is basically “PCIe in a cable” so that might be an easy way to expand there. I’m not an expert in this type of thing so I truly don’t know.
Thunderbolt has limited bandwidth (2750-3100 MB/s) and has higher latency than PCIe. If you want more PCIe devices, then use a PCIe expansion box like the Netstor NA255A (though that's kind of overkill since you can't use GPUs with Apple Silicon).

Not yet. But for the last MacPro, each GPU came with four Thunderbolt ports on two busses. Thus, my current machine has 12 ports of which 10 are used regularly.
Right. The 2019 Mac Pro could have 12 Thunderbolt ports. 6 Thunderbolt controllers. So you could connect 12 4K displays. I'm not sure why the Mac Pro Overview says it can only connect 6 XDRs. If the limit were 3 per GPU, then two Radeon Pro W6800X Duo MPX Modules should allow 12 XDRs but https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT210228 says only 10 which probably means the top and I/O Thunderbolt controllers are not divided between the Duos efficiently.

Do none of the PC PCie thunderbolt cards work in the 7,1 Mac Pro? Gigabyte Titan Ridge cards definitely worked in the 5,1 and gave 2 thunderbolt ports quite affordably.
You might need to flash a Mac firmware to the add-in card or add an SSDT using Open Core to get full use of the Thunderbolt ports (hot-plug, PCIe tunnelling, Thunderbolt networking, Thunderbolt target display mode, Thunderbolt target disk mode).
 

MrGunny94

macrumors 65816
Dec 3, 2016
1,148
675
Malaga, Spain
Did you use a Power Mac or Mac Pro in the past 3 decades? If yes, why did you move to a Mac with a M2 & M2 Pro?
Cloud workloads, we no longer do things locally on hardware. Instead of holding an on-premise racked Macs for rendering and computing we eventually shifted off alongside the rest of the company to the cloud.
 
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MrGunny94

macrumors 65816
Dec 3, 2016
1,148
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It's already dead before it comes out when Mac Pro does not support powerful GPU. Beside Apple Silicon itself still slower than Nvidia GPU. You probably never used RTX 3090 or 4090.
I have an RTX 3090 at home, and just like I told to the previous person most companies included mine have moved to the Cloud Workloads as on-premise data centres are being discontinued.

Completely understand what you mean, not having scalability sucks for this who are still rocking this for years and want to change their hardware.

Looks like the only option now for these people is x86.
 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,521
19,674
For some reason, Apple has never cared about that market. From their perspective, a professional has always been someone who works with something visual or with sound, not someone working with data.

I don’t quit follow. M1 Ultra looks like a fairly capable system for developing HPC workloads. Watts missing exactly?
 
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iPadified

macrumors 68020
Apr 25, 2017
2,014
2,257
It is a Mac Studio+. True to the markets Apple are addressing: video and music that may need custom cards. The Mac Pro and Mac Studio will support most of Vision Pro app work development as these apps seem to be mainly 2D apps arranged in a 3D space.

We may come to terms that Apple will not care for all markets. Everyone survives having the odd windows machine for special compute demands. I recently bought a DNA sequencer and the computer that drives it will be a Windows machine because of a GTX card requirement. Who actually cares that you need different computer tools for different jobs?
 
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ForkHandles

macrumors 6502a
Jun 8, 2012
550
1,399
I’d be ok with $3,999 too. I didn’t realize that the iMac Studio was that price with the Ultra. My point is that the model is overpriced as is.
The Mac Pro is at the price it is for a reason. It reflects the very low number of units it expects to sell in this space. If they considered it good enough to take a large market share they would price it accordingly ($4,000)
Their figures don’t show this at all. This is just a figure. Head, a status symbol, not a solution the market is erupts about.
 
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gpat

macrumors 68000
Mar 1, 2011
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If I could redo my Mac purchases I'd steer clear of them from 2015-2019.

Last Intel Mac be a 2014 model then skip to a M1 in 2020.

I avoided most of the damage because I bought lightly used/discounted and resold maybe 1 year after.
But I mercilessly purged from the household one 2017 12" rMB and one 2019 16" MBP i7, while the 2013 13" Air still sticks in the proximities of my couch.
 
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gpat

macrumors 68000
Mar 1, 2011
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The Mac Pro is at the price it is for a reason. It reflects the very low number of units it expects to sell in this space. If they considered it good enough to take a large market share they would price it accordingly ($4,000)
Their figures don’t show this at all. This is just a figure. Head, a status symbol, not a solution the market is erupts about.

Maybe the low number of units is a direct consequence of pricing it that way.
If the Studio M2U was $3999 and the Pro M2U was $4999, you could expect roughly a 50/50 market share split between them.
Also if the Pro M2U was $4999, then you could release a Mac Mini M2 Max at $1999 and maybe delete the Studio altogether.
I suspect they pondered to do this when there were rumors about the Studio being discontinued.
 

senttoschool

macrumors 68030
Nov 2, 2017
2,626
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I have an RTX 3090 at home, and just like I told to the previous person most companies included mine have moved to the Cloud Workloads as on-premise data centres are being discontinued.

Completely understand what you mean, not having scalability sucks for this who are still rocking this for years and want to change their hardware.

Looks like the only option now for these people is x86.

I've been advocating/speculating that the Extrem SoC needs to have a cloud version in order to justify its cost of development.

Most people in the thread argued against the idea. I have a feeling that a lot of people here still live in 2006 - when heavy workloads were still mostly done on local machines. Today, heavy workloads have moved to the cloud. How could Apple justify spending hundreds of millions to engineer an Extrem SoC, keep it up to date, but only sell in the tens of thousands each year? Made no sense.
 
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ForkHandles

macrumors 6502a
Jun 8, 2012
550
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Maybe the low number of units is a direct consequence of pricing it that way.
If the Studio M2U was $3999 and the Pro M2U was $4999, you could expect roughly a 50/50 market share split between them.
Also if the Pro M2U was $4999, then you could release a Mac Mini M2 Max at $1999 and maybe delete the Studio altogether.
I suspect they pondered to do this when there were rumors about the Studio being discontinued.
Maybe. They have decades of data and if there is one thing this company knows, it’s how to turn a profit. They don’t do loss leaders and they don’t do pricing themselves out of a market.

I still hold that this is a vanity product for them. And this small group of buyers are vanity users. There are much better solutions out there for the price. Much better.
 
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gpat

macrumors 68000
Mar 1, 2011
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Maybe. They have decades of data and if there is one thing this company knows, it’s how to turn a profit. They don’t do loss leaders and they don’t do proving themselves out of a market.

I still hold that this is a vanity product for them. And this small group of buyers are vanity users. There are much better solutions out there for the price. Much better.

They are run by humans and humans make mistakes even with all the data of the world.
Actually more data can lead people to be confused and make more mistakes sometimes.
Just think for a minute how much money, mindshare, marketshare they've lost over the 2013 Mac Pro and even the subsequent 2017 iMac Pro, when they could have just refreshed the 2006 Mac Pro design until literally last week...
Would've been a much better deal for them, it's easy to see in hindsight but they've still done it even with top management.
I bet that Michael Spindler's Apple had lots of data and know-how as well....
 

ForkHandles

macrumors 6502a
Jun 8, 2012
550
1,399
They are run by humans and humans make mistakes even with all the data of the world.
Actually more data can lead people to be confused and make more mistakes sometimes.
Just think for a minute how much money, mindshare, marketshare they've lost over the 2013 Mac Pro and even the subsequent 2017 iMac Pro, when they could have just refreshed the 2006 Mac Pro design until literally last week...
Would've been a much better deal for them, it's easy to see in hindsight but they've still done it even with top management.
I bet that Michael Spindler's Apple had lots of data and know-how as well....
You’re assuming that the 2006 was remotely profitable. If it were I assure you that refreshes would have come by the dozen.

No serious IT professionals would use a network of Mac Pros. It smacks of all your eggs in one basket, waiting for one company to update hardware in a competition free vacuum. It’s vanity I’m sure.
 
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