MP All Models Seeking use case scenarios for the M2 Mac Pro

[leifp]

Hey there Forumers,

I can’t get over the feeling that there must be some target market out there that is absolutely fine with Apple’s decisions on the M2 Mac Pro. While I still hold my breath (running out of air!) for a setup that allows for more RAM of the traditional variety along with discrete GPUs in the next generation, we’re now a year into M silicon and I wonder who is (happily) using a Mac Pro?

Cheers!

 

[mattspace]

Hey there Forumers,

I can’t get over the feeling that there must be some target market out there that is absolutely fine with Apple’s decisions on the M2 Mac Pro.

Youtube video makers who produce content in Final Cut, about Apple products (and who are hoping to be eventually hired by Apple, after receiving demonstrator / review units for a few years, and building up a sufficient audience that they can't be allowed to remain independent in case they cease being Apple-positive).

 

[avro707]

Ouch ^

Otherwise there are very powerful PC workstations available that offer more scope to upgrade as time goes on.

 

[leifp]

Youtube video makers who produce content in Final Cut, about Apple products (and who are hoping to be eventually hired by Apple, after receiving demonstrator / review units for a few years, and building up a sufficient audience that they can't be allowed to remain independent in case they cease being Apple-positive).

I have found exactly zero that have any use for the Mac Pro, which is particularly the PCIe slots. I’ve heard audio mixers need it or have use for it and you can jam RAID in there but specifics? Not on any videos I have found…

 

[Eric_WVGG]

It's pretty great for audio. There are all kinds of expansion cards for a/v equipment, and in a studio setting even a wristwatch can be detected by sensitive microphones.

That market is of course small to the point of being irrelevant.

A Mac Pro with GPUs would require one of two things:
- Apple-designed external GPU cards, which would work very differently from their existing GPUs (no shared memory architecture), a huge engineering task that would only affect a market that even optimistically is tiny.
- Third-party GPU drivers built for Apple Silicon. A significant engineering effort from either AMD and Nvidia, again for a market that is just tiny. Might've been worth it for them if their drivers would be useful for consumer (i.e. laptop) devices, but they won't be.

I just don't see a way through this that pays off for anybody.

 

[avro707]

Apple-designed external GPU cards, which would work very differently from their existing GPUs (no shared memory architecture), a huge engineering task that would only affect a market that even optimistically is tiny.
- Third-party GPU drivers built for Apple Silicon. A significant engineering effort from either AMD and Nvidia, again for a market that is just tiny. Might've been worth it for them if their drivers would be useful for consumer (i.e. laptop) devices, but they won't be.

For third party this would have to involve making drivers for cards that will also work for 2019 Mac Pro. I’m sure there are 2019 MP owners who would put W7900 48GB cards in their machines if MacOS had drivers. They work in Windows already.

And maybe also the Mac Studio or lower spec machines via eGPU enclosures.

 

[StuAff]

The practical case for the M2 MP boils down to your use/need/desire for faster than 10Gb Ethernet, and your use/need/desire for more and/or faster local storage than can be fitted to the Studio, and/or your dislike of clutter. The Dave's Garage video puts it best.

 

[leifp]

Discrete GPUs have been added to systems with APUs for quite a while now. I see no issue with Apple enabling such a setup in a future MacPro. Further, they could add RAM modules as a further L stage, meaning it would be slower than the RAM in x86 era Macs was, however it should be substantially faster than hitting RAM limits. For example: M4Ultra with 256GB RAM on die + 1TB sticks brings things close to the Intel Mac Pro…

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

It can take super high speed (eg 400gbps fiber) and super high speed and high density storage via PCI cards. There are many applications that require such bandwidth.

Sadly big ram and and GPUs are no longer options so the value to many markets requiring that are now gone.

 

[mattspace]

I have found exactly zero that have any use for the Mac Pro, which is particularly the PCIe slots. I’ve heard audio mixers need it or have use for it and you can jam RAID in there but specifics? Not on any videos I have found…

PCI storage is a huge reason for it... or at least it would be if the current macOS version was reliable with PCI storage 🤣

I would expect it's used for things like realtime I/O modifications - a large number of video in / out, audio in / out, netorking in / out. TV stations needing something to connect to go between a video library and a broadcast out etc.

Mac Pros used to be built into roadcases for running the AV / lighting rigs etc for concert tours etc.

 

[leifp]

It can take super high speed (eg 400gbps fiber) and super high speed and high density storage via PCI cards. There are many applications that require such bandwidth.

Sadly big ram and and GPUs are no longer options so the value to many markets requiring that are now gone.

In STEM? Do you have any concrete examples? It’s not that it’s life changing for me to know, but ever since I had one myself (well, the PowerMac G4 Mirrored Drive Doors) I look at them longingly… and I hope Apple builds out their capabilities rather than slowly sunsets them…

 

[flowrider]

See this thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/so-who-ordered-a-new-mac-pro.2392112/

Lou

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

In STEM? Do you have any concrete examples? It’s not that it’s life changing for me to know, but ever since I had one myself (well, the PowerMac G4 Mirrored Drive Doors) I look at them longingly… and I hope Apple builds out their capabilities rather than slowly sunsets them…

Well video 8k work, the super big storage and high speed drive and network work is very useful.

Also for machine learning work when you have huge huge datasets that hit the local drive or even high speed network drives.

A lot of stem work are not machine learning, but also have insanely big data sets and so having hyper fast storage is very useful, but to be fair, most of the use cases are not local machines per se as they usually have a lot of distributed processing. However, the super fast network speed coupled with hyper speed local storage make that kind of distributed work much faster.

I do not do this kind of work, but I think recall reading somewhere that cosmology work and analyzing the sky from zillions of hours of video can use this kind of pool (i would guesss things like scanning sections of the sky for asteroids etc).

 

[rondocap]

I originally started that thread, and kind of answered my own question at the end. I ended up getting the M2 Ultra Mac Pro, basically it's wanting Apple silicon plus tons of NVME PCIe storage cards. I use stuff like the Sonnet 8X4 NVME card with 8 NVMES on it, plus more, etc.

Video work mostly. The second big thing is keeping all of the needed devices neatly tucked into the Mac Pro, without as many cables and external thunderbolt devices. (Which are also slower on average than internal PCIe)

I also got the Mac Pro for cheaper than MSRP at MicroCenter, they're selling it new for $5299 or at least were.