MP All Models Would you buy a mac pro m2 ultra?

[macguru9999]

If its reasonably priced (starting at a bit under the intel model, or at worst the same) ill get a base model because I want a desktop computer with internal storage options. I dont care personally about the ultimate cpu/gpu power I am sure it would be fine for me.

 

[novagamer]

Probably, I want those PCIe slots and a higher thermal/power envelope & clock speed. I just hope they add additional neural engine cores and don't just top out at 2x the Macbook Air on a many thousand dollar machine.

I also may buy an M2 Mini Pro and just upgrade that every year or two which might come out cheaper but figuring out sustainable external storage for hardware licensed virtual instruments is a pain... I really want a self-contained unit, but I don't like the idea of spending 3x the cost and getting stuck with old technology vs. spending less and upgrading more often. It's a pretty difficult call.

I don't know if 32GB of RAM will be enough for my projects - I really want 96gb minimum but the swap is pretty good. It's a tough decision and will depend on price and capability.

I don't care about PCIe GPU support, but I'd prefer they have it as an option vs. not. Especially given how non-apple 3d software performs on the unified architecture (much worse than 2 year old designs).

Hopefully the M2 Ultra (or M3 if they wait it out) works better than the M1 Ultra which a lot of software really hasn't taken very good advantage of, and I'm not clear on this being completely a software problem - I think there are some significant design choices that limit the throughput in specific scenarios when using cores across the unified chips that could be addressed.

 

[mateo14]

The hardware issues are happening quite frequently with computers. Sometimes, you have to replace RAM, a graphic card, a hard drive, and so on.

I plan to stay on the Mac Pro 5,1 as long as possible.

However. it is hard for me to make a decision about my next Apple computer. I don't want to store a data on the internal hard drive that I can't replace.
It will used only for the operating system because
my first SSD died after a few weeks of using it.

I had issues with Mac mini 2010 Server like the broken graphic card on the logic board, the dead SSD. In this case, I could add more RAM and replace a hard drive.

I like using Linux x86-64 on the Intel Mac, and the M1/M2 processor isn't the best option for Linux users.

 

[innerproduct]

At the time of this writing 37 people have cast votes. From this skewed, but still macpro specific crowd , it seems we can conclude that this group prefer a new, classic tower that can be used and upgraded for quite some time. A few accept (about 25%) something like an m2ultra with slots even without upgradability or better gpu perf than 2x a laptop since either they have no choice or their tasks simply doesn’t require more brute force.
Let’s extrapolate these findings: (yeah I know….)
100% could be accommodated with the expandable approach while at best 25% with the locked down approach.
Why would Apple limit their market to a 4th?

 

[prefuse07]

Here is an interesting read, from the front page:

SOURCE

It's interesting, but still Meh...

 

[MisterAndrew]

The M2 Max has a lot of unified memory, but the bandwidth is a lot slower than an AMD or Nvidia GPU. The comment was also misleading because the full 96 GB is not available for graphics. The system is using a good chunk of that. They also must be forgetting that the Mac Pro is available with 128 GB of dedicated graphics memory.

 

[fuchsdh]

The M2 Max has a lot of unified memory, but the bandwidth is a lot slower than an AMD or Nvidia GPU. The comment was also misleading because the full 96 GB is not available for graphics. The system is using a good chunk of that. They also must be forgetting that the Mac Pro is available with 128 GB of dedicated graphics memory.

I think it's a kind of pointless thing to say regardless. Most people aren't throwing 64GB dGPUs at games, any more than they are upgrading to a 96GB of RAM and focusing that on games. Even if Apple did stuff like native Vulkan support and cheaper GPU upgrades it'd never be a good platform for gaming.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

but the bandwidth is a lot slower than an AMD or Nvidia GPU

What do you mean by “bandwidth”? Because PCI limits both AMD and Nvidia to a bandwidth lower than Apple GPU connection to it’s memory.

 

[goMac]

The M2 Max has a lot of unified memory, but the bandwidth is a lot slower than an AMD or Nvidia GPU. The comment was also misleading because the full 96 GB is not available for graphics. The system is using a good chunk of that. They also must be forgetting that the Mac Pro is available with 128 GB of dedicated graphics memory.

The other issue is that unified memory might be nice for original games. But Mac games are going to be ports - and the assets are going to be built around 8, 16, and 32 gigabyte GPUs.

Not to mention, even if you had 96 gigs worth of assets, you don't have the GPU power to render them quickly enough for a game. On top of the bandwidth issues.

 

[deconstruct60]

The other issue is that unified memory might be nice for original games. But Mac games are going to be ports - and the assets are going to be built around 8, 16, and 32 gigabyte GPUs.

if Apple pegged non macOS gaming as a top priority there would be 3rd party GPU drivers . There are none.
There would also be more open/portable graphics API support. All Apple has a deprecated OpenGL and an officially ignored Vulkan.

I highly doubt Apple is going to contort and twist their GPU architecture into dramatically reducing the costs of porting older Windows games. I don't think legacy Windows gaming apps is the primary target for the large footprint Unified memory. I think that comment about gamers developers having to wrap their head around it was for future games and current new development on gaming engines.

The ported stuff that makes no account for the new platform will run worse. The folks who put in the work to do fully adapted ports will run better. Is Apple going to cry tears when the folks who pay attention at WWDC do better than the folks who completely ignore it? Probably not.

Has Apple been throwing money like drunken sailors at folks who will do any port. Yeah. Are they going to continue to do long period when the port warmed over code with large impedance mismatch with the Metal API ? Probably not.

Apple put lots of effort into the Rosetta 2 port to help Intel macOS code come across unchanged. For the graphics stack on macOS on M-series transparent and unchanged really hasn't been the main message. They want changes so that the new graphics code runs well completely up and down the Apple GPU configuration stack.

"... And I don't think we're going to fool anybody by saying that overnight we're going to make Mac a great gaming platform. We're going to take a long view on this." ..."

there is a long term strategy here. Apple has enough money that 'long' can be 3-4 years. Nor is this necessarily total consumption of the entire gaming market performance in 3-4 years. when he was talking about gaming it was really more so about ,pre gaming on the whole Mac product line ; not some narrow niche on the upper 1% end.
Mostly likely Apple is looking to connect the already relatively large gaming revenues on iOS/iPad to that of the macOS. Not coming up with a 'gaming PC market killer' system or product line.

Not to mention, even if you had 96 gigs worth of assets, you don't have the GPU power to render them quickly enough for a game. On top of the bandwidth issues.

How much of a 80GB super complex model is going to be actually visible from a fixed viewport perspective? Apple's major approach is to "trim off " as much as they can before getting eyeball deep in the rendering.
Metal 3 has features for asset loading straight from the SSD . If use 40GB for effective caching then are actually alleviating bandwidth ( if trying to point at the RAM to die bandwidth cap). that isn't disconnected from new, future growth features on the Windows side that has a similar DirectStorage API.

DirectStorage Testing Shows PCIe 3 SSDs Are Basically as Fast as PCIe 5

In both load times and FPS

www.tomshardware.com

both are a more 'unified' path to loading managing assets. Longer term it will likely remove the notion of managing duplicates in the "CPU RAM" on both operating systems (and associated filesystem caches).


M2 tweak up the cache higher. (probably likely increased the internal bus aggregate bandwidth). The media en/decode got better along with the GPU performance bump.

 

[Matt2012]

It definitely needs to have components that can be swapped out by the end user easily for a 'Pro' machine.
Case in point (and I have to compare it to PC as I use both), I bought an almost top spec Mac Studio almost a year ago and it worked very well for me doing my job. It kept up with my slightly less expensive PC but In the back of mind, I always worried if things ever failed and this is the machine I'm stuck with forever.
Then Nvidia released the 4090 for PC and once I got one of those for the PC, it pretty much destroyed the Studio in terms of video rendering speed which I do day in, day out.
The lack of any real news on the Mac Pro has now made sell the Studio and buy a second PC with a 4090 so my work rate can now double. Sorry Apple, but I feel the Pro users have been pretty abandoned now and businesses cannot plan for any purchases.

 

[avro707]

Then Nvidia released the 4090 for PC and once I got one of those for the PC, it pretty much destroyed the Studio in terms of video rendering speed which I do day in, day out.

You can't say that!

For me the silicon based machines are no go, they don't run windows and so far don't support discrete GPUs. I have a 7,1 here so there is a feeling that I'm part of the enemy camp when you see the vitriol poured on the 7,1, "it's dead to Apple", "it's no good" or "it's a failure" or "they are worth nothing anymore" (that last one is false).

 

[innerproduct]

If Apple just could communicate like adults to adults it would be so much easier. Some kind of roadmap, some kind of communication to clear up the worry. The unprofessionalism is appalling. And it also works against them. I mean we here are some die hard pro fans that are questioning the future of Mac. Not because we are insane cry babies or madmen but rather since we are afraid that the platform we prefer to work on will not be viable in the near future.

They don't have to pre announce details but at least they should make things clear enough for pros to plan investments.
As it is now (as we clearly see from all discussions here on the forum) Many die hard fans are questioning if there even is a future for heavy duty computing on the Mac. The M1Ultra underwhelmed us when it came to GPU power and easy extrapolation from that architecture showed that even a 4 way M1Max would be far far far weaker than the current MP2019 when it came to GPU. A 4X m2 max is not enough GPU either. They would have to come up with something far more elaborate or starting with supporting regular GPUS again. But nothing points in any other direction than a Mac Studio in a big case.

They really should come clean and state:
- Mac Pro Intel will be supported with updates for X years. We will release new MPX modules as well as drivers for new AMD GPUS when available... We unstand the massive investments some of you did in these machines and we will of course honour that commitment. Don't worry, we get you!
- The new ASi Mac Pro will be coming later this year and we understand that the current situation might be hard to plan for. But let us assure you that it will be a powerhouse that will beat the MP2019 in all areas, including raw compute.

But let's just remember how Apple never addressed or said anything about the lack of drivers for nVidia cards post Mojave? I remember signing the "official petition" but neither Apple nor nVidia ever came clean.

So I guess there is no point in jabbing around here. Maybe the totality of the forum noise here and elsewhere will make Apple feel that they really should address the situation. I doubt it but I hope for it.

Once they release a MP we will finally have all answers at least and can stop these endless threads of speculation. Looking forward to that.

 

[AlphaCentauri]

Those of you who are fine with getting a m2 ultra mac pro without extra gpu power and also have no need for the speciality cards. Would you care to elaborate? Why wouldn’t you rather have a m2ultra housed in a studio case at less money?

Better cooling, easy to clean inside. For music studio, I don’t need monster dGPUs. I could use PCI slots and more than 128GB Ram, though.

 

[TechnoMonk]

The M2 Max has a lot of unified memory, but the bandwidth is a lot slower than an AMD or Nvidia GPU. The comment was also misleading because the full 96 GB is not available for graphics. The system is using a good chunk of that. They also must be forgetting that the Mac Pro is available with 128 GB of dedicated graphics memory.

I would love to see which single GPU has 128 GB on MacPro. I am literally going through pain from 4090 running out of memory. My M1 Max has been life saver, though 20-30% slower. The AMD workstation cards are gimped in TF for the price and a memory they provide. I spent ton of money on A100 in cloud. Not every one cares about gaming, I have a PS5 and Xbox if I need to game.

 

[TechnoMonk]

If Apple just could communicate like adults to adults it would be so much easier. Some kind of roadmap, some kind of communication to clear up the worry. The unprofessionalism is appalling. And it also works against them. I mean we here are some die hard pro fans that are questioning the future of Mac. Not because we are insane cry babies or madmen but rather since we are afraid that the platform we prefer to work on will not be viable in the near future.

They don't have to pre announce details but at least they should make things clear enough for pros to plan investments.
As it is now (as we clearly see from all discussions here on the forum) Many die hard fans are questioning if there even is a future for heavy duty computing on the Mac. The M1Ultra underwhelmed us when it came to GPU power and easy extrapolation from that architecture showed that even a 4 way M1Max would be far far far weaker than the current MP2019 when it came to GPU. A 4X m2 max is not enough GPU either. They would have to come up with something far more elaborate or starting with supporting regular GPUS again. But nothing points in any other direction than a Mac Studio in a big case.

They really should come clean and state:
- Mac Pro Intel will be supported with updates for X years. We will release new MPX modules as well as drivers for new AMD GPUS when available... We unstand the massive investments some of you did in these machines and we will of course honour that commitment. Don't worry, we get you!
- The new ASi Mac Pro will be coming later this year and we understand that the current situation might be hard to plan for. But let us assure you that it will be a powerhouse that will beat the MP2019 in all areas, including raw compute.

But let's just remember how Apple never addressed or said anything about the lack of drivers for nVidia cards post Mojave? I remember signing the "official petition" but neither Apple nor nVidia ever came clean.

So I guess there is no point in jabbing around here. Maybe the totality of the forum noise here and elsewhere will make Apple feel that they really should address the situation. I doubt it but I hope for it.

Once they release a MP we will finally have all answers at least and can stop these endless threads of speculation. Looking forward to that.

Apple doesn’t need to do anything, most folks I know moved on from MacPro, including me. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple just cancels MacPro and keeps working on making Studio more powerful. Not enough Market and revenue to deviate from their core Mx architecture.

 

[fuchsdh]

Apple doesn’t need to do anything, most folks I know moved on from MacPro, including me. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple just cancels MacPro and keeps working on making Studio more powerful. Not enough Market and revenue to deviate from their core Mx architecture.

Then they should just say that and let people move on. That attitude is totally fair for Apple to take, but it's **** to keep stringing people along.

 

[innerproduct]

I would love to see which single GPU has 128 GB on MacPro. I am literally going through pain from 4090 running out of memory. My M1 Max has been life saver, though 20-30% slower. The AMD workstation cards are gimped in TF for the price and a memory they provide. I spent ton of money on A100 in cloud. Not every one cares about gaming, I have a PS5 and Xbox if I need to game.

Seriously what kind of extreme edge case are you solving here? Something with massive amounts of textures but simple shading ? Massive geos with simple shading?
I have had scenes that didn’t fit on the 24gb of my 3090 workstation but that also failed to render on the m1 max. Pleae don’t see my question as some kind of “attack” I am genuinely curious

 

[TechnoMonk]

Seriously what kind of extreme edge case are you solving here? Something with massive amounts of textures but simple shading ? Massive geos with simple shading?
I have had scenes that didn’t fit on the 24gb of my 3090 workstation but that also failed to render on the m1 max. Pleae don’t see my question as some kind of “attack” I am genuinely curious

Using tools that leverage AI models for Vision, speech or Text inferences. It’s not massive nor extreme, it’s probably going to be more mainstream soon. Here are some use cases I am going through now.

1. Content aware fill in Premier Pro. Wouldn’t it be nice to remove or even add something after the shoot.
2. Upscaling to 4k/8k using something like Topaz Video AI models. The AI up scaling is at another level. I see lot of tools adding it in near future.
3. Generating Text to Video/effects or Video2video morphing using AI. I can’t go beyond 540P on 4090, it just runs out of memory consistently for anything 720 P or HD. I am talking about generating anything more than 10 seconds.
May be my computing needs are little ahead, but Nvidia needs to bump their RAM to support running inferences on models generated by their own high end GPUs. AMD is basically non player in this space. Apple is putting in some effort in providing tools to convert Nvidia models in to their core-ml, not great but barely enough.

 

[deconstruct60]

Then they should just say that and let people move on. That attitude is totally fair for Apple to take, but it's **** to keep stringing people along.

Apple isn't doing much to string people along. Non-Apple Folks are doing more to string themselves along than Apple is. Rumors sites have a steady stream of "doom and gloom" article to strip up the 'natives' and generate clicks.

Apple made no direct statement about the Mac Pro in 2020 ( an indirect generalization about the Mac line up) and a relatively nebulous mention the Mac Pro would come "later" about two years after that. And really only in the context of declaring that the iMac 27" Intel mac was done. More so, it was just an affirmation that there was more work to go ( but shoving under the run that the Intel Mini was still in the line up).

In June 2020 Apple explicitly said that macOS on Apple Silicon supported just the Apple GPU. Apple has not hemmed and hawed over that spec. They haven't talked about 'maybe', 'would-a, could-a , should-a' on that spec at all. So leading people on how there. It was clear and to the point and entirely consistent for over two years.

The whole "that can't be true , it has gotta support 3rd party GPUs and should bring back Nvidia GPUs" is entirely driven by non Apple speech for the last two years.


Just as clear and explicit action the number of PCI-e cards supported on macOS on AppleSilicon has steadily gone up over the last 2 years. It started slow because the "Transition Kit" system had no Thunderbolt , but has steadily gotten better since the first M1 systems shipped. So the "doom" of no PCI-e slots on Mac Pro is being driven by Apple how??????

Is Apple communicating that they completely equate dGPUs with PCI-e slots ? No. That is non Apple folks spinning that imagery.

At one point, Intel had roadmaps of Ice Lake shipping in late 2019. Getting things done matters more than 'roadmaps' and slideware talks ?


Apple's explicit and standard corporate policy is not to talk about future products in detail. They have said on numerous times that they are not out to make everything for everybody. They also have said that they like to 'delight and surprise' their customers. So deceptively stringing how? They have said who and what they are about. They said they were not going to say anything and then did pretty much do exactly that.

Much of the angst comes from a totally disconnected expectation that "Well, Apple has to do exactly what Dell/IBM/Lenovo/Intel/AMD do. " when Apple is explicitly saying they are not those folks.

 

[deconstruct60]

For me the silicon based machines are no go, they don't run windows

Apple merging onto the x86 platform never had running Windows as a top 4 strategic goal. It has been a bit of a dual edged swords. Apple got the better component part ecosystem they wanted to select a narrow subset of parts from and reduce R&D costs (by sharing costs across a wider set of system vendors). One of the downsides is that they scooped up a decent number of customers who really didn't see much value in macOS. Folks who wanted a Mac because it met some criteria as a better Windows box than several of the other Windows only systems out there.

That relationship was really primarily about the parts. As long as they were uniformity and predictable better than alternatives Apple stuck with them. When that wasn't true anymore Apple dumped them. Apple wasn't committed to always bow-waving off of fallout from the Windows PC market. Choosing the 68K , PPC none of that was about primarily chasing DOS/Windows sub-components.

and so far don't support discrete GPUs. I have a 7,1 here so there is a feeling that I'm part of the enemy camp when you see the vitriol poured on the 7,1,

It isn't an enemy camp. It is just that the Mac Pro really wasn't primarily targeted at running Windows and the same selection of GPU cards as Windows runs. That was extremely unlikely to be a top 10 core design goal for the system. It is merely just a narrow side effect that happened to fall out of the design focus of Intel and AMD who are mostly focused on Windows. But Apple folks are not jumping out of bed in the morning each day say "Hot dog , today is great because Macs can run Windows (and make Microsoft more money). " That is not their job (not even in the slightest).

Since there was no GPU in the Intel W-6200 and macOS is a heavily Graphical/GUI operating system , that pretty much required a dGPU to be present. That was primarily Intel's design choice not Apple's. Some side effects come along with Intel design choices that Apple leveraged , but were not necessarily asking for all of those. For example, the T2 chips don't allow the Intel CPU to deal with primary instance of the UEFI firmware. It is handed a copy. Quite demonstrative that Apple isn't some 'superfan' of UEFI. And they are not ( it is gone at the base level on M-series. That should have been very unsurprising to folks actually looking at what Apple does as opposed to Intel/AMD roadmaps. )

Apple isn't making "Windows requirements first" systems. As Jobs said a long time ago "The PC war is over". That is somewhat implicitly about the 1970-2000 era classic Windows PC form factor 'war'. Personal computers , in the general sense , have gotten a lot smaller and are not primarily lumbering boxes with slots.

That doesn't mean Apple has to build a box with zero slots in it. But probably means they are going to select the subset of aspects they want and leave what is highly misaligned with the rest of the Mac ecosystem out. The Mac Pro isn't going to bring back UEFI boot at the primary level and chase commodity off the shelf, 'boot screen' GPUs. At best, might get a secondary GPU that is initialized late in boot process, but not a primary.


Apple's non-macOS virtualization efforts are far more focused on Linux (on Arm) than on Windows. [ Probably, in part for some 'eat your own dogfood' reasons for parts of their service cloud moving over to Linux on Arm for configurations. Not necessarily Apple Arm, but server arm for server Linux. There are quite suitable options for Apple to buy or lease for cloud services on Arm ( Amazon Graviton series , Ampere Computing (Altra) , and upcoming Nvidia 'Grace'. ) ] . If there was some compute card PCI-e pass-thru they had to do to support that then it would not be a huge diversion. (and another reason why wouldn't make Mac Pro slot less ... but it isn't chasing Windows. )

Windows is stagnating as a high growth market. Going to be hard pressed to get Apple to view Wintel as the big bad boogey man that they should be deeply afraid of at this point.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

If Apple just could communicate like adults to adults it would be so much easier.

I think they’re limiting who they’re communicating to because they already know what it’s NOT going to have, so talking to someone that’s saying “it’s going to fail without replaceable memory”… well, not worth even starting a conversation there. They ARE inviting people to their campus, but very likely those folks are under NDA, so they’re not at liberty to divulge plans, really.

 

[deconstruct60]

I think they’re limiting who they’re communicating to because they already know what it’s NOT going to have, so talking to someone that’s saying “it’s going to fail without replaceable memory”… well, not worth even starting a conversation there.

Apple's standing, overtly stated , overall corporate policy is not to talk about future products. So not talking about something they haven't release is not indicative of 'good' or 'bad'. It is just them following their standards.

Apple didn't talk about the M1 in advance and it blew its competitors out of the water. Was it 'bad'? No. Not talking was indicative of the 'not talking' policy.

They ARE inviting people to their campus, but very likely those folks are under NDA, so they’re not at liberty to divulge plans, really.

Pretty likely that Apple is selecting the people that largely fitting the folks who fit the targeted market to comment. They very likely are not targeting folks who are more then eyeball deep in proprietary Nvidia software/hardware stack solutions to come and give feedback. (e.g., folks who are myopically focused on only using a 4090 'measuring stick' (nothing else in Nvidia line up (or anyone else's), just solely the 4090 ) asked what they would would provide as feedback. The DNA conversation really doesn't provide any value because it is very predictable what they are going to say. ).

Apple inviting in outside folks who have a dogmatic form over function agenda probably is not going to happen. "We need help with Industrial design" is probably not a question that Apple is going to solicit with. "Drop dead over a DIMM slot" is far more a 'form' argument (it must be this high with x number of slots/pins , etc.) than a 'function' one.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Pretty likely that Apple is selecting the people that largely fitting the folks who fit the targeted market to comment.

Knowing how low the sales are going to be, I wouldn’t doubt that they’re inviting the 12 folks who plan to have requisitions ready on day one to purchase 90+ percent of the systems Apple plans to sell. Not so much that it “fits the targeted market” as much as it’s literally “the targeted market” .

 

[Ryan P]

Ya, I’m super odd ball case and not sure. Mid spec 2019 Mac Pro, 192GB ram, doing virtualization, database work and video editing and feel pushing existing setup to the limit. Not using any PCI slots, but 3 4K monitors and do have two 20TB drives installed.

Want to move to Apple Silicon…did try a fairly basic Mac Studio (only version I could get quickly at the time) and despite benchmarking well, it absolutely crumbled under my workload. I’m not even sure what I need most, as I fully maxed out the CPU / GPU, and memory (despite only using it for part of my workflow). It’s possible a maxed out Mac Studio might serve my needs, but twiddling thumbs to see what Apple does.