IMPORTANT: I'm really dumb and didn't check our export file very well. Half of our benchmark charts are missing and I *really* apologize for not catching this before I pushed "publish." It won't happen again. Please see this Google Sheets link with all of the data we collected for better insights on how it compares to PC GPUs. snazzy.fm/fx
I see that you are using the System76 Launch keyboard. What are your thoughts on it and the company behind it? I love mine and I have just recently bought the Pangolin laptop as well.
I think you're right. The super early leaks were discussing the 'Jade-C' (M1 Max) 'Jade-C Chop' (M1 Pro), the 'Jade-2C' (M1 Max) and a Jade-4C. That leak was absolutely bang on the head except for the 4C. It just, never came. However, I'm not sure that the die size is the primary driver, given nvidia's GH100 is at 800mm2, my guess would be the interposer tech being a problem when working with 4 dies rather than 2. Adding to that, they've painted themselves into this corner by steadfastly refusing to support NUMA on macOS-- so they can't just break it out to a slower interconnect and bang another SoC in, without having to make big changes to macOS to prevent the performance tanking
I think you’re right. I just built a Ryzen 5600x system with 32gb ram /1tb ssd, and an nvidia 1060 gpu. It was fun. It was cheeesaaapppp. It is screaming fast.
Shame about the Mac Pro offering and I do like my M1 but I also feel a lot better about the faster Intel system I built for video editing a year ago at a quarter of the price.
I think you are on to something here, this is not the Mac Pro Apple intended to release and the use case for it might have changed slightly? It will be interesting to see how the future for Mac Pro looks in the coming years.
For the Mac Pros, Apple really should stop pretending that it can make a reasonable competitor to the GPU compute options available on the Intel side. Just go back to using high end Intel or AMD parts instead. In the big scheme of things, this Apple Silicon thing seems to evoke more than a little bit of deja-vu for those who've been with Macs since the early days.
They need to come to an understanding with Nvidia so we can get Mac silicon drivers for Nvidia GPUS. Cuda compute is a huge necessity for a lot of pro workloads.
The problem isn't a lack of drivers in this case. The M series chips physically do not support off chip memory, and this includes VRAM. It simply isn't possible to get eGPUs working on them.
@@tonetraveler992That's not true. They've got the pcie lanes, they've got the speed, and therefore it's possible. It's only not possible because the software doesn't exist. Apple could enable it tomorrow.
@@Malc180s the issue isn't drivers. Look at Linux on M1 - third party GPUs including AMD are just as unsupported, because fundamentally Apple Silicon isn't capable of addressing off-die memory. It simply isn't designed in that way. Hacky workarounds might theoretically be possible but they would absolutely destroy performance.
Great review and specifics about Mac Pro that actually are helpful. Would love a retrofit for the existing case. Would love to get more life out of it.
This is the thing I don't understand most people not mentioning at all. To get the new Mac Pro, you have to buy a new case, power supply and fans to replace the identical case, power supply and fans...why?!
Pegasus made a 32 TB raid array that was compatible with the previous generation Mac Pro. It use the MPX slot, and on Apple own website is advertised as being compatible with the current generation 2023 Mac Pro. Spoiler alert, it isn’t.
@@TazzSmk Not remotely close to my point but Thunderbolt is exactly what they baked into USB4, so obviously it lives on and all serious I/O equipment gets certified for Thunderbolt still.
I think they missed a huge opportunity with a „Mac Pro/Mac Studio“ in a 1U rack mount chassis. Considering all the rack mounted thunderbolt hardware and the acceptable success of the Rack mount Mac Pro, a slim 1U M2 Ultra Mac with fat networking and a buttload of thunderbolt would fill that professional gap.
@@rdsii64the form factor isn't what makes anything loud. Going from the cooling they made for the mac Studio they could easily fit 1U and it'll be just as quiet.
they really need to bring back GPU Support, internal and external. These integrated GPUs are nice in the Performance per Watt regard but for anything serious they're to compromised.
dedicated GPUs are too in-efficient for Apple Silicon, but I guess for a desktop computer where energy-efficiency isn't a factor, Apple could cram a dGPU into the Mac Pro Heatsink
I think for this form of computing (desktop/tower), Windows/Linux PCs may still have the edge. What killed it for me was the PCI-e's underutilized potential. At the moment, the biggest advantage of the awesome Apple silicons are mini-PCs. Small computers that doesn't lack big performance. I see a lot of businesses in the future, moving towards small form factor which in the case of Apple, the Mac Mini. Awesome video Quinn.
BINGO! My 2019 is safe from replacement for now. You want to see the new Mac Pro completely destroyed, run a comparison with a W6800 duo. And the memory limitations are potentially an issue too for many as there are workflows that need more than 192 GB.
Apple needs to bring back the Xserve with Apple Silicon. Imagine a silent, relatively low power, media ingest/render farm server with an M2 Ultra or Steve Jobs forbid, more than one M2 Ultra chips running ala NUMA Nodes. Top of the line media capabilities with top of the line efficiency. That's where I see ARM chips with dedicated media engines like these M-series chips shine.
You could do a video with Neil Parfitt on the pro. He's a composer who bought a Mac Pro, and a very amusing guy. His biggest issue was the cross compatibility of software that worked on an Intel Mac Pro but didn't work at all on a Mac studio and also when firmware updates come through, it is a total gamble for them that their software and plugins will actually work at all. Something that could potentially massively affect their ability to work and therefore earn money.
Apple intentionally killing the Mac Pro and replacing it with the great Mac studio, despite their failure in 2013 trying to built a Small Mac Pro (Similar to current Mac Studio).
Recording studios are the only music department that need the PCIe HDX cards, as they are the only thing that give no latency on input monitoring for musicians - specifically large studios. The other interfaces you mention can only give low latency which isn't good enough for a professional studio. Everyone else I know who used to use the Mac Pro 2019 for their home studio setups is moving to the Mac Studio, including myself. The external Thunderbolt PCI expansion chassis aren't reliable enough yet, but if they get better, there would no need for the new Mac Pro in recording studios either.
Here's a one line summary of this machine.... 'It offers the perfect reason to jump ship and just buy a more powerful, faster, top end PC that will beat it in almost all productivity tasks... and then take all the money you saved to buy a macbook pro too'.. I mean the M2 Ultra GPU in cinebench is only par with the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti (thats just a low end $380 nvidia gpu). Just makes a $10000+ Apple price insane when compared to PC equivalence in benchmarks, same for DaVinci Resolve or the Adobe Suite. Then you just compare components like RAM, and the Apple tax is just crazy, 10x the price for what used to be off the shelf parts. Honestly why anyone these days pays all that money for a top end Mac Pro workstation is beyond me when it gets hammered by a PC at half the price.
Yeah, it's honestly insane for any pro that doesn't rely on Final Cut/Logic Pro to even consider a Mac Pro, and even then, it's a bit dumb for them to not jump ship at this point.
This is what I said on MKBHD’s vid and I do agree! I don’t think this is a send off to the Mac Pro. I think this is just the result of getting extremely poor yield on the higher end M2 that they couldn’t feasibly put it in there even if it cost a lot more as they wouldn’t mind it. It would also explain why this machine missed the 2 year mark by a full year of probably trying everything to get the yield up. It honestly reminds me of AirPower and how, technically, they had it working, but they just couldn’t get most of them within the heat tolerance for mass production.
The problem is you're clearly still thinking they're going to keep the line going at the same time as you're describing the similarities to a product that they had to can. In this case the product came to market, but nobody should buy it. So the sales are going to be pitiful and it's very likely that studio is the new pro.
These are ways in Tim Cook operates versus Steve Jobs. Jobs would've never let this Mac go to market. It fills no need. Unless Apple drastically improves graphics performance or somehow figures out how to create the ability to support GPUs over Apple Silicon, there's no reason to create a Pro unit over the existing Studio systems.
I'm honestly happy i bought my Mac Pro 2019 back in summer 2020! The only thing i need to upgrade is the GPU. But anything else is good! I can go on with this for some time. 🙂
Been waiting on this vid. The Mac Pro 2023 could have been somewhat of a solid value add at it's current state, if wasn't $3k just for the internal PCIe slots that are for storage expansion/IO or had a massive performance uptick and higher base specs than the Mac Studio. Since it's neither, it exists in for a very small subset of users. Hopefully, the Mac Pro finds its way to some sort of upgradability in the next iteration.
I have one - maxed out - and I love it. I can't believe the speed and precision of the renders I'm getting. If I'd bought the Mac Studio with the same M2 Ultra I wouldn't have internal SATA ports, upgradable storage, eight thunderbolt ports or the ability to put afterburner cards or RAID storage into the PCI lanes.
what they should have done is remove the graphics storage and ram from the chip and make them their own stuff so you can upgrade them or maybe a gpu override so it supports gpus
It is technologically possible to add additional RAM and dGPUs to Apple Silicon. I hope they’ll bring that to a future version of Mac Pro because there definitely are pro workflows that require crazy amounts of memory and graphics.
Great video, well structured and very accurate except for the ending: no, it’s not true that 3D artists and animators need this much GPU power and this is a myth growing recently with the new Apple silicon. I can not put it too politely otherwise it will take me forever but it’s simple - junior artists, TH-camrs, boutique house artists will think they need a ton of GPU power to work with, a senior artist at high end facilities will work with a gtx1080 any day. The only exception is with unreal and unity or any game engine being used for real-time rendering or close to real-time final quality. Not only they know and need to optimize their scenes but they also know that when they press render they depend mainly on ray traced cpu unbiased render engines. A lot of high end CG isn’t being done in redshift or octane (GPU based engines) but still being done with multiple GI bounces that need a lot of cpu. That’s why cinebench has a cpu and GPU test. And it’s the cpu type of render (those squares are literally the threads of CPU) that builds most of the CG when working in Maya or 3DS max. You can check James Boyle TH-cam channel for a good M1 Max review in the CG context. For a boutique house and freelancers this chip is more than enough and a great value for money. In big post houses it’s all running on Linux based render blades that are barely above a gtx2080. Source: im VFX Supervisor that works with the biggest post production studios around. I hate to see this myth grow because if there is one thing that is painful is working in windows just because you think you need a massive GPU to model or animate something, or Linux to get anything done. This information just makes things intimidating and it’s just not accurate. If you know what you are doing in a 3D package you know how to keep things moving fast.
Ive always felt that this mac pro was released just so they can say they finished the apple silicon changeover, and theyll release something that isnt a mac studio in a cheesegrater case sometime in the future. would be cool if they returned to the trashcan mac chassis just for the memes
Meanwhile Apple should give their Apple Intel Mac Pro customers another GPU upgrade with AMD 7000 Series GPU"s so they can at least be happy instead of disappointed while Apple finishes their transition with REAL GPU power.
Before they released it, I was wondering if they'd have an Apple Silicon-based PCIe GPU to go in the newest Mac Pro... It would make sense to not support other GPUs if they wanted people to use their own. Still wondering if they may be working on it but haven't gotten it working yet...
When Apple released M1, the big question was what was going to happen with the desktop line. I think Apple either did not have a solution at the time, and maybe the solution is in progress. As far as I see it. The Mac hardware is gone, we only have supersized iPhone hardware. I am not sure if this is good or bad, but without even one computer without serious GPU capabilities the Mac software support is going to be an issue. Who is going to take any Mac seriously for animation, CAD, 3D modelling, etc.?
I’m using my M1 Max MacBook Pro for 3D modelling and animation daily. I don’t understand the perspective of these type of comments (no one can use macs for 3D) - people did 3D work for like 30 years on hardware nowhere near as powerful as the current gen of computers. Entire CG movies such as Avatar or Transformers made with hardware less powerful than today. The Matrix movie in 1999 used computers with Pentium 2 processors, no such thing as GPU rendering. Macs are completely viable for working in 3D, even if you don’t get the same GPU horsepower as a desktop PC. My MacBook loads a complex scene faster and achieves higher viewport editing performance than my top of the line desktop PC due to the efficiencies.
At this point, Apple Silicon is competing against itself. Sure, Nvidia still has an edge in 3D but that is a dedicated GPU vs an integrated GPU which is crazy. Technically there is nothing stoping Apple from allowing third party GPU in the future. Can't wait for 3rd and 4th generation
I’m still such a simp for the Intel Mac Pro. Apple's M(X) Ultra chip line won't surpass a 28-Core Xeon w/ a W6900X until we get to like an M10 Ultra at the earliest. The highest-end specced Intel Mac Pro will be light years faster than any Apple Silicon product for the next decade. Ironically enough, the Intel Mac Pro is quite future-proof. An Apple Silicon Mac Pro compared to an Intel Mac Pro is like comparing a PS4 to an NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti.
Great video it covered everything I could think of! Which their are Music production channels saying it's bad for music production... So Yeah I hop apple just hit a road bump and this isn't a grand master plan to cancel the Mac Pro.
I don't get it! Why not support any and every PCI-E expansion card? Be it by TB dock be it by PCI-E slot on the tower Mac Pro. Are they trying to kill the prosumer user base?
Still loving the Mac Pro 2019. The best Apple computer that I had in my life. Just for the pcie and the cpu upgrade options is a Killler. Even with Apple silicon on the table.
I think the only reason why this Mac Pro was released was because of Tim's promise to transition completely to Apple Silicon in 2 years. It's been over 2 years, and the Mac they want would probably take a few years longer. So they put this out to satisfy their timeline (still over 2 years, but not going to be 4) and customers as they work out a new product which will be ready in minimum 2 years, or probably even longer than that.
The competition for the Mac Pro is things like the Lenovo ThinkStation and HP Z-Series workstations. You can easily spec those out to be $60,000 + My ThinkStation P620 has 256GB RAM, which is more than a Maxed out MacPro can have, and I could upgrade it to 2TB for about €65,000 + import tax. I'll wait until it gets a lot cheaper before doing that. It can take 4 GPUs. I have two at the moment, one is a potato-card where the only requirement is that it has a display-out that can do 4k60, the other is a GTX 3080Ti.
Even my 2012/2013 ThinkStation S30 can take 256GB RAM, which like you said is more than the maxed out Mac Pro can have. Though I only have 64GB (4x 16GB) in it, but DDR3 Reg ECC is dirt cheap so I could get another 64GB kit for
It seems that the Apple ethos on hardware right now is that if you can't do it on the "package" its not happening, so likely they are waiting for genuine N3 fab to bump the GPU cores, that and software better optimised for Metal, if it lies outside that envelope it's not sustainably economical.
Anyone considering a Mac Studio or Mac Pro should watch your review, and also Linus’. You’re both tough, and fair. But Quinn, you’re never going to get that sweet, sweet Gruber-love from Apple with reviews like this 😢
I have a Mac Studio M2 Ultra now as well as the Mac Studio M1 Max upgraded. I agree the Mac Pro (I owned all the previous ones going back to the Mac IIfx) is an unnecessary device, but for a very few. Yet, I do recall the discussions pre the Mac Studios release by so many semi pros, on various blogs, demanding Apple release another Mac Pro with an expansion bus. I say bravo Apple for giving s what we all needed as well as what most of us don't. It's probably for Apple's in house use, a few specialty cases and as a hell of a flag ship; the new Mac Pro is a beast. Dell has its insanely high end Precision Work stations too, I have one which when new was around $20,000. Prestige car makers tend to have ridiculously powerful models too. People buying the consumer models don't bitch about the ones they can't afford, they read all about them, and wish. So again I say, great job Apple. Next, I can't wait to get my hands on the Apple Vision Pro. Again critics of price need to read up about such things as light frequency modulating LEDs, and support for spectral lines, understand HDR and the importance of the ability to see textural changes due to light modulation. Then they might understand the Apple 6K monitor's pricing too.
I said it when they revealed it live in the keynote, if I were someone who was ecstatic about Mac Pro transitioning to Apple Silicon, I would have been furious.
This is exactly why I love my 2019 Mac Pro which I purchased in 2022 seeing I only wanted Intel which goes along with it just like a normal PC. I did the same with my 2012 Mac Pro holding out for the announcement of trash can and the day of the announcement I bought the 2012 Mac Pro knowing it was the older version at that point. Call me old school but I needed and still do PCIe and back then had TBs of 10K rpm spinning rust which is now converted into solid state. Not to mention my CPU was the 8 core on the 2019 which is now a 16 core plus ram I keep adding when I see fit. I like macs but with a PC style approach. Prob why I’ve gravitated to the Mac Pro. Main use is music creation, also photo and video editor of the family. Hence the big library of photos, videos, documents of at least 12 people other then me. Then there’s my music samples, plug-ins, programs and the rest. That’s the macOS side of my needs. I also either have PC just for gaming (currently do) but with my 5,1 I used a SSD using the second sata port for another DVD drive which was my boot camp drive. Back then nvidia and apple played ball so I always had either the current x80 or last gens x80. My last one that I used in the 5,1 was a GTX980. Plus I would flash the firmware to support boot screen support and nvidia used to release drivers fairly regularly. First AMD card I ever owned was a RX580 when I decided to upgrade to Mojave as it was a better option then the GTX680 that was supported. Haven’t done bootcamp yet on the 7,1 yet as my PC still plenty full. Plus I prefer nvidia. Though would like to run a bunch of test on it with the W5700x Pro I have and my RTX4090. Haven’t been able to find anyone who has tried it yet. Anyway I do believe this new model is a stop gap, they must of ran out of time or something similar.
If it had AV1 Encode/Decode I'd be doing everything possible to get one. I already edit all of my videos on MacOS, being able to record them directly to said Mac instead of needing a separate Capture PC? Pshhh easy buy. And no, I don't currently record AV1, I record HEVC. And yes, I COULD use the current M2 Mac Pro for that. The issue is that I WANT to move to AV1 soon. I stream AV1, so I have the PC hardware needed to record it as soon as I get a Mac that can edit it. But since I won't be able to upgrade this Mac Pro down the line to support AV1, I am stuck waiting on Apple to release an M3 model. As for why I would be interested in the Mac Pro for this task... PCIe. My capture cards (which ARE MacOS compatible) could slot right in without needing any Thunderbolt enclosures. I'd be down for that. But we'll see. Until then, I'll keep using a Capture PC I suppose.
I fully agree. I was hoping the Mac Pro would be the 3D rendering, Ray Tracing Cuda killer playing AAA games at 200fps as a trivial side job....without even breaking a sweat....Price be damned. Nope.... far worse than I expected was the lack of support for GPUs altogether.
Given the chip struggles, Apple realized they were going to have to redesign silicon to make a Mac Pro only chip -and- redesign the entire Mac Pro. Apple Silicon is really efficient as an SoC - but that hurts its expandability as a chip for a Mac Pro, and it’s pure performance. Hopefully, Apple better integrates additional cards. Personally, I’d like to see Apple design more of their own cards, as they did with AfterBurner.
Saturday, as I was trying to reroute all the external drives and USB devices, because my Qwiizlab USB C Hub died, I was thinking how badly I wash the Mac Pro wasn’t over priced. That’s the computer I need. I just can’t justify the price.
Might be buying time for the next leap for M3 and then start difference on the studio and pro, with a updated design and something more unique than this pale update of the pro, studio was great 👌🏻 M3 can’t come fast enough
its not that nobody needs it....its that nobody wants it because its grossly over priced.........but since you are such a huge fanboy...it doesnt dawn on you that nobody wants to pay that much just because its a mac
I suspect the M3 will have improved GPUs along with raytracing hardware much like the media engines for video processing. And the MacPro should have, for the price, given the user more RAM for the base configuration. What were they thinking?
Yea, PCIe-based Pro Tools systems are pretty antiquated at this point, and seem to be getting phased out except for very specific uses cases (scoring, post, that kind of thing)
I had high hopes for it and I was disappointed when I saw the announcement. Having more than 10x less ram is a big deal breaker for me and I'm sure it's a deal breaker for a lot of people as well. I'm hoping by the time I'm ready to replace it, I'll be able to get a decent Intel or HP workstation.
Great video! But I have to say that, just in my opinion, I'm not sure if I agree with your take on the graphics performance of Apple Silicon. Sure, I do think Apple doesn't put nearly as much focus on graphics as they do on CPU and overall efficiency, but I think the actual problem boils down to benchmarks not telling the whole story. In real-world performance, the M2 Max smokes pretty much everything else out there, and the M2 Ultra just makes it look like you're trying to give PC users an inferiority complex. Only gaming still remains a challenge, but I hope that the new Game Mode and tools for devs to optimize them - which still hasn't happened! - will really change the game.* These chips are absolutely insane! *No pun intended, honest - I couldn't think of something else to say, and since it was a funny coincidence I just left it like that!
This is probably as spot on as it gets with this strange machine. Everyone tries to argue that it is for a very certain, very important, sub-set of a niche group but the only real world fact is that it lacks support of proper GPUs and going forward that is the one single thing that matters. Hopefully we will see a new version in the coming year...
whole Apple in 2023 is aspirational failure, almost 3 years ago when they announced Apple Silicon Macs, they boasted about unmatched performance, scaleable architecture and all sorts of fancy words, now in 2023 they barely managed to complete Apple Silicon lineup with 1 year delay, barely refreshing M1 with little to no performance/efficiency difference, nowadays prices, especially upgrade options remain wild to say politely, here in Europe looking at MBP 14" it's $567 EXTRA for 16GB more memory (32GB in total), another $567 EXTRA for 1TB more storage (2TB in total), while PC market is overflowing with 32GB ram kits and 2TB NVME SSDs for around $140, Apple seriously needs to calm their greed down, cut prices at least in HALF to remain only TWICE as expensive in 2023 onward, new Apple Silicon Mac Pro is not a problem, it's literally only Apple "computer" in traditional sense, problem is that outrageous pricing, again, for HALF the cost it could be a competitive product...
The most frustrating bit is that Apple knows what consumers want. Yet, they REFUSE to give it to us. As such, I'm going to continue building custom PCs and just running Arch on them. I'd love to use a Mac. But for my workload, the new M1 / M2 config makes no sense because I can't plug in a GPU. It's frustrating and unfortunately, the only time Apple will listen is when people stop buying their stuff.
Was kinda disappointed in the new Mac Pro (I don’t have one). Seemed to me to lack super high bandwidth I/O card possibilities. I also despise the non-upgradeable RAM. Ugh. Long time Mac user, since 1986. I want a new iMac with a stunning display and user upgradable RAM and SSD. Is that too much to ask?
Quinn, I've been watching your videos for quite a few years now, and IMHO, not many creators - if any - deserve the success you've achieved with your channel thus far. The most important improvement, again IMO, is the writing. Yeah the video has gotten better, the audio, the setups, the editing, the quality control -- but man you're at the point now where your script alone can be an article published in a high-end tech magazine. Perhaps you'd lose money in writing for a separate outlet rather than spending that time on the videos for your own channel, which likely create more revenue in the short and long term; but I thought I would nonetheless throw that idea out there. If you did publish written pieces, I think they would be extremely successful, and I personally would be all in for it. Have a great night man.
From the very start, when Apple anounced to move Mac to ARM, I felt sorry for Mac Pro users. Cause no way any GPU manufacturer is going to invest in ARM drivers for the few MacOS uses who can afford a Mac Pro, assuming apple would allow this in the first place. And without GPU support the Pro platform is dead imho. I really don't understand why they even bothered to release this. Maybe things will change in the future, but it feels like Apple is going full in their own processors and GPU's. And don't get me wrong, they do really well in performance and power consumption, but it just won't cut it for real power users. And yes Apple showed it can change, though I don't think they will keep i368 MacOS support alive for power users. That doesn't make any sense.
So stupid that you can’t install Nvidia’s or AMD’s finest in that huge box. What other cards could you possibly in there and for what purpose? All I can think of is a math co-processor, but do they even make those anymore? Peace.
I am not an analyst and even I can see that that Apple was waiting for the competition to come up with something that would challenge Apple Silicon. Their plan was to have the Max pro smash that. Whatever was going to go in this machine will have to wait. Why bringing it out if you are competing against yourself? Mind you that these are INTEGRATED solutions so save the Dedicated GPU speech.
The Apple Silicon Mac Pro looks EXTREMELY hushed not even supporting external GPUs on that PCIEs. I really hope this Mac Pro doesn’t kills Mac Pros, and that we end up getting Mac Pro with actually useful PCIEs. I’m sure they can figure it out, they wouldn’t even be the first one to put out an ARM SOC with PCIE GPU support - Apere Dev Kit is right there.
Gotta love the nod to Apple neglecting the Pro market for the better part of a decade (from 2012 to 2019). I definitely felt that neglect, when I wanted to upgrade my 2009 Mac Pro, and waited until 2017 to build my own PC workstation for much less than half the price of a 2013 8-core Mac Pro. The M1 Max Mac Studio finally felt like Apple was listening to it's pro user base who didn't need Xeon processors and ECC memory, much less wanted to spend $6,000 on a fairly pedestrian 8-core CPU based workstation. The M1 Ultra was a definitely solid step up for those who need more oomph. The pro users who need over 200GB of ram will have to wait. ...have to think it'll come, as Apple rethinks the Mac Pro.
I can't really see a future for a Mac Pro in this form. Apple have few options, and both will be costly & requires a lot of work that probably won't be used in other of their computers: 1. Allow for RAM slots & PCI-e graphics cards: Lack of RAM slots is not (only) Apple greed, because of the unified, integrated RAM, it's so much faster than socketed ones. This is one of the most important things of M1/M2 architecture. You need to rethink almost entire concept to allow for that. PCI-e graphics cards seems to be much easier to achieve, but then what? Should they design a special SoC-variant without GPU (but maybe with much higher CPU core-count?) only for Mac Pro? Or maybe still use the same chips but allow for more powerful GPUs? But then, who will produce those cards and write drivers for them? 2. Find a way to make this rumored 4x Max chip feasible, or at least allow for dual or quad-SoC configurations (which also requires a LOT of work, as they are designed to be a singular chips, with their own RAM, not working in multiprocessor configurations, macOS also doesn't have support for any non-symmetric multiprocessing) I think second option in some way is more possible (with a single-behemoth SoC), but they could also decide at one point that maybe Mac Pro is not needed on the market anyway.
IMPORTANT: I'm really dumb and didn't check our export file very well. Half of our benchmark charts are missing and I *really* apologize for not catching this before I pushed "publish." It won't happen again. Please see this Google Sheets link with all of the data we collected for better insights on how it compares to PC GPUs. snazzy.fm/fx
Thanks for clarifying Quinn!
I see that you are using the System76 Launch keyboard. What are your thoughts on it and the company behind it? I love mine and I have just recently bought the Pangolin laptop as well.
Did you Really mean M1 Pro / Max early on? As opposed to M2.
you can still delete the video and reupload
@@tonystark1073 TH-camrs know that you really can’t.
Man, that is once again probably the most honest and level headed Mac prospective I've seen.
Perspective*
Linus did it better IMHO
I think you're right. The super early leaks were discussing the 'Jade-C' (M1 Max) 'Jade-C Chop' (M1 Pro), the 'Jade-2C' (M1 Max) and a Jade-4C. That leak was absolutely bang on the head except for the 4C. It just, never came.
However, I'm not sure that the die size is the primary driver, given nvidia's GH100 is at 800mm2, my guess would be the interposer tech being a problem when working with 4 dies rather than 2.
Adding to that, they've painted themselves into this corner by steadfastly refusing to support NUMA on macOS-- so they can't just break it out to a slower interconnect and bang another SoC in, without having to make big changes to macOS to prevent the performance tanking
I think you’re right. I just built a Ryzen 5600x system with 32gb ram /1tb ssd, and an nvidia 1060 gpu. It was fun. It was cheeesaaapppp. It is screaming fast.
Shame about the Mac Pro offering and I do like my M1 but I also feel a lot better about the faster Intel system I built for video editing a year ago at a quarter of the price.
Intel Macs are still the best, at least for me. My 2020 iMac is still very powerful with the Radeon 5700 pro XT.
I think you are on to something here, this is not the Mac Pro Apple intended to release and the use case for it might have changed slightly? It will be interesting to see how the future for Mac Pro looks in the coming years.
It's like every Apple product, designed to separate you from your money and your senses.
Your local hardware-store is selling cheese-graders for about 15,-- Dollars/Euros...
M1 really changed everything lol
If Apple enabled GPU acceleration on the Mac Pro, perhaps more people would buy the system. You know, four extra gpus for rendering
Coming in December.
Time to build a new Hackintosh, with the latest ~$700 GPU, and ~$700CPU. I’ve a feeling it would absolutely WRECK the Mac Pro.
Can it run Microsoft Access?
Always fond of his videos 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
If I want mopping, T20 Omni, Narwal Freo or Q Revo? Or wait for Roborock to release rotating mops in an S line?
Purely mopping? As in you don’t care about vacuuming at all? Narwal Freo.
@@snazzy Yep, have a vacuum already which does fine. Thank you!
For the Mac Pros, Apple really should stop pretending that it can make a reasonable competitor to the GPU compute options available on the Intel side. Just go back to using high end Intel or AMD parts instead.
In the big scheme of things, this Apple Silicon thing seems to evoke more than a little bit of deja-vu for those who've been with Macs since the early days.
All I know is I want a burger, fries and a shake!
They need to come to an understanding with Nvidia so we can get Mac silicon drivers for Nvidia GPUS. Cuda compute is a huge necessity for a lot of pro workloads.
The problem isn't a lack of drivers in this case. The M series chips physically do not support off chip memory, and this includes VRAM. It simply isn't possible to get eGPUs working on them.
If it's just a driver issue then why is it also not compatible with amd gpus?
2 greedy companies can't agree on their stuff. That's why there's no macOS drivers for nvidia GPUs since pascal.
@@tonetraveler992That's not true. They've got the pcie lanes, they've got the speed, and therefore it's possible. It's only not possible because the software doesn't exist. Apple could enable it tomorrow.
@@Malc180s the issue isn't drivers. Look at Linux on M1 - third party GPUs including AMD are just as unsupported, because fundamentally Apple Silicon isn't capable of addressing off-die memory. It simply isn't designed in that way. Hacky workarounds might theoretically be possible but they would absolutely destroy performance.
I can’t believe we got a stopgap Apple Silicon Mac Pro right after the stopgap Intel Mac Pro.
After the stop gap iMac Pro
What do you think that the iMac Pro was then?
@@johnwade7430The leaked 4 M1/2 Ultra chips the past leaks were saying.
And what the video was talking about.
Or every stop gap mac that instantly thermal throttled since 2014 cause intel couldn’t make an m1.
Makes sense. M2 feels like stopgap before M3 anyways.
Great review and specifics about Mac Pro that actually are helpful. Would love a retrofit for the existing case. Would love to get more life out of it.
This is the thing I don't understand most people not mentioning at all. To get the new Mac Pro, you have to buy a new case, power supply and fans to replace the identical case, power supply and fans...why?!
Pegasus made a 32 TB raid array that was compatible with the previous generation Mac Pro. It use the MPX slot, and on Apple own website is advertised as being compatible with the current generation 2023 Mac Pro.
Spoiler alert, it isn’t.
Massive L
Imagine being Pegasus. Can’t imagine this card being sold enough to recover the development costs.
@@harmvzon imagine being the customer who sees no GPUs work and orders 3 of those to make up for it 😂
Typical Apple 😅
Holy crap I'd be infuriated lol
The thunderbolt future that Phil was so excited about back in 2013 has finally happened now a decade later.
and to their detriment
Thunderbolt is already dead being replaced by USB-4 standard
@@TazzSmk Not remotely close to my point but Thunderbolt is exactly what they baked into USB4, so obviously it lives on and all serious I/O equipment gets certified for Thunderbolt still.
@@TazzSmkTB4 is still the better version of USB4.
Definitely a newb since I thought usb4 was just a newer version of thunderbolt 😅
I think they released it just so they can say, "We've finally finished our transition" in the next Apple event or something.
i mean that's literally what they did (sorry if i'm missing satire here im tired asf)
I think they missed a huge opportunity with a „Mac Pro/Mac Studio“ in a 1U rack mount chassis.
Considering all the rack mounted thunderbolt hardware and the acceptable success of the Rack mount Mac Pro, a slim 1U M2 Ultra Mac with fat networking and a buttload of thunderbolt would fill that professional gap.
That’s actually a really good idea
@@AntonKuznetsovMusic 1U would be to loud. 2U would be a much better choice.
@@rdsii64 I think OP meant a quite U1 😜
@@rdsii64the form factor isn't what makes anything loud. Going from the cooling they made for the mac Studio they could easily fit 1U and it'll be just as quiet.
@@rdsii64loud, why? The cooling doesn’t need to be beefy.
they really need to bring back GPU Support, internal and external. These integrated GPUs are nice in the Performance per Watt regard but for anything serious they're to compromised.
dedicated GPUs are too in-efficient for Apple Silicon, but I guess for a desktop computer where energy-efficiency isn't a factor, Apple could cram a dGPU into the Mac Pro Heatsink
@@TheStopwatchGod this is why they should support thunderbolts docks again with eGPUs
I think for this form of computing (desktop/tower), Windows/Linux PCs may still have the edge. What killed it for me was the PCI-e's underutilized potential.
At the moment, the biggest advantage of the awesome Apple silicons are mini-PCs. Small computers that doesn't lack big performance.
I see a lot of businesses in the future, moving towards small form factor which in the case of Apple, the Mac Mini.
Awesome video Quinn.
BINGO! My 2019 is safe from replacement for now. You want to see the new Mac Pro completely destroyed, run a comparison with a W6800 duo. And the memory limitations are potentially an issue too for many as there are workflows that need more than 192 GB.
Apple needs to bring back the Xserve with Apple Silicon. Imagine a silent, relatively low power, media ingest/render farm server with an M2 Ultra or Steve Jobs forbid, more than one M2 Ultra chips running ala NUMA Nodes. Top of the line media capabilities with top of the line efficiency. That's where I see ARM chips with dedicated media engines like these M-series chips shine.
RISC-V and open standard will devour this M2 chip.... nobody buy pro machine with planned obsolescence hardware
Unless it comes with native Linux support, never gonna happen.
You could do a video with Neil Parfitt on the pro. He's a composer who bought a Mac Pro, and a very amusing guy. His biggest issue was the cross compatibility of software that worked on an Intel Mac Pro but didn't work at all on a Mac studio and also when firmware updates come through, it is a total gamble for them that their software and plugins will actually work at all. Something that could potentially massively affect their ability to work and therefore earn money.
He has some great videos, including his series on the ER-301 Sound Computer Eurorack Module!
Apple intentionally killing the Mac Pro and replacing it with the great Mac studio, despite their failure in 2013 trying to built a Small Mac Pro (Similar to current Mac Studio).
I want a Mac Pro to match my XDR but I would like a smaller box with the same design.
Recording studios are the only music department that need the PCIe HDX cards, as they are the only thing that give no latency on input monitoring for musicians - specifically large studios. The other interfaces you mention can only give low latency which isn't good enough for a professional studio.
Everyone else I know who used to use the Mac Pro 2019 for their home studio setups is moving to the Mac Studio, including myself.
The external Thunderbolt PCI expansion chassis aren't reliable enough yet, but if they get better, there would no need for the new Mac Pro in recording studios either.
Here's a one line summary of this machine.... 'It offers the perfect reason to jump ship and just buy a more powerful, faster, top end PC that will beat it in almost all productivity tasks... and then take all the money you saved to buy a macbook pro too'..
I mean the M2 Ultra GPU in cinebench is only par with the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti (thats just a low end $380 nvidia gpu). Just makes a $10000+ Apple price insane when compared to PC equivalence in benchmarks, same for DaVinci Resolve or the Adobe Suite. Then you just compare components like RAM, and the Apple tax is just crazy, 10x the price for what used to be off the shelf parts. Honestly why anyone these days pays all that money for a top end Mac Pro workstation is beyond me when it gets hammered by a PC at half the price.
Yeah, it's honestly insane for any pro that doesn't rely on Final Cut/Logic Pro to even consider a Mac Pro, and even then, it's a bit dumb for them to not jump ship at this point.
This is what I said on MKBHD’s vid and I do agree! I don’t think this is a send off to the Mac Pro. I think this is just the result of getting extremely poor yield on the higher end M2 that they couldn’t feasibly put it in there even if it cost a lot more as they wouldn’t mind it. It would also explain why this machine missed the 2 year mark by a full year of probably trying everything to get the yield up.
It honestly reminds me of AirPower and how, technically, they had it working, but they just couldn’t get most of them within the heat tolerance for mass production.
The problem is you're clearly still thinking they're going to keep the line going at the same time as you're describing the similarities to a product that they had to can. In this case the product came to market, but nobody should buy it. So the sales are going to be pitiful and it's very likely that studio is the new pro.
These are ways in Tim Cook operates versus Steve Jobs. Jobs would've never let this Mac go to market. It fills no need. Unless Apple drastically improves graphics performance or somehow figures out how to create the ability to support GPUs over Apple Silicon, there's no reason to create a Pro unit over the existing Studio systems.
@@irod97 spotted on with the recent VR headset release....they're likely to focus on that...
I'm honestly happy i bought my Mac Pro 2019 back in summer 2020! The only thing i need to upgrade is the GPU. But anything else is good! I can go on with this for some time. 🙂
Been waiting on this vid. The Mac Pro 2023 could have been somewhat of a solid value add at it's current state, if wasn't $3k just for the internal PCIe slots that are for storage expansion/IO or had a massive performance uptick and higher base specs than the Mac Studio. Since it's neither, it exists in for a very small subset of users.
Hopefully, the Mac Pro finds its way to some sort of upgradability in the next iteration.
I have one - maxed out - and I love it. I can't believe the speed and precision of the renders I'm getting. If I'd bought the Mac Studio with the same M2 Ultra I wouldn't have internal SATA ports, upgradable storage, eight thunderbolt ports or the ability to put afterburner cards or RAID storage into the PCI lanes.
what they should have done is remove the graphics storage and ram from the chip and make them their own stuff so you can upgrade them or maybe a gpu override so it supports gpus
So basically, turn it into a PC?
@@notme8232 kinda but still have it be ARM
It is technologically possible to add additional RAM and dGPUs to Apple Silicon. I hope they’ll bring that to a future version of Mac Pro because there definitely are pro workflows that require crazy amounts of memory and graphics.
I just don’t get why the didn’t enable the Mac Pro to use dedicated graphics. How hard could it be?
Great video, well structured and very accurate except for the ending: no, it’s not true that 3D artists and animators need this much GPU power and this is a myth growing recently with the new Apple silicon. I can not put it too politely otherwise it will take me forever but it’s simple - junior artists, TH-camrs, boutique house artists will think they need a ton of GPU power to work with, a senior artist at high end facilities will work with a gtx1080 any day.
The only exception is with unreal and unity or any game engine being used for real-time rendering or close to real-time final quality.
Not only they know and need to optimize their scenes but they also know that when they press render they depend mainly on ray traced cpu unbiased render engines. A lot of high end CG isn’t being done in redshift or octane (GPU based engines) but still being done with multiple GI bounces that need a lot of cpu. That’s why cinebench has a cpu and GPU test. And it’s the cpu type of render (those squares are literally the threads of CPU) that builds most of the CG when working in Maya or 3DS max.
You can check James Boyle TH-cam channel for a good M1 Max review in the CG context.
For a boutique house and freelancers this chip is more than enough and a great value for money. In big post houses it’s all running on Linux based render blades that are barely above a gtx2080.
Source: im VFX Supervisor that works with the biggest post production studios around. I hate to see this myth grow because if there is one thing that is painful is working in windows just because you think you need a massive GPU to model or animate something, or Linux to get anything done. This information just makes things intimidating and it’s just not accurate. If you know what you are doing in a 3D package you know how to keep things moving fast.
Besides, anyone who actually needs GPU muscle moved to a PC years ago.
Ive always felt that this mac pro was released just so they can say they finished the apple silicon changeover, and theyll release something that isnt a mac studio in a cheesegrater case sometime in the future. would be cool if they returned to the trashcan mac chassis just for the memes
Yes Trashcan Mac Pro with 2x M2 Ultra and a ton of Thunderbolt 4 ports
Meanwhile Apple should give their Apple Intel Mac Pro customers another GPU upgrade with AMD 7000 Series GPU"s so they can at least be happy instead of disappointed while Apple finishes their transition with REAL GPU power.
Then the ‘old’ MacPro would be so much faster than a M2 Ultra. They would never allow that.
Apple never cared for Gpu power. Nor will they now.
Before they released it, I was wondering if they'd have an Apple Silicon-based PCIe GPU to go in the newest Mac Pro... It would make sense to not support other GPUs if they wanted people to use their own. Still wondering if they may be working on it but haven't gotten it working yet...
it would be nice to add a "lower is better", "higher is better" caption to your charts, cos not all of us understand these numbers.
When Apple released M1, the big question was what was going to happen with the desktop line. I think Apple either did not have a solution at the time, and maybe the solution is in progress. As far as I see it. The Mac hardware is gone, we only have supersized iPhone hardware. I am not sure if this is good or bad, but without even one computer without serious GPU capabilities the Mac software support is going to be an issue. Who is going to take any Mac seriously for animation, CAD, 3D modelling, etc.?
I’m using my M1 Max MacBook Pro for 3D modelling and animation daily.
I don’t understand the perspective of these type of comments (no one can use macs for 3D) - people did 3D work for like 30 years on hardware nowhere near as powerful as the current gen of computers.
Entire CG movies such as Avatar or Transformers made with hardware less powerful than today. The Matrix movie in 1999 used computers with Pentium 2 processors, no such thing as GPU rendering.
Macs are completely viable for working in 3D, even if you don’t get the same GPU horsepower as a desktop PC.
My MacBook loads a complex scene faster and achieves higher viewport editing performance than my top of the line desktop PC due to the efficiencies.
At this point, Apple Silicon is competing against itself. Sure, Nvidia still has an edge in 3D but that is a dedicated GPU vs an integrated GPU which is crazy. Technically there is nothing stoping Apple from allowing third party GPU in the future. Can't wait for 3rd and 4th generation
Sounds like the mac pro should be a mac studio in a 19 inch rack mount chassis with extra thunderbolt ports
They aren't giving 7000 AMD drivers for mac OS to artificially age the 2019 mac pro. It's actual bullshit.
I’m still such a simp for the Intel Mac Pro.
Apple's M(X) Ultra chip line won't surpass a 28-Core Xeon w/ a W6900X until we get to like an M10 Ultra at the earliest.
The highest-end specced Intel Mac Pro will be light years faster than any Apple Silicon product for the next decade.
Ironically enough, the Intel Mac Pro is quite future-proof.
An Apple Silicon Mac Pro compared to an Intel Mac Pro is like comparing a PS4 to an NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti.
at this point i would just cut mac pro loose…
Just don’t cut it loose above anyone’s head. The thing is so heavy it’s assured death.
@@snazzy someone should really motorised the wheels and see if they can steer it via remote down a hill
I mean it’s a stupid computer to buy but I still want one! I should just build a pc in that dune case.
Shrink form factor, make entire board upgradable, fill rear with ports, add great speakers, keep exterior style and I'll buy one
Great video it covered everything I could think of! Which their are Music production channels saying it's bad for music production... So Yeah I hop apple just hit a road bump and this isn't a grand master plan to cancel the Mac Pro.
I don't get it! Why not support any and every PCI-E expansion card? Be it by TB dock be it by PCI-E slot on the tower Mac Pro. Are they trying to kill the prosumer user base?
If you can't upgrade basically nothing on the mac "pro" why.... Would you buy it? oh so you can flex on your friends...
Still loving the Mac Pro 2019. The best Apple computer that I had in my life. Just for the pcie and the cpu upgrade options is a Killler. Even with Apple silicon on the table.
I ordered a M2 Mac Studio today, but I WILL get a Mac Pro at some point. I am someone who has pcie cards for audio.
I think the only reason why this Mac Pro was released was because of Tim's promise to transition completely to Apple Silicon in 2 years.
It's been over 2 years, and the Mac they want would probably take a few years longer. So they put this out to satisfy their timeline (still over 2 years, but not going to be 4) and customers as they work out a new product which will be ready in minimum 2 years, or probably even longer than that.
The competition for the Mac Pro is things like the Lenovo ThinkStation and HP Z-Series workstations. You can easily spec those out to be $60,000 +
My ThinkStation P620 has 256GB RAM, which is more than a Maxed out MacPro can have, and I could upgrade it to 2TB for about €65,000 + import tax. I'll wait until it gets a lot cheaper before doing that. It can take 4 GPUs. I have two at the moment, one is a potato-card where the only requirement is that it has a display-out that can do 4k60, the other is a GTX 3080Ti.
Even my 2012/2013 ThinkStation S30 can take 256GB RAM, which like you said is more than the maxed out Mac Pro can have. Though I only have 64GB (4x 16GB) in it, but DDR3 Reg ECC is dirt cheap so I could get another 64GB kit for
Curious to know, what do you do on your workstation?
@@spikatrix1486 I do lots of data analysis on big datasets mostly.
It seems that the Apple ethos on hardware right now is that if you can't do it on the "package" its not happening, so likely they are waiting for genuine N3 fab to bump the GPU cores, that and software better optimised for Metal, if it lies outside that envelope it's not sustainably economical.
Anyone considering a Mac Studio or Mac Pro should watch your review, and also Linus’. You’re both tough, and fair. But Quinn, you’re never going to get that sweet, sweet Gruber-love from Apple with reviews like this 😢
The fact that this is less upgradable than the Trash Can Mac Pro is kinda sad, even if it was predictable :(
At least here-unlike with the 2013 Mac Pro-Apple didn't sell it on the promise that it would get future upgrades lol
@@snazzy true true haha, the dual GPU setup on that thing was such a mess lol
I have a Mac Studio M2 Ultra now as well as the Mac Studio M1 Max upgraded. I agree the Mac Pro (I owned all the previous ones going back to the Mac IIfx) is an unnecessary device, but for a very few. Yet, I do recall the discussions pre the Mac Studios release by so many semi pros, on various blogs, demanding Apple release another Mac Pro with an expansion bus. I say bravo Apple for giving s what we all needed as well as what most of us don't. It's probably for Apple's in house use, a few specialty cases and as a hell of a flag ship; the new Mac Pro is a beast. Dell has its insanely high end Precision Work stations too, I have one which when new was around $20,000.
Prestige car makers tend to have ridiculously powerful models too. People buying the consumer models don't bitch about the ones they can't afford, they read all about them, and wish. So again I say, great job Apple.
Next, I can't wait to get my hands on the Apple Vision Pro. Again critics of price need to read up about such things as light frequency modulating LEDs, and support for spectral lines, understand HDR and the importance of the ability to see textural changes due to light modulation. Then they might understand the Apple 6K monitor's pricing too.
I said it when they revealed it live in the keynote, if I were someone who was ecstatic about Mac Pro transitioning to Apple Silicon, I would have been furious.
It's for a very specific set of people who wanted a mac studio but need extra PCIe lanes for their work.
And yet you'll see people this machine wasn't built for complain about it and how it's so bad and expensive for their needs like gaming.
This is exactly why I love my 2019 Mac Pro which I purchased in 2022 seeing I only wanted Intel which goes along with it just like a normal PC. I did the same with my 2012 Mac Pro holding out for the announcement of trash can and the day of the announcement I bought the 2012 Mac Pro knowing it was the older version at that point. Call me old school but I needed and still do PCIe and back then had TBs of 10K rpm spinning rust which is now converted into solid state. Not to mention my CPU was the 8 core on the 2019 which is now a 16 core plus ram I keep adding when I see fit. I like macs but with a PC style approach. Prob why I’ve gravitated to the Mac Pro.
Main use is music creation, also photo and video editor of the family. Hence the big library of photos, videos, documents of at least 12 people other then me. Then there’s my music samples, plug-ins, programs and the rest. That’s the macOS side of my needs. I also either have PC just for gaming (currently do) but with my 5,1 I used a SSD using the second sata port for another DVD drive which was my boot camp drive. Back then nvidia and apple played ball so I always had either the current x80 or last gens x80. My last one that I used in the 5,1 was a GTX980. Plus I would flash the firmware to support boot screen support and nvidia used to release drivers fairly regularly. First AMD card I ever owned was a RX580 when I decided to upgrade to Mojave as it was a better option then the GTX680 that was supported. Haven’t done bootcamp yet on the 7,1 yet as my PC still plenty full. Plus I prefer nvidia. Though would like to run a bunch of test on it with the W5700x Pro I have and my RTX4090. Haven’t been able to find anyone who has tried it yet.
Anyway I do believe this new model is a stop gap, they must of ran out of time or something similar.
If it had AV1 Encode/Decode I'd be doing everything possible to get one. I already edit all of my videos on MacOS, being able to record them directly to said Mac instead of needing a separate Capture PC? Pshhh easy buy. And no, I don't currently record AV1, I record HEVC. And yes, I COULD use the current M2 Mac Pro for that. The issue is that I WANT to move to AV1 soon. I stream AV1, so I have the PC hardware needed to record it as soon as I get a Mac that can edit it. But since I won't be able to upgrade this Mac Pro down the line to support AV1, I am stuck waiting on Apple to release an M3 model.
As for why I would be interested in the Mac Pro for this task... PCIe. My capture cards (which ARE MacOS compatible) could slot right in without needing any Thunderbolt enclosures. I'd be down for that. But we'll see. Until then, I'll keep using a Capture PC I suppose.
I fully agree. I was hoping the Mac Pro would be the 3D rendering, Ray Tracing Cuda killer playing AAA games at 200fps as a trivial side job....without even breaking a sweat....Price be damned. Nope.... far worse than I expected was the lack of support for GPUs altogether.
Given the chip struggles, Apple realized they were going to have to redesign silicon to make a Mac Pro only chip -and- redesign the entire Mac Pro.
Apple Silicon is really efficient as an SoC - but that hurts its expandability as a chip for a Mac Pro, and it’s pure performance.
Hopefully, Apple better integrates additional cards.
Personally, I’d like to see Apple design more of their own cards, as they did with AfterBurner.
Saturday, as I was trying to reroute all the external drives and USB devices, because my Qwiizlab USB C Hub died, I was thinking how badly I wash the Mac Pro wasn’t over priced. That’s the computer I need. I just can’t justify the price.
Might be buying time for the next leap for M3 and then start difference on the studio and pro, with a updated design and something more unique than this pale update of the pro, studio was great 👌🏻 M3 can’t come fast enough
its not that nobody needs it....its that nobody wants it because its grossly over priced.........but since you are such a huge fanboy...it doesnt dawn on you that nobody wants to pay that much just because its a mac
You didn’t watch the video, you ghoul.
Love your takes Quinn!
I suspect the M3 will have improved GPUs along with raytracing hardware much like the media engines for video processing. And the MacPro should have, for the price, given the user more RAM for the base configuration. What were they thinking?
How about a Mac Pro with 4 M3 Ultra chips running in a parallel cluster?
Without upgradability, it’s a dog. I need an affordable machine that I can upgrade as my needs change.
If linux gets better support on the Mac pro, doesn't that mean GPUs could be supported?
Yea, PCIe-based Pro Tools systems are pretty antiquated at this point, and seem to be getting phased out except for very specific uses cases (scoring, post, that kind of thing)
I had high hopes for it and I was disappointed when I saw the announcement. Having more than 10x less ram is a big deal breaker for me and I'm sure it's a deal breaker for a lot of people as well. I'm hoping by the time I'm ready to replace it, I'll be able to get a decent Intel or HP workstation.
Excellent video. Explains a lot. Thanks.
Great video! But I have to say that, just in my opinion, I'm not sure if I agree with your take on the graphics performance of Apple Silicon. Sure, I do think Apple doesn't put nearly as much focus on graphics as they do on CPU and overall efficiency, but I think the actual problem boils down to benchmarks not telling the whole story. In real-world performance, the M2 Max smokes pretty much everything else out there, and the M2 Ultra just makes it look like you're trying to give PC users an inferiority complex. Only gaming still remains a challenge, but I hope that the new Game Mode and tools for devs to optimize them - which still hasn't happened! - will really change the game.* These chips are absolutely insane!
*No pun intended, honest - I couldn't think of something else to say, and since it was a funny coincidence I just left it like that!
That shirt OMG
I'M DOING SOMETHING!
@@snazzy Don't be shy. Where'd you get the shirt? 👀
Dan Flashes
But remember Apple doesn't care about AAA gaming and pro level 3D apps no matter how much they say they do. They never have and never will.
Until the Apple Vision “SE” or “Air” drops and they see the money rolling in. They absolutely are interested in AAA gaming, so long as it suits them.
This is probably as spot on as it gets with this strange machine. Everyone tries to argue that it is for a very certain, very important, sub-set of a niche group but the only real world fact is that it lacks support of proper GPUs and going forward that is the one single thing that matters. Hopefully we will see a new version in the coming year...
whole Apple in 2023 is aspirational failure,
almost 3 years ago when they announced Apple Silicon Macs, they boasted about unmatched performance, scaleable architecture and all sorts of fancy words,
now in 2023 they barely managed to complete Apple Silicon lineup with 1 year delay, barely refreshing M1 with little to no performance/efficiency difference,
nowadays prices, especially upgrade options remain wild to say politely, here in Europe looking at MBP 14" it's $567 EXTRA for 16GB more memory (32GB in total), another $567 EXTRA for 1TB more storage (2TB in total), while PC market is overflowing with 32GB ram kits and 2TB NVME SSDs for around $140,
Apple seriously needs to calm their greed down, cut prices at least in HALF to remain only TWICE as expensive in 2023 onward,
new Apple Silicon Mac Pro is not a problem, it's literally only Apple "computer" in traditional sense, problem is that outrageous pricing, again, for HALF the cost it could be a competitive product...
Why would you need a 7000$ computer? Do you use it to make 10000$ per month?
Yes.
The most frustrating bit is that Apple knows what consumers want. Yet, they REFUSE to give it to us. As such, I'm going to continue building custom PCs and just running Arch on them. I'd love to use a Mac. But for my workload, the new M1 / M2 config makes no sense because I can't plug in a GPU. It's frustrating and unfortunately, the only time Apple will listen is when people stop buying their stuff.
Was kinda disappointed in the new Mac Pro (I don’t have one).
Seemed to me to lack super high bandwidth I/O card possibilities.
I also despise the non-upgradeable RAM. Ugh.
Long time Mac user, since 1986.
I want a new iMac with a stunning display and user upgradable RAM and SSD. Is that too much to ask?
this guys trying to start a pay it forward chain!
I want nothing less than 1.5 tb RAM expandability.
Quinn, I've been watching your videos for quite a few years now, and IMHO, not many creators - if any - deserve the success you've achieved with your channel thus far. The most important improvement, again IMO, is the writing. Yeah the video has gotten better, the audio, the setups, the editing, the quality control -- but man you're at the point now where your script alone can be an article published in a high-end tech magazine. Perhaps you'd lose money in writing for a separate outlet rather than spending that time on the videos for your own channel, which likely create more revenue in the short and long term; but I thought I would nonetheless throw that idea out there. If you did publish written pieces, I think they would be extremely successful, and I personally would be all in for it. Have a great night man.
From the very start, when Apple anounced to move Mac to ARM, I felt sorry for Mac Pro users. Cause no way any GPU manufacturer is going to invest in ARM drivers for the few MacOS uses who can afford a Mac Pro, assuming apple would allow this in the first place. And without GPU support the Pro platform is dead imho. I really don't understand why they even bothered to release this. Maybe things will change in the future, but it feels like Apple is going full in their own processors and GPU's. And don't get me wrong, they do really well in performance and power consumption, but it just won't cut it for real power users.
And yes Apple showed it can change, though I don't think they will keep i368 MacOS support alive for power users. That doesn't make any sense.
So stupid that you can’t install Nvidia’s or AMD’s finest in that huge box. What other cards could you possibly in there and for what purpose? All I can think of is a math co-processor, but do they even make those anymore? Peace.
I am not an analyst and even I can see that that Apple was waiting for the competition to come up with something that would challenge Apple Silicon. Their plan was to have the Max pro smash that. Whatever was going to go in this machine will have to wait. Why bringing it out if you are competing against yourself? Mind you that these are INTEGRATED solutions so save the Dedicated GPU speech.
The Apple Silicon Mac Pro looks EXTREMELY hushed not even supporting external GPUs on that PCIEs. I really hope this Mac Pro doesn’t kills Mac Pros, and that we end up getting Mac Pro with actually useful PCIEs. I’m sure they can figure it out, they wouldn’t even be the first one to put out an ARM SOC with PCIE GPU support - Apere Dev Kit is right there.
Gotta love the nod to Apple neglecting the Pro market for the better part of a decade (from 2012 to 2019). I definitely felt that neglect, when I wanted to upgrade my 2009 Mac Pro, and waited until 2017 to build my own PC workstation for much less than half the price of a 2013 8-core Mac Pro.
The M1 Max Mac Studio finally felt like Apple was listening to it's pro user base who didn't need Xeon processors and ECC memory, much less wanted to spend $6,000 on a fairly pedestrian 8-core CPU based workstation. The M1 Ultra was a definitely solid step up for those who need more oomph.
The pro users who need over 200GB of ram will have to wait. ...have to think it'll come, as Apple rethinks the Mac Pro.
What good is a Mac PC when you can't use a GPU lke a rt6900xt,7900xtx or a 4090 ? garbage, and a waste of money!
Sounds like this machine is a $7K touch-bar for nearly every "pro" usage situation.
I can't really see a future for a Mac Pro in this form. Apple have few options, and both will be costly & requires a lot of work that probably won't be used in other of their computers:
1. Allow for RAM slots & PCI-e graphics cards:
Lack of RAM slots is not (only) Apple greed, because of the unified, integrated RAM, it's so much faster than socketed ones. This is one of the most important things of M1/M2 architecture. You need to rethink almost entire concept to allow for that. PCI-e graphics cards seems to be much easier to achieve, but then what? Should they design a special SoC-variant without GPU (but maybe with much higher CPU core-count?) only for Mac Pro? Or maybe still use the same chips but allow for more powerful GPUs? But then, who will produce those cards and write drivers for them?
2. Find a way to make this rumored 4x Max chip feasible, or at least allow for dual or quad-SoC configurations (which also requires a LOT of work, as they are designed to be a singular chips, with their own RAM, not working in multiprocessor configurations, macOS also doesn't have support for any non-symmetric multiprocessing)
I think second option in some way is more possible (with a single-behemoth SoC), but they could also decide at one point that maybe Mac Pro is not needed on the market anyway.
Ita actually kinda amazing and terrifying how Thunderbolt is replacing pci cards, because well... thunderbolt runs on a pci standard