You're comparing M2 Ultra with a Xeon W-3257M introduced 4 years ago. These days both Intel (Xeon) and AMD have workstation processors outperforming M2 Ultra. Some by +100% on multi-core. For GPU things are even worse. The x86 workstations also support workstation class ECC-memory - a feature the Mac had from 2004 to 2023 (not available in Mac Pro 2023), and the x86 workstation are running PCIe 5.0 at double the speed of the PCIe 4.0 used by Mac Pro 2023.
You're comparing M2 Ultra with a Xeon W-3257M introduced 4 years ago. These days both Intel (Xeon) and AMD have workstation processors outperforming M2 Ultra. Some by +100% on multi-core. For GPU things are even worse. The x86 workstations also support workstation class ECC-memory - a feature the Mac had from 2004 to 2023 (not available in Mac Pro 2023), and the x86 workstation are running PCIe 5.0 at double the speed of the PCIe 4.0 used by Mac Pro 2023.
I would love o know how they're doing that the same PPW or why that's relevant to an Intel Mac user looking to see if they are ready to upgrade to an M-series Mac.
I can't find where video cards will not be supported.
Finally, Mac Pro brings PCI expansion to Apple silicon. It features six open expansion slots that support gen 4, which is two times faster than before. So users can customize Mac Pro with essential cards, including audio and video I/O, networking, and storage.
Right there in the keynote, Apple says the new Mac Pro will support video card for input and output.
That is talking about video capture and playback like this:
I think it probably would be possible to support a PCIe GPU in some way, even if just for compute but there may be a reason why they will try to avoid it. 3rd party GPUs have a different rendering architecture and the Metal API has to support both.
"Some macOS GPUs have an immediate mode rendering (IMR) architecture. On IMR GPUs, a deferred lighting renderer can only be implemented with at least two render passes. Therefore, the sample implements a two-pass deferred lighting algorithm for the macOS version of the app."
If Apple eventually deprecates immediate mode support in Metal, 3rd party GPUs wouldn't be usable with it.
There's not much point in 3rd party GPUs anyway. This is clear with what happened with Nvidia. Despite the Mac Pro having slots, there was never Nvidia support. AMD was supported because those GPUs were used all through the lineup. Nobody will write drivers and offer software support for the 0.01% of Mac users who want to add an AMD GPU on top of the Ultra GPU.
How do you know for sure, that apple will not support video cards? How do you know that Apple isn't working out the bugs with software to enable video card or some compute module support?
There's always a possibility but they've been saying multiple times in interviews that they are focused on doing graphics internally because of the huge benefits of unified memory.
You also have to take into consideration the size of the target market. The old Mac Pro never had internal graphics and the Intel IGPs in the lower-end chips were low performance. This meant they had to support AMD GPUs across millions of products. Now, AMD support would only be for an optional extra for the lowest volume Mac. If they shipped 50k Mac Pros, it would be a fraction of those buyers, maybe 10% of them at most. Is it worth making and supporting drivers and software APIs for 5k units per year? There's always a threshold where it's just not worth doing.
For compute, it would be an option for people to buy additional Mac Studios and network them instead of extra AMD GPUs. It would be good if they partnered with the likes of Adobe and Blackmagic to offer these kind of solutions. So you'd be able to have a main Mac, connect an extra Studio for $4k over Thunderbolt and transparently be able to render frames on those machines (Compute Sharing).
Say they were working with After Effects, they'd have the main machine with the project open. They'd plug in an extra two Mac Studios via Thunderbolt and configure them for compute sharing. After Effects would allow using the extra nodes for rendering and could even be the default for background rendering to keep the main machine responsive. For a final render, they can specify frame ranges to do on each node and it would transparently copy the project and render software to the node and process the frames and transparently put the rendered frames on the main machine.
They could potentially have a way to mount Studio Macs inside a Mac Pro or sell Ultra PCIe boards.
I can't find where video cards will not be supported.
Finally, Mac Pro brings PCI expansion to Apple silicon. It features six open expansion slots that support gen 4, which is two times faster than before. So users can customize Mac Pro with essential cards, including audio and video I/O, networking, and storage.
Right there in the keynote, Apple says the new Mac Pro will support video card for input and output.
That is talking about video capture and playback like this:
I think it probably would be possible to support a PCIe GPU in some way, even if just for compute but there may be a reason why they will try to avoid it. 3rd party GPUs have a different rendering architecture and the Metal API has to support both.
"Some macOS GPUs have an immediate mode rendering (IMR) architecture. On IMR GPUs, a deferred lighting renderer can only be implemented with at least two render passes. Therefore, the sample implements a two-pass deferred lighting algorithm for the macOS version of the app."
If Apple eventually deprecates immediate mode support in Metal, 3rd party GPUs wouldn't be usable with it.
There's not much point in 3rd party GPUs anyway. This is clear with what happened with Nvidia. Despite the Mac Pro having slots, there was never Nvidia support. AMD was supported because those GPUs were used all through the lineup. Nobody will write drivers and offer software support for the 0.01% of Mac users who want to add an AMD GPU on top of the Ultra GPU.
How do you know for sure, that apple will not support video cards? How do you know that Apple isn't working out the bugs with software to enable video card or some compute module support?
Maybe they are, but they've given no indication that they are. It is prudent to assume something is not happening given an absence of evidence.
It would be nice and I assume for the end of the year 2023, the 24 inch iMac will be upgraded to the M2 SOC for back to school, but it would be nice if for example Apple could upgrade all of their computers to the next M2,M3,M4 SOC’s within the same calendar year from now on, for instance, if the M3 is available next year, just go ahead and upgrade the Mac Pro to the M3 and release it, the same applies to the Mac Studio and 24 inch iMac don’t hold back.
Many people still buy the Mac Pro, but I would assume many get highly upset, when they see other computers in the range get upgraded (Mac Studio), and nothing happens with the Mac Pro at all for years.
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You also have to take into consideration the size of the target market. The old Mac Pro never had internal graphics and the Intel IGPs in the lower-end chips were low performance. This meant they had to support AMD GPUs across millions of products. Now, AMD support would only be for an optional extra for the lowest volume Mac. If they shipped 50k Mac Pros, it would be a fraction of those buyers, maybe 10% of them at most. Is it worth making and supporting drivers and software APIs for 5k units per year? There's always a threshold where it's just not worth doing.
For compute, it would be an option for people to buy additional Mac Studios and network them instead of extra AMD GPUs. It would be good if they partnered with the likes of Adobe and Blackmagic to offer these kind of solutions. So you'd be able to have a main Mac, connect an extra Studio for $4k over Thunderbolt and transparently be able to render frames on those machines (Compute Sharing).
Say they were working with After Effects, they'd have the main machine with the project open. They'd plug in an extra two Mac Studios via Thunderbolt and configure them for compute sharing. After Effects would allow using the extra nodes for rendering and could even be the default for background rendering to keep the main machine responsive. For a final render, they can specify frame ranges to do on each node and it would transparently copy the project and render software to the node and process the frames and transparently put the rendered frames on the main machine.
They could potentially have a way to mount Studio Macs inside a Mac Pro or sell Ultra PCIe boards.
Many people still buy the Mac Pro, but I would assume many get highly upset, when they see other computers in the range get upgraded (Mac Studio), and nothing happens with the Mac Pro at all for years.