atonaldenim

elliots11 said:

Would really like to know more on how they're stopping it as it doesn't seem there's any physical reason it shouldn't be possible, even if the performance is poor.

The software limitations currently are "no AMD GPU drivers exist for macOS on Apple Silicon", basically the same limitation that kept NVIDIA cards out of Macs since Mojave. On top of that, the second limitation is "no support for using any GPUs other than Apple Silicon, in macOS on AS."

For current 2019 Mac Pro owners, a further hardware limitation is "no MPX slots on 2023 Mac Pro" therefore no power connection to any existing MPX Mac Pro GPUs, nor integration into Thunderbolt ports' DisplayPort bus.

PC GPUs could in theory work in Asahi Linux, someday, only after Asahi Linux gets even native Apple Silicon GPU support straightened out, maybe someday they'll be able to port other Linux GPU drivers to Apple Silicon Linux. For Linux apps. Don't hold your breath!

kendog52404 said:

I actually could see, in the future, there being an option for additional "Apple GPUs" Cards, to increase video memory capability.  

I was hoping this would come this year! I'm fairly surprised that it didn't, but I think you're right that it could still be possible in the future. Just like the Jade-4C "M3 Extreme" dual-Ultra chip could still be possible, someday. Let's hope this year's "minimum viable Mac Pro" will be surpassed in future years with more than we got this year.

Grabbing some popcorn... curious to see how the VR wars play out once Apple steps into the arena...

Clarification on the code names:

Stinson Beach is a popular beach town in Marin County, Northern California, north of San Francisco and Facebook's HQ in Menlo Park, often shortened to just "Stinson" by locals. Marin County could be considered the northernmost part of the "tech region" of California. (Apologies to Santa Rosa and Sacramento.)

Ventura is a beach town in the Los Angeles area, several hours south of Stinson Beach.

La Jolla is also a coastal town, in the San Diego area a few hours south of Ventura, which is the southernmost part of the tech region and California itself.

Because I and some colleagues were so curious about the possibility of M2 supporting 20Gbps USB Gen 2x2, I actually got ahold of a Sandisk Extreme PRO Gen 2x2 SSD V2 (1TB) which advertises 20Gbps speeds, and took it to the Apple Store today. Sadly, I found the M2 Max MBP 16" only showed 10Gbps speeds on this Gen 2x2 SSD.

I trust Mike's results on the PRO-BLADE Transport that showed 20Gbps speeds, so I wonder if the USB chip in the Transport reader is more of a USB4 chip, compared to the chips used in the older Extreme PRO V2 drive from 2021? Another reviewer actually claimed 30Gbps speeds with the PRO-BLADE on an M2 Air, which is strange but might lend credence to the USB4 hypothesis... (unless they accidentally tested their internal SSD rather than the PRO-BLADE like I accidentally did in one of my test runs today!)

In any case I'd have to agree with Mike that Gen 2x2 remains a bit of a mess, and focusing more on USB4 (not to mention Thunderbolt) seems ultimately for the best.


Testing methodology: Sandisk Extreme PRO V2 1TB purchased 2/19/23 from local Best Buy store, model # SDSSDE81-1T00.
Cables: both included Sandisk USB-C cable (unmarked), and OWC 0.7m Thunderbolt 3 Passive Cable CBATB-002-070A.
Computers: M2 Air 13" 8GB, M2 Pro MBP 14" 16GB, M2 Max MBP 16" 32GB, all on macOS Ventura 13.2.1 at the Apple Store.
Testing Apps: Amorphous DiskMark 4.0(41) and Blackmagic Disk Speed Test 3.4.2, both with default settings.

great to see that Apple is putting some resources into promoting gaming on their platforms.

Very interesting.

Optional GPU expansion card(s) augmenting the M2 Ultra’s integrated GPU is the only way I can see an Apple Silicon Mac Pro truly matching or exceeding the capabilities of the current Intel Mac Pro’s dual Radeon Pro W6900X GPU option. At this point my guess would be such an expansion card would use an Apple GPU rather than AMD, but we’ll see. 

Thus I think something like this will likely come with the new Mac Pro this year. Very cool to see that indeed Apple is working on this kind of thing.