4 ms·

> Overall I don't think it's horrendously priced as some of the previous Mac workstation components could get, but at the same time, unless you have a very spec

by WWLink 3y ago

> Overall I don't think it's horrendously priced as some of the previous Mac workstation components could get, but at the same time, unless you have a very specific use case or specifically need macOS, it's not exactly compelling. It is "good enough" to finally round out the lineup though. It's such a specific use case that I'm not entirely sure what the use case even is. Capturing off an SDI camera? Great! Why do we need so many pcie cards and so little memory? These things aren't even setup to hold that much storage. It appears to not work with PCIE GPUs, so that's out. You probably don't need additional thunderbolt ports since it already has those. Maybe additional USB, but probably not that many cards worth? Most audio equipment is external? I get it. Apple is saying "This machine is for a very specific type of video editor" lol.

USB5 3y ago
I am probably the minimal target market for the mac pro m2 ultra. I am an artist and I do a lot of 3D rendering. I think it's a great price and I would love to own one, but I wouldn't even consider it unless it had support for Nvidia GPUs. Good GPU-based 3D rendering engines need CUDA. Even with the ones that don't, GPU rendering on a 4090 is 4x-5x times more performant than on an M2 Max, and building my own PC allows me to have multiple of them. Also Octane, the rendering engine in their demo, is trash. Specifically, it's fine for fancy titles and cartoons but terrible for realistic renderings. Also, I still have a chip on my shoulder about Apple failing to update Mac Pros for about a decade and then rubbing salt in the wound with their pathetic trash can. It would take A LOT to get me back after that BS. Moving to Windows was a horrible experience and they gave me no choice. Lastly, VFX software is heartily embracing Linux these days and I'm loving it, but I did have to invest in a KVM switch system and 10Gbe network so I can comfortably run Photoshop and Substance on a separate Windows machine.
- WWLink 3y ago
  > I am probably the minimal target market for the mac pro m2 ultra. I am an artist and I do a lot of 3D rendering. I think it's a great price and I would love to own one, but I wouldn't even consider it unless it had support for Nvidia GPUs. Please don't get me wrong, but when I said that Apple seemed to have narrowed their target audience to the point where I was confused who the target audience even was - I was taking stuff like your use case into account when I said that! For my own personal use cases? Ehh. I don't need a $7000 Mac Pro. A $2000 Mac studio would suffice, but it doesn't do the one thing I wish any of these machines did - and that's accept a bunch of m.2 NVME SSD cards! Honestly I always thought a "more pro" laptop would be one where you could open a door on the bottom and have a couple of m.2 slots. Anyway, the last Mac Pro that I really would've fit in the target audience for was the original. Those were great. I have a trash can because I always loved that design and got an incredible deal on one. I'll probably pick up one of the last intel ones if/when I find a killer deal on one. I ended up just switching to building my own PC desktops and using the Mac Pro for things that I prefer using a Mac for.
- Melatonic 3y ago
  Seriously - they do not even talk about GPU in the PCIe slot - then again they do not expressly rule it out either.
  - USB5 3y ago
    I think it's ruled out by the fact that Nvidia would need to release macOS drivers, and there is no realistic chance of them doing so without Apple's support.
    - ssijak 3y ago
      at this point, for mac pros which have expansion slots, why would not apple do that. both for nvidia and amd cards?
      - USB5 3y ago
        Why did they discontinue support for eGPUs? They have some legacy beef with Nvidia and now they are increasingly competitors.
- WatchDog 3y ago
  No idea if the operating system will support nvidia graphics cards on arm. However, even if it does, the mac pro only has one 8 pin power connector and two 6 pin connectors. The 4090 needs a 16 pin input, and I've only ever seen adapters that convert 2x8pin to 16. Maybe you could get one card running, but any more than that and you will need some kind of hacky external power supply setup.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
derefr 3y ago
> It's such a specific use case that I'm not entirely sure what the use case even is. Live TV production, I think. Mostly in the rackmount form-factor. A plethora of "IO breakout boards" is what turns a regular computer into a "video production system" head-unit. Though also, at least three of the PCI-e cards shown on the slide were for fibre-optic networking. So, presumably, this would be the Mac to get if you're trying to Beowulf the M2-Ultras together for some kind of NUMA-friendly ML model training. Or just for a render farm. Insofar as Apple dogfoods things, I would guess this is what they use them for themselves.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  I liked how one of the cards on the screen was a sound card, as if a PCIe slot wasn't 1000x overkill for that amount of I/O. We had USB ports that could handle that when Bill Clinton was still president of the United States.
  - derefr 3y ago
    There was also what I believe to be an SDR card (the one with all the antenna-inputs) — which is pretty interesting in its implications, but perhaps not the brightest one in this context. Aren't RF antennas also lightning rods? :) There was also something there that had DB9 and DB25 connectors, but both female. (I would think this was a weird SuperIO card, but the computer side of a serial port is usually male.) There was also a lot of stuff on that card. Anyone know what that one was?
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      That's the sound card. It's a Lynx E44. It has two giant breakout cables.
  - jdboyd 3y ago
    Plus for audio tasks that USB isn't good enough for, there is Thunderbolt (Avid will do 256 channels via TB3) and Ethernet (256+ channels via AVB possible).
- 3y ago
ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
I don't even see the use case for SDI capture. You can buy SDI-to-Thunderbolt converters starting at $150.
- reassembled 3y ago
  SDI->Thunderbolt “converters” are capture cards, they just use TB as the physical connector. Also, not all capture cards have the same feature set. Some of these cards have SDI capture and/or output, sometimes simultaneously and some with up to 8 SDI IO connectors. Some cards also do HDMI capture and/or output of the same or different feeds as the SDI signal(s). The landscape of capture cards (not just SDI) is pretty diverse. It all depends on the kind of workflow you’re dealing with. Live productions in particular will often demand many connections, to be able to capture multiple camera angles, as well as to output to confidence monitors and/or backup recording devices, frame syncs, switchers, SDI routers and more.
- jdboyd 3y ago
  Thunderbolt falls short at 4k resolutions. It is OK for 4k24 through 4k30, but for 4k60 or higher (HDR, high frame rates and not to mention 8k) you would probably want an internal PCIe card. 40gbit thunderbolt sounds like it should be fast enough, but it turns out that for PCIe traffic it tops out at 32gbit, which just isn't quite enough.

by WWLink 3y ago

USB5 3y ago

I am probably the minimal target market for the mac pro m2 ultra. I am an artist and I do a lot of 3D rendering. I think it's a great price and I would love to own one, but I wouldn't even consider it unless it had support for Nvidia GPUs. Good GPU-based 3D rendering engines need CUDA. Even with the ones that don't, GPU rendering on a 4090 is 4x-5x times more performant than on an M2 Max, and building my own PC allows me to have multiple of them. Also Octane, the rendering engine in their demo, is trash. Specifically, it's fine for fancy titles and cartoons but terrible for realistic renderings. Also, I still have a chip on my shoulder about Apple failing to update Mac Pros for about a decade and then rubbing salt in the wound with their pathetic trash can. It would take A LOT to get me back after that BS. Moving to Windows was a horrible experience and they gave me no choice. Lastly, VFX software is heartily embracing Linux these days and I'm loving it, but I did have to invest in a KVM switch system and 10Gbe network so I can comfortably run Photoshop and Substance on a separate Windows machine.

WWLink 3y ago
> I am probably the minimal target market for the mac pro m2 ultra. I am an artist and I do a lot of 3D rendering. I think it's a great price and I would love to own one, but I wouldn't even consider it unless it had support for Nvidia GPUs. Please don't get me wrong, but when I said that Apple seemed to have narrowed their target audience to the point where I was confused who the target audience even was - I was taking stuff like your use case into account when I said that! For my own personal use cases? Ehh. I don't need a $7000 Mac Pro. A $2000 Mac studio would suffice, but it doesn't do the one thing I wish any of these machines did - and that's accept a bunch of m.2 NVME SSD cards! Honestly I always thought a "more pro" laptop would be one where you could open a door on the bottom and have a couple of m.2 slots. Anyway, the last Mac Pro that I really would've fit in the target audience for was the original. Those were great. I have a trash can because I always loved that design and got an incredible deal on one. I'll probably pick up one of the last intel ones if/when I find a killer deal on one. I ended up just switching to building my own PC desktops and using the Mac Pro for things that I prefer using a Mac for.
Melatonic 3y ago
Seriously - they do not even talk about GPU in the PCIe slot - then again they do not expressly rule it out either.
- USB5 3y ago
  I think it's ruled out by the fact that Nvidia would need to release macOS drivers, and there is no realistic chance of them doing so without Apple's support.
  - ssijak 3y ago
    at this point, for mac pros which have expansion slots, why would not apple do that. both for nvidia and amd cards?
    - USB5 3y ago
      Why did they discontinue support for eGPUs? They have some legacy beef with Nvidia and now they are increasingly competitors.
WatchDog 3y ago
No idea if the operating system will support nvidia graphics cards on arm. However, even if it does, the mac pro only has one 8 pin power connector and two 6 pin connectors. The 4090 needs a 16 pin input, and I've only ever seen adapters that convert 2x8pin to 16. Maybe you could get one card running, but any more than that and you will need some kind of hacky external power supply setup.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

derefr 3y ago

> It's such a specific use case that I'm not entirely sure what the use case even is. Live TV production, I think. Mostly in the rackmount form-factor. A plethora of "IO breakout boards" is what turns a regular computer into a "video production system" head-unit. Though also, at least three of the PCI-e cards shown on the slide were for fibre-optic networking. So, presumably, this would be the Mac to get if you're trying to Beowulf the M2-Ultras together for some kind of NUMA-friendly ML model training. Or just for a render farm. Insofar as Apple dogfoods things, I would guess this is what they use them for themselves.

jeffbee 3y ago
I liked how one of the cards on the screen was a sound card, as if a PCIe slot wasn't 1000x overkill for that amount of I/O. We had USB ports that could handle that when Bill Clinton was still president of the United States.
- derefr 3y ago
  There was also what I believe to be an SDR card (the one with all the antenna-inputs) — which is pretty interesting in its implications, but perhaps not the brightest one in this context. Aren't RF antennas also lightning rods? :) There was also something there that had DB9 and DB25 connectors, but both female. (I would think this was a weird SuperIO card, but the computer side of a serial port is usually male.) There was also a lot of stuff on that card. Anyone know what that one was?
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    That's the sound card. It's a Lynx E44. It has two giant breakout cables.
- jdboyd 3y ago
  Plus for audio tasks that USB isn't good enough for, there is Thunderbolt (Avid will do 256 channels via TB3) and Ethernet (256+ channels via AVB possible).
3y ago

ShadowBanThis01 3y ago

I don't even see the use case for SDI capture. You can buy SDI-to-Thunderbolt converters starting at $150.

reassembled 3y ago
SDI->Thunderbolt “converters” are capture cards, they just use TB as the physical connector. Also, not all capture cards have the same feature set. Some of these cards have SDI capture and/or output, sometimes simultaneously and some with up to 8 SDI IO connectors. Some cards also do HDMI capture and/or output of the same or different feeds as the SDI signal(s). The landscape of capture cards (not just SDI) is pretty diverse. It all depends on the kind of workflow you’re dealing with. Live productions in particular will often demand many connections, to be able to capture multiple camera angles, as well as to output to confidence monitors and/or backup recording devices, frame syncs, switchers, SDI routers and more.
jdboyd 3y ago
Thunderbolt falls short at 4k resolutions. It is OK for 4k24 through 4k30, but for 4k60 or higher (HDR, high frame rates and not to mention 8k) you would probably want an internal PCIe card. 40gbit thunderbolt sounds like it should be fast enough, but it turns out that for PCIe traffic it tops out at 32gbit, which just isn't quite enough.