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Don't waste your money on the Pro, you can get an M2 Ultra in a Mac Studio for $4000. The only reason to buy the Pro is if you have a bunch of really weird PCIe
by kmeisthax 3y ago
Don't waste your money on the Pro, you can get an M2 Ultra in a Mac Studio for $4000. The only reason to buy the Pro is if you have a bunch of really weird PCIe cards[0].
As for the desktop use case... sure, you aren't going to care about the $200 of saved power draw, but not having a very loud and hot machine at your desk has to count for something, right?
[0] GPUs won't work, their memory access is locked out in hardware and Apple removed the MPX connectors that powered the Intel GPU modules.
- Dylan16807 3y agoA proper cooler won't get loud or hot. And as far as heating the room, okay that's an extra $50 of air conditioning to remove the $200 of heat.
- torginus 3y agoGPUs won't work at all? Can't you even use them for ML/compute stuff?
- jsheard 3y agoThey don't work at all, there are no discrete GPU drivers for ARM macOS. The cooling solution and 1250W(!) power supply they carried over from the 2019 model are kind of hilariously overkill now, I don't think there's anything you still can install into the PCIe slots which comes even remotely close to needing them.
- grecy 3y ago> The cooling solution and 1250W(!) power supply they carried over from the 2019 model are kind of hilariously overkill now I wonder if that's a small hint or giveaway of something coming in the future that will make use of it.... One can hope.
- jsheard 3y agoIf they were going to make a dGPU or other big accelerator in the future then I think they would have maintained support for the MPX form factor cards. The new Mac Pro doesn't support MPX, despite being based on the same chassis that MPX debuted with.
- threeseed 3y agoGPUs can work provided the drivers exist. And those really weird PCI cards are what underpins many industries for which the Mac Pro is designed for e.g. video and audio production.
- smoldesu 3y ago> provided the drivers exist. Provided Apple signs 'em :p
- threeseed 3y agoMicrosoft has implemented driver signing with Windows so not sure what the issue is. And users can still use unsigned drivers provided they disable the option.
- zarzavat 3y agoApple has beef with the worlds largest GPU maker and refuses to sign their drivers because they got screwed by that company over a laptop GPU a decade ago and still hold a grudge. Microsoft on the other hand, is run by adults.
- xattt 3y ago> The only reason to buy the Pro is if you have a bunch of really weird PCIe cards They’re telegraphing the use case for future SOCs.
- kristianp 3y ago> They’re telegraphing the use case for future SOCs. Can someone explain what that means?
- xattt 3y agoTelegraphing means to give away away a message, inadvertently or not. While the M2 doesn’t include external GPU support, I think the M3 Mac Pro will in order to continue justifying the astronomical price. Otherwise, Apple would have gone through an awful lot of trouble to design a new motherboard with PCIe slots for an otherwise limited-use case. In releasing an M2 Mac Pro, Apple is trying to balance a consistent message regarding the ARM transition and customer expectations, but also the hiccups and limited experience of developing desktop CPUs. There may be some silicon bug or silicon-level design oversight in the M2 preventing use of an external GPU. Discrete GPU support is supposed to be there, but not quite ready.
- baggy_trough 3y agoI’ll take the under on that.
- kristianp 3y agoThanks. So by "for future SOCs" they meant future iterations of Apple Silicon. And you think the use case the gp means is GPU support? I'm not sure I agree thats what they meant.
- xattt 3y agoI was the GP. I don’t know what else to call the M-series chips :)