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Anyone know what exactly would be worth putting in the PCI slots that would make the Mac Pro worth it? Also, do Apple employees at Apple Headquarters get fully

by fouc 3y ago

Anyone know what exactly would be worth putting in the PCI slots that would make the Mac Pro worth it? Also, do Apple employees at Apple Headquarters get fully-specced out Mac Pros at their desktops for their work?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
brucethemoose2 3y ago
Nvidia/AMD/Intel GPUs, in theory. I don't see why the Apple employees wood, most of the Apple silicon and mobo isn't really being used for coding and such
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Except for developing iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, XCode Cloud, Keynote, Pages,... No coding happening at Apple. /s
  - brucethemoose2 3y ago
    I mean the GPU. Most of the area of the M2 ultra is GPU, while the Pro is more CPU heavy.
BXlnt2EachOther 3y ago
Might lean toward postproduction studios' use cases? No GPU support, but the slide during the presentation showed extended storage (4-8xNVME to PCIe adapters are fairly inexpensive I think), SDI video ingestion, ProTools HDX cards (music I/O and DSP), 25GbE card, and I think a fiber channel one. Since then a third-party company announced a networked audio card. Possibly some special-purpose accelerator cards; IIRC the first-party Afterburner cards on the last mac pro were FPGA-based; video acceleration is now built into the M2 chips. I think most of the extra ports that differentiate a Mac Pro 2023 from a Mac Studio Ultra on the spec sheet are on a small PCIe card included with the machine that stays in the top slot.
threeseed 3y ago
a) Professionals who have a lot of external TB appliances e.g. audio interfaces and want everything in one case. To save on the hassle when moving between jobs or just to simplify their studio. b) No.
kalleboo 3y ago
> Anyone know what exactly would be worth putting in the PCI slots that would make the Mac Pro worth it? Probably something like this $5000 Avid Pro Tools card https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1385850-REG/avid_9900_65173_00_avid_hdx_core_pcie.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1385850-REG/avid_9900...

by fouc 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

brucethemoose2 3y ago

Nvidia/AMD/Intel GPUs, in theory. I don't see why the Apple employees wood, most of the Apple silicon and mobo isn't really being used for coding and such

pjmlp 3y ago
Except for developing iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, XCode Cloud, Keynote, Pages,... No coding happening at Apple. /s
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  I mean the GPU. Most of the area of the M2 ultra is GPU, while the Pro is more CPU heavy.

BXlnt2EachOther 3y ago

Might lean toward postproduction studios' use cases? No GPU support, but the slide during the presentation showed extended storage (4-8xNVME to PCIe adapters are fairly inexpensive I think), SDI video ingestion, ProTools HDX cards (music I/O and DSP), 25GbE card, and I think a fiber channel one. Since then a third-party company announced a networked audio card. Possibly some special-purpose accelerator cards; IIRC the first-party Afterburner cards on the last mac pro were FPGA-based; video acceleration is now built into the M2 chips. I think most of the extra ports that differentiate a Mac Pro 2023 from a Mac Studio Ultra on the spec sheet are on a small PCIe card included with the machine that stays in the top slot.

threeseed 3y ago

a) Professionals who have a lot of external TB appliances e.g. audio interfaces and want everything in one case. To save on the hassle when moving between jobs or just to simplify their studio. b) No.

kalleboo 3y ago

> Anyone know what exactly would be worth putting in the PCI slots that would make the Mac Pro worth it? Probably something like this $5000 Avid Pro Tools card https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1385850-REG/avid_9900_65173_00_avid_hdx_core_pcie.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1385850-REG/avid_9900...