Why Does the M2 Mac Pro Exist?
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- čas přidán 27. 04. 2024
- In a world where you can get the exact same performance from a computer half the price... what's the point?
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Because it has the biggest Apple logo.
But I wanted an orange lol
Don't traslate😠
ในเวลาไม่กี่ชั่วโมง หัวใจของคุณจะเริ่มหยุดเต้น วิธีเดียวที่จะป้องกันไม่ให้สิ่งนี้คือสมัครรับข้อมูลจากช่องของฉัน
Lol
This is also true
@@l4gbot
As other industry people have stated, the PCIE slots for specialist A/V cards might have been useful when M1 Studio launched but because it wasn’t, a lot of those devices were either replaced with TB3 versions or they got put in a Ext box, so the Mac Pro audience is now even smaller than it would have been.
Hence the price tag. 😂
Jokes aside. Good point about the PCIe devices going to TB3 devices.
In the audio industry, we are moving towards networked audio using protocols like Dante. Instead of requiring multiple cards for inputs and outputs, a single network cable can now connect to a wide range of equipment. So It's really only specialist V cards now. 😏
It's funny because the move to networked audio was partially because of Apple's trashcan Mac Pro having no PCIe expansion, which caused external interfaces to develop, since no one wanted to deal with daisy chaining.
P.S. Even macOS has built-in AVB (Non-proprietary Dante) functionality over the Ethernet port, but it's recommended to use a dedicated interface for optimal performance, as the built-in driver doesn't provide internet access.
@@snowwsquire 🎯
Got the fully spec’d MacPro last week and pulled all the storage from my 2019 MacPro and put it in there and will be buying two Promise Pegasus R4is to add even more. The 32TB NVME RAID 0 I’ve been using has been great and I love having all the storage (I need) internally.
@@DustinFrancis using the pcie slots to store spinning rust is actually crazy
That fan going all loud is a pretty common practice with server hardware actually, to ensure chip doesn't overheat since you removed the case and possibly might remove airflow shrouds.
No that's the turbo lever that doubles as a handle
that makes sense
it's funny how apple has bought most of our tech creators
@@saladgreens912PCs in the 90’s actually had a turbo boost button that would boost their megahertz. Completely wasteful use of a switch!
As others said, the Mac Pro is just protecting its chip when the user removes the enclosure.
@@realdevdivhow so?
The old G5 cheese grater towers would spin up the fans to max if you took the side cover off with it running as well... It's a safety thing to make sure it gets airflow when the fans are partially blocked, or in the case of the G5 when the side panel was off and the air wasn't directed around the components as designed.
Yeah or they just used thermal checks to see if its actually needed to boost the fans. It's a real stupid 'safety' feature.
Shot in the dark: because it took longer than expected and they have a direct product cannibalising it, I’m going to assume that they did have a faster, bigger chip for it that they couldn’t get to work; this being their fallback.
It legitimately looks like they put a Mac studio into a bigger case
One of the various tech sites, don’t remember which now, claimed the yields were too low on the absolutely massive die size required for that 16x chip. Presumably they’re working with TSMC on that for the 3rd generation
Makes sense. Guess they underestimated AMD. AMD may be a much smaller company in terms of market cap, but their engineers did an amazing job on chiplet architecture that Apple currently can't match.
This makes a lot of sense to me
@@xahst Not really. Apple was a already building there own custom chips for iphone from the very beginning. It's just that the chips got so good that they could now put it on laptops and computers. Apple already had very extensive knowledge on chipmaking and already been on the industry for a long time.
It exists so that the Mac Studio can seem like a good purchase
Very good point… I see very big producers that of course had the Pro day one. Then ended up replacing it with a Mac Studio. PCIE in the music world at least isn’t much a thing anymore with Macs. Most are just straight out USB-C AD/DA systems. The point of PCI back then was more processing power, but we passed needing that with new chips 5 years ago if not more! Even pro grade external AD/DA is just okay and play and apple compliant. If on PC some do use PCIE because it interfaces better as it’s not Windows compliant. But on OSX no need for PCIE in the music world much anymore. And if you have too for legacy stuff, get an external chassis! Almost all high end audio gear has been no drivers needed, mac compliant forever. But not so much on PC, so the PCIe gets rid of ASIO and you get a more dedicated system. OSX doesn’t need all that and it’s plug n play.
I run an expensive pro grade Apogee rack AD/DA, and the PCIE option was cool in like 2009. Now you can just plug it in via USB-C and it works. Load additional software for direct monitoring. But a Studio plus maybe 2 dongles and any audio system is going to slay! 100+ track counts on that beast! Newer fast I/O has great bandwidth!
LOL! Love it!❤
0:30 what a great way to show the different chips in all the configs of the different machines!!
You always make nice clean videos man, crisp, beautiful and the info I’m looking for. Thank you!
My PowerMac G5 Quad does the same thing with the fans if you open the case with it running. It's because the internals are designed around individual thermal chambers and the airflow is no longer directed properly if you open the case, so it speeds up the fans to account for that.
How is the airflow detected?
@@jameswoll It’s not. There’s just an intrusion switch on the chassis.
@@Xaluber Humans do not open me while I am running ! kinda.
We should do a speed comparison of a G5 Quad and M2 Mac Pro. The two ultimate machines of their time.
Mine blew last year - don't talk about it please - I had like 23 GB RAM (with OF hack I came up with - otherwise the limit is 16) - just after powering it on after shutting down it fume the magic smoke.
For those wondering just what kind of sound cards you might put in an M2 Mac Pro. AVID HDX cards are hugely important to film and television post production where 2-3 Mac Pros will be connected together with these cards to provide all the low latency audio processing necaseary for mixing movies and TV. There are also other high bandwidth (128+ channel) MADI / Sync cards that allow composers to offload some of the work of virtual orchestras to secondary machines. There may not be many customers for this product but the ones that do exsist are likely to be buying multiple if not fleets of these for studios and workspaces
All of this is easily accomplished without PCIE via thunderbolt.
@@theeltea it depends on the speeds needed. TB is only pcie 3.0 with 4 lanes. MacPro has pcie 4 slots. Two 16x and 4 8x.
Pcie 3.0 x4 is about 32Gbps where as Pcie 4.0 x16 is about 250Gbps
@@sebulban Audio doesn't require that much bandwidth even with insane channel counts and high sr
Since the trash can Mac Pros most facilities just use external TB PCI boxes
@@theeltea okay so you would connect all 3 avid HDX card to your thunderbolt I/O? while you need to run several 4k monitors? you do know how many I/Os will be used in big post production right? this aint for home studio. This is for actual studios running million dollar projects who cannot be delayed, that needs less of computer tinkering and more of set and forget system that can be connected to a system already millions of dollar facility invested in. This is cheap compared to time wasted whcih is more expensive for a studio for unnecessarily tinkering a computer and setting it up. specially if you need to change your whole studio just because you need to change to a new o.s. Imagine how much that will cost just shifting to a new system already in place for years. this machine is way too cheap for such studios. Basically thinking which will be more cost effective for such a little thing as your workstation in that environment is a waste of time.
Thats why it's weird to see people get such machine in their homes as their personal computer. It's not for that. Now can you build a more powerful machine at a cheaper cost? yes, will it be compatible to an already existing system in place? No. will it be the same system? no, and thats the problem. the system and workflow shouldn't change in that kind of scenario. why would they bother changing the whole system for something that will be so small of an expense in their over all operation?
The problem with those PCIe slots is that it may well offer 8 PCIe slots, but the M2 doesn't have nearly enough PCIe lanes to drive all those slots directly. So instead those slots are behind PCIe switches and effectively share bandwidth with each other. (Like old 4-way SLI motherboards on the PC side used to do).
Which for Marques's use case isn't too bad because he's only going to use 1 16x card. (the bigger problem there is the slots only being PCIe4 when intel has been shipping PCIe5 for almost 2 years now)
but if you're some broadcasting customer like many in the comments keep bringing up as the intended use case for this machine you are in for a rude awakeing.
Because those customers rely on their 4k capture cards not fighting for bandwidth with their 100gb network card and their fiber connection to the SAN.
Same goes for any audio engineers that want to put their PCIe based audio gear for their 2019 Mac pro rack version into this machine. Those PCIe switches basically need to turn off the PCIe lanes for one card for a tiny fraction of a second to give the other card access and vice versa. That introduces latency and any form of latency is an absolute killer for any professional audio workflow.
Ouch, that's terrible, sales of the Pro will be brutal.
Chitty chitty bang bang
the more pcie lanes is likely going to come in the redesign NEXT year or a few years after.
@@peanutnutter1 I can't tell if you're sarcastic, but I genuinely hope they are so that they really revamp it
the other problem with this machine is the RAM cap. In the studio, where I work with audio recordings and post-production, 192 GB of RAM is a joke compared to the current 512 we use in each of the installed intel mac pros.
The server version did the fan thing. It's to keep some air flow since the lid seal is broken. It was designed for Intel rack mount Mac Pro.
Tons of TV and local news stations across the country have been waiting for this new Mac Pro to drop. They load them up with AJA cards for capture and fiber cards for their SAN. I worked for a company that setup these Macs at hundreds of these locations across the US. This system is a big deal for them.
Finally someone with some background to give a light to that.
Great insight, thanks for sharing. Niche market but when they’re charging $7000 minimum, Apple will still print money selling these things.
Small post production house here: Mac Studios with BMD UltraStudio/thunderbolt for SDI. But fiber SAN I can see. For me going from a heavy MacPro tower to Studio (with a thunderbolt SSD Raid) has been so wonderful.
+3000$ just for PCI is still unjustified.
finally someone said it, this machine is targetted at enterprise, broadcast and production who have been stuck on on the 2019 hardware and needs new stuff, avid acceleration cards, aja kona cards, 1000gbit network cards, 8k capture cards, blackmagic, production switchers, it's getting tiresome people simply dont understand the product isnt targetted at them.
For those who didn’t watch throughout, at 5:09 he says it exists just for PCI slots so there ya go
Excellent, well-reasoned review and justification for your upgrade (that Storage Card is a Beast!) Thanks!
The G5's used to crank the fans when the clear plastic cover that guided the air flow wasn't totally sealed against the frame. I don't know if it was some sort of air pressure sensor or just a pressure switch that the tabs on the cover would hold down, but basically, it was to keep people from running the Mac with the door off which totally messed with the thermals.
When you try to take the case off the Mac Pro, it ramps up the fans to make sure air flows over the parts it needs to while being in the open air. It’s similar to blowing down a tube at something far away vs blowing at it in the open. You need to blow harder in the open.
And the last one actually did do that. I believe Snazzy Labs was one of the first to discover that when he hacked the case off it while keeping it plugged in.
10:50 thats what a lot of server chassis do to keep the dust and other debris out i think
I think main reason why this exists aside from a handful of niche cases where it's actually needed is because there are enough people who will just buy it because it's the most expensive product in their line-up. And most buyers will never use the expansion slots. It's kind of the SUV of the computer world. It's bigger, heavier, more expensive, but 95% of owners never actually take it off-road and would be better off buying an estate car. But it makes them feel good to own a product that is superior in their minds.
As soon as a reviewer says “I’m going to use this, but you peasants don’t need it”, you’re going to get a subset of individuals (not gonna lie… they’re probably dudes) who buy it as a result.
THAT is the answer. And since I live in the USA, it's so prevalent that I can't even buy a wagon/estate version of the car I really want (a sports-sedan) and had to buy the SUV version to have a proper size trunk/boot despite not even wanting one. Oh well.
@@MrTrestoJust buy a truck.
@@maxpro751oh yes, you want a small sporty car? Get a fucking truck! Makes sense!
@@maxpro751 Yes just buy something more expensive and less safe
0:42 This is the best chart I've seen explaining the Mac lineup.
I'm real worried Apple has engineered themselves into a corner here. The massive max RAM downgrade is a severe problem, and I have to wonder if they just could get their architecture to work with non-shared memory, or physically distant memory. If the next Mac Pro is more than a year from now, and still doesn't have expandable RAM, I think that'll be pretty good evidence for this.
Apple could release a brick and stupid people would by it. It is not about tech or quality. It is about mindless cultism.
I’m pretty sure that will come in the next generation or two. Just adding support for external pci-e devices was a pretty heavy lift from M1 to M2.
The competition in that space uses AMD Threadripper and Intel Xeon W, which are based on their server platforms and designed very differently to mobile phone chips.
They're waiting for CXL to settle into consumer viability.
And no ECC memory support in some fields is an immediate dealbreaker. You know, the fields that would have bought the 2019 Mac Pro but now have no option in Apple's ecosystem.
I really hope they add further expansion capability to their SoCs; dumbfounding that it still doesn’t support GPU expansion
I think it makes all the sense in the world when you consider that it's Apple
don't need gpu in this pccs
@@piyushpithava8540 sorry I don't speak wrong
Because graphic card, has intel code in bios, perhaps, you need emulator to initialize the gfx card.
Don't think there is any ARM based processor that supports external GPUs or RAM.
ARM cpus perform better per watt, but are less versatile than x86
Love the MacPro - I have used the older G3’s, G4’s and G5’s but with the current lineup I finally do not need the Apple Silicone MacPro - it feels quite weird to not see a tower in the space. Although it would be nice to use and I do like some of the expansion cards available, but the cost and the speed of the studio make it a better fit. I know some colleagues would prefer the MacPro just for the expanded internal storage as having a dedicated external array is an issue when on location - having it all in one case makes for less carry and worry. Thanks for your continued coverage - enjoy the channel and your frank assessments.
Howzit bud ! Major fan of your pure reviews ! Keep doing what you doing my man ! Stay safe !
I'd like to see a performance comparison between the Mac Pro with a card in a PCI slot, and the Studio with the same PCI card in an external enclosure connected via TB.
Huge bottleneck for SSD's and 40Gbps/100Gbps Network Cards. Got to remember that a lot of the users of the Mac Pro want Fiber Channel cards.
I would guess for your $3000 that it's nothing more than a fancy TB connected "external" enclosure already.
@@nathanmiddleton1478
TB3/4 has 40Gb/s (little b = bits, equivalent to 5GB/s; big B = bytes) of bandwidth (equivalent to a 4x PCIe 3.0 slot) the Mac Pro has four 8x and two 16x PCIe 4.0 slots, rated at 126Gb/s (15.75GB/s) and 252Gb/s (31.5GB/s) respectively.
Fancy indeed when having 3-6x more bandwidth on tap for array based PCIe SSD storage cards
Im wondering how Apple is going to handle this. I wouldn’t expect yearly Mac Pro updates but then again if they release a new chip yearly, they would kinda have to. Feels like they’re putting themselves in a bit of a tight spot here…
Not really, the imac 24 is still on m1
@@TwatMcGee iMacs aren't pro machines though.
One option would be to only release ultra versions of every other chip (i.e., no M3 Ultra), so it would still be the top of the line performance for it's whole product lifecycle.
They should just switch to a 2 year cycle on Mac's and chips. Base M chips one year, Pro chips the next. They need a larger iMac and an update to the 24" bad.
@@AlexAnteroLammikko Neither is the Macbook Air but it still gets yearly updates
You do a nice job of explaining things. Greetings from Rockford, Illinois.
Love your connect always sound real knowledgeable
The color grading and composition in this video was beautiful. I rarely notice and certainly never comment, but I was awed. Thank you for all the effort that went into it.
Thank the team!
Chill 😂
@@sebfleebee And you cant really tell what color grading went into the video unless you say the real place and raw footage... seems bot-y
@@sebfleebee I did. And maybe because it was just him talking to the camera that allowed me to see all of the details. 🤷🏽
Frankly, all the top tier YT tech creators have 2160p or better quality. As far as MKBHD goes, have you seen the M2 Max Macbook Pro video they did? This is mostly talking head, with black and white background... unless you are talking about the ProRes clip they have in this, which is another example of their top quality composition.
Most video post is on PC, but in the audio post world, Mac is still very much dominant. ProTools is best used with HDX acceleration/IO cards which connect to Avid audio interfaces. HDX uses PCIE.
Thing is that we have been used to using Thunderbolt to PCI-E chassis for a while. And while they are certainly a bit more messy, a lot of studios are used to using them already with Mac Studios/Mac Minis. A plus I also did not consider with the Mac Studio is how much less space they take up on a rack versus a Mac Pro - you can actually get two in a half depth 2U rack.
Even with the added cost of a PCIE chassis (typically $500-ish), it is still much cheaper to go Mac Studio. Of course many will go for the Mac Pro for the added convenience/reliability, but the Mac Studio has proved a surprising hit that may end up eating most of its market share.
Great video as always, just pointing out a typo at 1:36
It says 'Radon' on the first graph
It's clear from the lineup that the Mac Pro should have had a base configuration of M2 Ultra with a high end M2 Extreme variant also in play. Obviously somewhere along the line Apple dropped the ball and could not ship the Extreme chip. Perhaps the M3 version will fix this glaring oversight.
Its about the card slots on this one. Its for people that need proprietary pci cards for their work and jobs. Funniest part was when Marques points out you still may want the older mac pro cause it supporters GPUs for GPU cores.
Exactly. Nobody sane is going to buy this terrible deal of a kitchen appliance.
@@cameronbosch1213 For me the older model feels superior cause it can use GPUs and you can upgrade the ram as needed. Even with older CPUs having more ram and being able to hit GPU cores with loads matters for some people.
@@cameronbosch1213 The idea that the Mac Pro is a kitchen appliance is laughable (despite its size), but you're right that it is probably a terrible deal for most people.
Most don't need it some need it. That's what marques said. Maybe one day they will create a dedicated GPU for M chips.
@@cameronbosch1213 there's a lot of sane people who will buy this one Mac who don't need GPUs for their workflow but rather other specialist expansion cards and fast storage.
When you showed us the 64TB SSD module, I thought you were going to say you were going to fill up all 6 PCIE slots with them for a total of 392TB of storage (assuming you maxed out the internal storage at 8TB) 😂 that would be mad 😅. To be fair 64TB at that speed is insane!
One of those 64tb filled PCIe cars will cost you about 30k btw lol
@@benbork9835 Nope. It's $12k.
This ain't LTT my guy..
As always - great vid and summary 👍👍
We worked off of my buddies M2 Pro setup for a year but found that it always struggled when coloring or effects came into play. It would shut down on us from time to time. Happy to announce that my new M3 setup is handling the same type of footage like a champ. Mostly 4K 120fps action footage.
I work in IT for a company spanning multiple countries that does stuff with video, DO NOT STOP USING EXTERNAL BACKUPS. Connect the NAS to the network and set up automatic backups. You really don't want all your data to go poof if something catastrophic happens to your main machine. We even go as far as backing up all of our projects to s3 buckets and then move them to Amazon Glacier for old projects.
Yes, at least following the 3-2-1 rule is always a good idea when it comes to backups.
If we don't consider the PCIe slots, I think they also refreshed it because they decided the profitability beats the R&D cost to stick in a M2 Ultra into the Mac Pro chassis, and also keep the door open for a potential M3 "Extreme" or "Ultimate" for the next iteration of the Mac Pro. Essentially, renewing the product because it's cost effective (people will buy the M2 Ultra Mac Pro enough to offset costs) and also hold it up as a temporary stopover for when they differentiate the Mac Pro once again as something above the Studio.
EDIT: Lol didn't realise Marques brought this exact same point out in the last 60 seconds of the video
Very interesting, looking forward to new production.
Excellent piece. The inside and exterior of the Mac Pro is a thing of beauty but I hope they create a smaller version next time around. It’s time for an update.
I'm glad someone finally said the obvious... simply PCIE slots.
I'm glad you brought up to one complete failing with this and that's not being able to install other GPU's to do other work loads.
Could live with it only being the M2 that could be used for screens but would have been nice to be able to use other GPU's for background rendering.
I'm more looking for the music side of thing... I did notice the Avid HDX PCIE card in your examples and it would be this and the native one I would have installed... along with one UAD card and also the storage option much like you will have... if, there's a need to go this far with it.
Maybe there's a better option coming with the M3 line??
Thanks for making great vids. I'm a long time subscriber (and newer podcast/studio fan) and I love your content. You really help people understand tech better, and your my inspiration for making a tech channel/blog
I love when the MKBHD editor makes a typo at 1:38, it feels natural and very human😆✌
Well done, these kinda videos get closed most of the time but wasn’t bored.
Regarding the fan thing, I'm guessing that it makes use of a lot of directed airflow via ducting for cooling, and if you take off the lid, that all goes away, so Apple chose to detect a (soon to be) removed lid and spins up the fans?
It’s called chassis intrusion. It’s a common feature on servers. They rely on a certain airflow path and when you remove the lid it changes that. So pretty much what you said. It’s very normal for workstations and servers to operate that way.
Yes and the old one actually did do the same thing
@@mrsittingmongoose Never worked with servers but I love computers. This is a neat explanation that makes sense. Thanks, learned something new.
Nice take Marques. I was wondering what you were going to say about this Mac Pro. I'm in the category of user: "Why spend all that extra cash for the Pro when I can get a fully loaded Studio for a fraction of the cost?" Of course, my workflows aren't as complex as yours, so the Pro would be overkill. A maxed out studio would be a treat for someone like me. Keep up the good work brother.
Actually, the pcie lanes are available for thunderbolt enclosures, so you can use storage, io cards, in a pcie enclosure
At the end I’m pretty sure the old one did that too. When you take the top off while it’s still plugged in it boosts the fans to full blast, possibly to rapidly cool off any components before they’re exposed to protect the user from burns?
It's getting frustrated and trying to scare the user from seeing that it's a completely empty box with a Mac Studio stuffed into one corner! 😆
Loved the graphics and subtle sound effects in this!
Really well done
Yea the team is amazing
The mac pro not supporting video cards with that many PCIE slots is just wild to me.. It makes an extremely niche product just even more niche. I feel that a lot of the 'features' here could just be replaced by a server, and then you use the mac studio if you really need to use apple silicon.
This is Apple. Their clients buy the thing over social pressure, not rational reasons.
just because you dont know what to do with internal expansion doesnt mean everyone is as ignorant
Plugging in an external PCI-e card is just as much of a niche solution; few people have the need to do so, especially with the graphics performance of the M2.
The high end Macs have always been called into question dating back to the MacII fx. They exist for a few reasons; I suspect Apple use them, companies that use high end equipment use them and they are good PR for the lower end Macs. Back in the 1990s when a Mac II fx, tricked out, was $12,000 most people just laughed, especially so called experts in the media. My company put them into printing companies and newspapers in droves. In those places the cost of the Mac was low compared to other equipment they used, and the ROI was huge.
Difference is back then, there was a large performance discrepancy between an entry level desktop, workstations, and laptops. Today, a professional can get everything done on a MacBook Pro without waiting for anything to compute. Things have changed. Today, these large desktops are niche.
@@MalcolmREBORNNo. You cant do advanced simulations,crash testing matrix calculations because M1 doesnt have math extensions on silicon
Try on a mac simulatingan an aircraft engine with 10 million degrees of freedom for 2 weeks nonstop, macs cant
@@MalcolmREBORN I agree with you, but 'niche' was my whole point. My comment is more about the blanket attitude high-end Macs always attract. I have a Dell Precision Work Station with 192 GB RAM and dual Xeons, and the price was astronomical, but no PC CZcamsrs disparage Dell for having high-end Work Stations. They ignore them and focus on those products in their users' price range.
@@Teluric2how do you mean? Apple Silicon has all the hardware needed to run any simulation, including hardware FPU and vector acceleration extensions. Not to mention unified memory architecture expands available memory to GPU cores.
It was fun seeing you at Collision!!!
Honestly, you can use external PCIe NVMe cards over TB4 for a good chunk that bandwidth.
But there really is something to be said for 1 big box with all your storage and IO in one.
It's a shame it maxes out at 192GB RAM. I certainly don't need 192GB, but there are Mac Pro users who'd certainly want more for certain applications.
Maybe the M3 will be able to use additional external memory by turning the on-chip stuff into a giant L3 cache. Could be interesting to see.
If they do that, everyone is gonna find the way that works to expand the lowest configuration memory to the highest to save money, and that doesnt like to apple
@@blion3dif Apple makes external memory “cards”, believe me, it won’t be cheap.
What are people doing with all that memory? Like opening 5 chrome tabs?
@@prashantkaushik7063 Sound libraries for music composers are often in excess of 300GB
@@griffin8062 I see you also watch Neil Parfitt
Marques is growing stronger. Not just a tech review, but an educational channel. Love you, MKHB!
you spelled that wrong but I still get what you mean and agree with you
mkhb?
Excellent vid mate.
The last Mac Pro was certainly just as expensive and not a good fit for most people, but the fact that we lost the ability to upgrade GPUs and RAM is a massive disappointment. I bought my 2019 Mac Pro because I kinda had a feeling it would be the last industry standard, modular and upgradable Mac they'd make. I was holding out some hope but unfortunately I was proven right. Apple Silicon excels in mobile devices and small desktops like the Mac Studio, but a desktop as big as the Mac Pro that you can't put stuff into (aside from storage cards or specialized ones like Marques mentioned) doesn't make sense to me as an average computer user. Especially not for a $3K premium.
thank you for your criticism of apple, you're better off with a Threadripper CPU from AMD, and a Computer tower with a GPU from NVdiai or AMD.
not only for storage also sound cards and a few other things like fiber channel cards, fiber networking cards, video cards ( not graphics) and Ethernet cards. I’m sure they are trying to cut off all external chips and gpu though. They are expecting the m1-m2 chips to be enough. But If anything they could have given the option to add another chip for people who wanted to do things like that.
@@letsplaywar problem with that is that you can't run macOS in a sensible supported way.
if youre an average computer user, the product simply is not for you. no use critiquing how something that wasnt designed to meet your needs doesnt meet your needs.
@@jonathanodude6660 You don't have to care what I think, I just put it out there . I still think for 95% of even professional/business environments the Studio is a no brainer.
I hear your theory at the end but maybe I'll play contrarian for a second by saying that they might end up keeping this design for the foreseeable future, considering the OG Mac Pro from 2006 carried over the external design of the Power Mac G5 from 2003 all the way to 2013. The G5/Mac Pro design (and the Mac mini) seemed to be the design exceptions for the longest time in their lineup, unlike the rest of their computers during the PPC to Intel transition. 👍🏾
you have the most expensive mac pro, but you don't have the most expensive wheel for this computer
Thanks for being interesting enough, cool enough, and geeky enough for me to sit through a Mac video. If I was actually running a studio or had the money I might get a Mac Studio - but the price is likely beyond my reasonability limit.
I can’t understand how they’re not selling the Mac Pro chip as a standalone chip, or at least a standalone motherboard. The fact that you have to re-buy the cheese grater tower again is insane. Defeats the whole purpose of it being modular.
Next thing you'll expect is the $400 castors to transfer to the new machine.
In part because it's an ARM chip, can't just be thrown into a system like an x86 chip
@@enzorodrigues9735they could do a mobo swap with the last gen Mac pro pretty easily if they wanted. But it's Apple, that's never been their style
@@enzorodrigues9735Uh. How to say this nicely. Even if an arm chip is soldered to the board it still needs a socket or slot to fit into. And lo and behold the M chips do. The M-socket. That means an M1 chip can be pulled out of the socket once removing the solder which holds it in place and an M2 chip will slide right in. It's also a SOC, so all I/O is handled on chip. The motherboard is just needs a small controller to handle routing on the board. And look at that. It's the same damned routing chip since it doesn't make sense to create a new one. The reason M2 doesn't work with M1 is because Apple doesn't want to sell a chip. The margins are better on a complete system. Even in Intel days Apple made it a PITA to swap chips. Now that they control the entire ecosystem they've made it impossible.
LOL, this isn't Framework company, this is Apple. Of course you will have to rebuy everything. Like you can't swap the intel MacBook Air with the M1 motherboard.
2:19 wait what 💀 that’s not 80% better lol
If I was someone that was waiting eagerly for the Mac Pro to have the M-series chips, I would have been pissed that this is what they released. It's insane that Apple didn't show off any expansion cards, like extra GPU cores or maybe extra Neural Engine cores. You can get the Mac Studio with every single thing maxed out and it would still be less than the starting price of the Pro, and at 1/10 the physical footprint.
Just out of curiosity.. what do you use the neural engine cores for ?
@@mm-hl7gh Machine Learning tasks
Even my G4 PowerMac (who is old enough to remember those?) did the exact same thing when you opened up the side panel and then removed the transparent plastic air guide panel thingy: All the fans spun up to max rpm and stayed that way until you replaced said transparent thingy! 🙃
11:00 it is preparing itself for a liftoff 😂
Actually, based on information from apple suppliers. M2 Extreme was in the work and was planned to be used for Mac Pro. However, it turned out fusing two M2 Max chips were wayyyy too expensive and Apple doesn't see enough demand for a chip like that. So the project was scrapped in the end. 48 core CPU would've been the most insane thing.....
According to SnazzyLabs there was indeed a *'Jade 4C-Die'* but I presume they had technical difficulties with it as LTT Labs showed us how M2 Ultra itself is large or actually larger than the largest enterprise class Intel Xeon processors.
Love the Mac Pro growling at him at the end.
0:19 the Tim the tatman outro kind of got me confused
I just wish they'd put the CPU on a card that could be upgraded in a couple of years. That one thing would have stopped it being obsolete in a couple of years. Like, you know, the Intel Mac Pro is now.
I just love your videos!! Best tech channel!!
10:28 With the small volume of Mac Pro’s sold, I wouldn’t be surprised if an exterior redesign takes another 4 years or so. Which means it’s closer to the M5-generation of Apple Silicon. We’re left hoping Apple spec bumps the processor generation at least once mid cycle.
A modular Mac Studio will be dope!
I’m glad we can always count on MKBHD to answer the questions we are all asking 😂
I like your content Thank you for sharing a good experience with us.
the fans shot up when you undid the latch because the case is integral to the correct airflow inside the machine just like in blade servers so it,s a safeguard to avoid overheating
I am surprised they upgraded the Mac Studio. I was convinced it was a stop-gap and would never get an upgrade. Now, it looks like MacStudio is the new "mac pro" and "Mac Pro" is "Mac For Industry Professionals Who Need pCIE slots." - That said, I will probably never outgrow my M1 Mac Studio. As a software developer it is more Mac than I will ever need. But it's good to know I didn't buy a one-off solution. Thanks again for your quality work. I continue to subscribe. Continued Success!
I expected the Mac Pro to have a unmatched big hot chip, like MX1 or some thing like that, something unmatched, ECC memory. But no, they were not able to make it happen and just stuck a M2 into it because they clearly run out of time. Another product like the Studio Display: clearly meant to be something else but then hastly completed to be sold
Marques got my dream job. I love tech and I’d love to talk about it all day lol.
Working In the AV world the extra PCIE slots would be super nice to have. I run 4 projectors at once plus live stream video outputs. We currently need a dedicated thunderbolt PCIE chassis to run it. It works, but an internal one would be awesome.
8 TB cost 2.5 grand extra in the studio. so you could justify getting the pro by getting better storage for less extra money, if you had any other use case. also can't expand later with the studio. It's still ridiculously expensive tho.
This is why I'm done with Apple, they used to be premium but absolutely focused on the user. Now they just seem to be making it up as they go along. $2.5k for 8TB in 2023 is just absurd.
Too bad you can't slot in good ole server grade HDDs in
I find it revealing the the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is your performance winner for Metal scores, beating the M2 Ultra (I'm assuming this is a max GPU core count chip). This implies the W6800 duo might still be the best option for many graphics operations, meaning this machine is not a replacement for those that need maximum graphics performance. It's not my area of expertise, but I'd love to see this broken down. Also, the upper bound of 192 GB might be a limitation as well for certain operations.
Honestly an integrated GPU will almost never beat a dedicated one like the 6900XT, which isn’t even built for metal (meaning it could probably run a ton faster in a dx12/vulkan benchmark)
@@dnsjtoh The Apple M series chips are SoCs, not simply a CPU with integrated graphics. Meaning that there is a CPU portion of the chip, and a gfx portion of the chip.
However, these days, there is no clear cut answer. Types of compute are merging, others are being more specialized, and compute is moving to different locations than a single computer tower (think DPUs).
The Apple M series chips have a large number of accelerators that if your workflow uses will outpace any general compute silicon like gfx cards. And if you benchmark on perf/watt, the M series often surpasses most systems with a dedicated CPU & GPU. But if you need pure, raw, gfx compute, then yes, a dedicated GFX card or several, will outpace an M series chip. If you consider the quantity of silicon apple uses relative to the alternate components (totaling a CPU+dGPU) then Apple is extremely performant for the amount of silicon consumed.
TL;DR "It depends"
bro left us with fan reviving sound as the outro. Classic MKBHD..😅
How is that OWC Accelsior 8M2 card? You gonna do a video on that? On the fence big time on the Mac Studio or the Mac Pro and internal storage would be the big reason.
I know they transitioned the iMac product line in general, but the fact that the 27”+ iMac has not transitioned makes the transition still feel incomplete
27in studio monitor + Mac mini.
@@TechnoLawyer I'm tempted to go Studio+M3Max and external monitors. 1 x 27" + 2 x 21" sidecars in vertical.
Exactly, the 27 inch imac was their best computer, combining performance with a big screen in one package.
@@JDH_MUSICThe iMac died to me when they killed Target Display mode. It just became a huge amount of e-waste. The Mac Studio is better, but the Studio Display is objectively a bad deal.
it's kinda weird how the M1 ultra was pretty decent at launch, with top-tier CPU-performance and mid-level gpu performance and now the M2 is just 15% faster while intel and AMD have increased performance by 40% for CPUs and Nvidia and AMD nearly doubled the GPU performance...
Love this guys videos!
Great video as always!
Low key one of the more interesting features of the Mac Pro is that you can now buy it in a rack mounted configuration. So that means cloud services can now put macs in their datacenters for highly specialized mac-only scenarios. Apple used to have a mac server option years ago but stopped selling it (likely due to low demand).
You could have done that with mac studios on a shelf and a much smaller footprint
@@electricsnut yes but Mac Studio can't take those faster networking cards.
@@sebulban it has 10gig and thunderbolt so it can have anything really…
@@electricsnutof you ever worked with racks you know this is a bad idea
The 1st-gen Mac Pro (Intel version) was also available in a rackmount config. We bought 6 of them - in said configuration - with 256 GB of RAM and every other option available then (in a corp. production studio). Fully loaded, each one cost around $25K. Pure insanity! Such a waste ... looking back; I still get angry when I think of it.
The fact you can get same performance from the computer for half the price is hilarious
Hey Heisenberg
This exactly what I don't understand about this lineup
he literally explained the reason on the video. Once you get yo server side stuff. its all super-expensive for almost no reason....almost
Well, it's apple at the end of the day, they can do whatever and people would still buy their products. The point tho is very well explained in the video for this case, I don't justify 3k over but different needs different choices
@@lehlohonolomoloi2109 It is all about greed.
Apple knows it customers will pay, so they overprice it.
Just because I see it next to the studio throughout the whole video, I have to say, I would have loved a refreshed trashcan Mac chassis for the studio
I was hoping they would have the unified memory and a ddr5 controller to allow slower system memory not at the unified speed. I was also expecting an m2 extreme, but I guess they didn't get that working in time. I project the m3 generation will be a large upgrade for that system and they just needed to get it out.
I had the same hopes
I was expecting to have a choice of 2 or 4 M2 Maxes with up to 192GB per socket.
@@katrinabryce There was rumors they were working on a larger chip for it but I guess they didn't get it working and just needed to release what they had. I would be surprised if they released it as socketed chip since everything else is soldered on, but it would be interesting since the chips would be upgradeable.
The further along the Apple silicon line up goes along, the more complex the names are going to get. Can’t wait to hear about the M3 Ultra Pro Max Plus or something like that
They'll have to graduate from the i prefix to the j prefix
Not nearly as bad yet as i9-13900K/KS/KF
@@EvilestMinion that is easy though? K is overclock, ks is overclock supreme with best binning and kf for no igpu.
@@EvilestMinioni mean the whole name is not that important just by using 13900k you can easily understand what generation the product belongs to "13" what type of cpu it is i9 "900" and can it be overclocked "K" , S just means its a better version of K and F means it doesn't have an IGPU.
@@harshmaurya.cy24can you please explain Apples naming conventions for processors now?
Thanks for explaining why anyone would want to spring for the mac pro. Curious, how do you keep everything on that OWC SSD card backed up? I assume you have it in some kind of raid configuration in case one of the component SSDs fails, but what about remote backup? Do you use cloud backup for all those TBs of data or do you have a personal cloud backup to another off-site storage device that you also own? Thanks.
the song used in the intro I've only heard used in a cs:go (now cs2) youtuber's videos
Thanks for pointing out reasons for this machine. Too many people are assuming that their needs are the only ones that exist.
In the spirit of this video, I thought I’d ask: I know you say that the storage situation is a use case (which it totally is), but I would be really interested to know how much this makes sense from a cost, reliability, redundancy perspective. By the time you’ve upgraded from the Mac Studio, bought the first (and presumably not the last) storage card, doesn’t it just get to the point where an upgraded network attached storage option would be the right way forward?
NAS storages although can be fast can never be faster than onboard memory options. The speed of the storage card mkbhd mentioned seems to be 2-4 times faster than even apple’s ssd so it seems read and write speed is pretty important to him
I think this specific variant is a stop gab. I think it is essentially a prototype for using the m series in a desktop form factor. Essentially a placeholder to keep investors happy and to show they're serious about moving to arm.
Being within a few years of having to replace your roof (they aren’t cheap) would also be something I would factor in to the savings.
Composer here-music, that is. I’ve honestly had mixed feelings about Apple silicon; the performance is great and for base-level Macs, and the capacity that M1 and M2 have delivered has been stunning compared to base-level Intel options. But as someone who relies solely on CPU and RAM for their workloads, I feel like I can’t really find a machine that fits my needs unless I end up paying for a lot of superfluous GPU performance. I would love to see a variant of the Max where they pile on the CPU capacity instead of adding more GPU muscle; I might’ve considered Pro but 32 GB of RAM just isn’t enough.
Modern high end x86 CPUs eat M2 for breakfast, because they focus on CPU and go for power over efficiency. They also allow you to add more RAM and have plenty of PCIe lanes on the high end workstations. GPUs are optional, and they can be much more powerful too if you need them. M2 is an oversized mobile chip, designed for power efficiency, whereas high end x86 systems have no problem devouring 200+ watts just for the CPU.
@@Pushing_Pixelsbut isn’t efficiency what people want. Just because something uses a lot of power doesn’t mean it runs good.
@@Bobspineable In a laptop or mobile device yes, efficiency is crucial, and Apple's M-series is great at providing high performance relative to power consumption. In a desktop, particularly one that's intended for highly demanding workloads like the Mac Pro, people want performance. Apple's approach to this is sticking multiple M-series processors together which gives you more performance, but not as much as a design specifically targeting performance would.
Generally, a high-performance design will require more power, and the higher you push the clock frequency, which further increases performance, the more power you need. It doesn't scale linearly, you do get diminishing returns, and different designs will be more or less efficient.
Apple also builds its GPU into the M processors, which is perfect for mobile and low power performance, but it limits total potential performance. Using discrete GPUs allows you to scale much higher, which is extremely important for certain demanding workloads. This Mac Pro limits users to the embedded GPU in the M2, which is not terrible, but if you're spending this much money you should be able to use as many of whichever GPUs you want. It's a bad deal for users that need more GPU power.
Also, 200 watts was an extreme example for x86, you can get a very capable CPU that runs at 65w. But a powerful GPU is an add on that has its own separate power consumption on top of that and they can go up to 350-400w.
just build a windows pc. easy.
@@Pushing_Pixels Try similar workloads; Apple Silicon workloads tend to use a lot less RAM than the equivalent Intel workloads do.