Paul Haddad Jun 27, 2023
Don't think I remember a more negative reception for an Apple product (maybe iPod socks?).
https://www.theverge.com/23770770/apple-mac-pro-m2-ultra-2023-review
Apple Mac Pro M2 Ultra review: a powerful computer in search of an audience

We asked professionals in film, VFX, animation, music production, design, software engineering, and more whether they are planning to buy Apple’s new Mac Pro with M2 Max and M2 Ultra. Almost all of them said no.

The Verge
Show threadPaul Haddad Jun 27, 2023

Who is this Mac Pro for?

1. You need more than 2 PCIe cards (3+ T3 enclosures is a bit much IMO)
2. You need > 4TB of very fast storage (Might as well vs Apple's $2K 8TB)
3. You need an x8 Audio Video card of some sort?
4. You need > 10GbE networking (Thunderbolt can't really fully handle 25GbE. 100GbE is actually surprisingly somewhat affordable)

I'm team want #2 and #4, but need none of these.

Show threadRob McDougallJun 27, 2023
@paul I do VFX/CG/3D and might be the only person I know who isn’t using a PC. My 2019 Mac Pro with an AMD 6900XT kills the M2 Ultra for 3D rendering. I hope they can really improve the GPU situation otherwise I’m off to RGB land… :(
Show threadmxkJun 27, 2023
@rob @paul at the moment it's not clear, if GPUs can actually work in the MacPros PCIe slots, is it?
Show threadRob McDougallJun 27, 2023
@mxk @paul the new Mac Pro provides ~50% the wattage for PCIe power cables of the old MP, which poses a big issue, and they haven’t yet made any attempts at 3rd party GPU drivers for Apple Silicon. It would certainly be possible to plug one in, but I don’t think much would happen.
Show threadmxk
@rob @paul granted, hooking a GPU to an additional PSU would be rather ugly, but not a Dealkiller.
But as far as I understand, there might be blockers on the PCIe level, that even would prevent Linux from supporting GPUs inside the MacPro.
Jun 28, 2023 at 7:02amWeb
Show threadRob McDougallJun 28, 2023
@mxk @paul hooking up a secondary PSU might be a solution but really crazy when the internal one is, I believe, the same as the 2019 MP so 2,000W. I’ve never come close to using all of that.
I’m just left slightly speechless by the design choices here. They’ve spent a lot of time and effort convincing companies like Maxon and Otoy to port Redshift and Octane renderers to Metal and now there’s nothing they’re selling that can use it well.
Show threadmxkJun 28, 2023
@rob @paul as others have stated in this thread already: the purpose of this MacPro is for Apple to get rid of the last Intel based system. Not to actually be a useful Computer.
Apple for a long time made us wonder, if they actually were committed to the MacPro and now we clearly are again in one of those letdown faces.