In reply to a post by zyborg47:

How is that going to work I wonder? That means that any hardware that uses the PCIE slots will need drivers and to be honest I can't see many hardware manufactures writing drivers for their hardware for Mac silicon.,

We aren't talking about general mass market cards here, it will be niche devices aimed at musicians/composers/audio people and video input/output cards (not GPU cards).

And I expect the makers of those niche cards know how keenly some of their customers want to keep using Macs. Many of them even go to the trouble of providing Linux drivers 😉

In reply to a post by andynormancx:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

So the real delta is more like £2,700 between the two. So basically a chassis that can take six PCIe Gen 4 slots, has an extra 10 GbE port, an extra HDMI port and 2 more Thunderbolt-4 ports.

And an extra USB-A port, that internal one that is intended for software licence dongles.

And also it has same option for a couple of internal drives that the Intel one has (it has the two 6GB SATA ports).

And presumably a lot quieter than the Ultra Studio under load.

You can also officially upgrade the SSD on the Mac Pro

https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MR393ZM/A/appl...

The price is eye-watering, £1,000 for a 2TB SSD. Only £820 more than the Samsung 990 PRO I bought recently.

Oh and don't forget the wheels...

Indeed. My point was that the price delta wasn’t as great between the two as claimed. Not sure where the $52k cost of the Pro came from / perhaps that was loaded with other drives etc?

For professional users with budget, the uplift is actually not that much in the grand scheme of things really - if you’re in the market for one - and can imagine some pro grade dedicated/specialist music and video PCIe add in cards could be half as much as the base system cost if not more.

Here:

https://9to5mac.com/2023/06/05/mac-pro-max-price-2/

(I inadvertently transcribed the delta from base to full: so it's $50k plays $12k

The old Intel one, yeah adding AfterBurner cards and memory etc

If you go to the Apple UK store you can max spec both new M2 Ultra in Studio and Pro form and (with the exception of wheels!) get the answers I gave above.

Edited by Pheasant (Tue 06-Jun-23 16:51:07)

In reply to a post by andynormancx:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

How is that going to work I wonder? That means that any hardware that uses the PCIE slots will need drivers and to be honest I can't see many hardware manufactures writing drivers for their hardware for Mac silicon.,

We aren't talking about general mass market cards here, it will be niche devices aimed at musicians/composers/audio people and video input/output cards (not GPU cards).

And I expect the makers of those niche cards know how keenly some of their customers want to keep using Macs. Many of them even go to the trouble of providing Linux drivers 😉

Just like ATTO who emailed me to tell me they’re “ready…now!!” 🤣

https://postimg.cc/Jt9VHxyN

https://postimg.cc/DS1X3xGB

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Just like ATTO who emailed me to tell me they’re “ready…now!!” 🤣

Of course, this is pretty much why they created their products. I remember someone using an ATTO thunderbolt to 10GigE unit years ago (may have even been RevK).

I always assumed the (local for Apple) customers for the Mac Pro chassis with these cards was the likes of the studios in LA, Paramount, MGM, etc. If you’re spending $150m on a movie and expecting to get $400m at box office, spending $1m on the hardware for your team is not really an issue.

I know some scientists (at a Uni in the US) whom had Intel Mac Pro’s in a server room they would remote into to run long computation / analysis jobs. I always wondered why they didn’t use a Linux Intel server, and was told it was because the Mac Pro was run by IT as any other Mac…. Shared between 50 scientists it wasn’t expensive.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

I know some scientists (at a Uni in the US) whom had Intel Mac Pro’s in a server room they would remote into to run long computation / analysis jobs. I always wondered why they didn’t use a Linux Intel server, and was told it was because the Mac Pro was run by IT as any other Mac…. Shared between 50 scientists it wasn’t expensive.

Do you recall SGI / Silicon Graphics from the early nineties? Universities and research institutes were also big buyers of them, just like the film and graphics industries. Then they slowly slid to oblivion in the noughties.

Just the Xeon CPU in that beast was somewhere around $10,000 retail.

Ha, I was looking to see if I could see if there was already anyone announcing support to include in my post.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Do you recall SGI / Silicon Graphics from the early nineties? Universities and research institutes were also big buyers of them, just like the film and graphics industries. Then they slowly slid to oblivion in the noughties.

I never used, my academic experience was SPARC (SunOS) and VaxVMS on the Alpha… but friends of mine at other establishments were all on Irix…. SGI !