Possible January 2023 New Mac Pro Reveal

[trs96]

Apple leaker Amethyst is saying it will use the older larger MP 7,1 chassis and have PCIe slots. Maybe even 6 or more. He got the Mac Studio and Studio Display exactly right, before Apple showed them to the public.

Does that mean support for the latest RDNA 3 cards ? He says that Apple can do that if they choose to. They don't work as of today.

24 core M2 and 192 GB of Ram on one SoC ? That's only possible if it's a lot bigger than the current Mac Studio's SoC. If the logic board goes into the 2019 MP case there's plenty of room. 192 GB will not be the amount of ram in the base model. Apple would never offer that much ram in a base Mac Pro. Way too expensive.

Mac Pro part of the video starts at the 5:40 timestamp. I tend to doubt the Mixed Reality will be shown this January. Sounds exciting though, gets clicks on the video.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Apple leaker Amethyst is saying it will use the older larger MP 7,1 chassis and have PCIe slots. Maybe even 6 or more.
Does that mean support for the latest RDNA 3 cards ? He says that Apple can do that if they choose to. They don't work as of today.

View attachment 559840

24 core M2 and 192 GB of Ram on one SoC ? That's only possible if it's a lot bigger than the current Mac Studio's SoC. If the logic board goes into the 2019 MP case there's plenty of room.

Mac Pro part of the video starts at the 5:40 timestamp.

Interesting ...

I wonder if Apple will stick with PCI Express? Now they have dumped Intel - and PCI-e was created by a consortium of Intel and others, but not Apple as far as I'm aware - why would they stick to the format? You might say, so people can upgrade their new MacPros ... Hmmm, just like they can their Mac Studios?

I'm probably way off base but it got me thinking ...

 

[etorix]

I wonder if Apple will stick with PCI Express? Now they have dumped Intel - and PCI-e was created by a consortium of Intel and others, but not Apple as far as I'm aware - why would they stick to the format?

Because the whole point of the big tower Mac Pro is to have expansion slots for hardware which Apple does not, and possibly cannot, supply. High-end audio or video cards are obvious examples within the avowed target market of "content creators".
PCIe is the industry standard for that.

As GPU grow more and more power hungry, the industry has developed mezzanine-style OAM format to address the new requirements. Apple came with its own solution, the MPX slot, which extends a standard x16 PCIe slot with a long row of extra pins for power delivery. I'd say that if Apple keeps the MacPro7,1 case, Apple is very likely to keep its very own MPX slot—compatible with PCIe cards.

 

[trs96]

I wonder if Apple will stick with PCI Express?

If they use the older 7,1 chassis they've got so much internal space they can use for the expansion slots. Why not ?

One problem I've heard about with the Mac studio is the speed of access to external storage. Using a NAS can be too slow for many. Thunderbolt external storage gets super expensive in a hurry. With PCIe slots and add in cards, new Mac Pro owners should be able to take advantage of whatever NVMe drives they choose for internal storage. Large, fast drives like the 4TB SN850X NVMe would solve that problem for content creators. Imagine the possible data transfer speeds if they use PCIe 5.0 slots !

Here's what OWC charges for a 4TB TH3 enclosure:

Super-fast sustained data transfer rates up to 1553MB/s

Put the SN850X into a PCIe slot and transfer rates go way up.

Here's what a 2TB NVMe with heatsink attached costs today.
The PCIe adapters don't cost much at all.

or you could use a 4TB SN850X and attach your own heatsink.
Compare this to what Apple charges for a 4TB internal storage upgrade.

 

[trs96]

Another thing to consider, how could the Apple integrated GPU (on the SoC) compete with this ?
Unless they've made some kind of major improvement to their current 48-core GPU in the M1 Ultra
their's simply no way to match a dual AMD graphics config. Probably the W7900X Duo.

AMD Radeon Pro W6800X Duo​

Two W6800X GPUs, each with 60 compute units and 3840 stream processors
64GB of GDDR6 memory (32GB per GPU), each with 512GB/s memory bandwidth
Up to 30.2 teraflops single precision or 60.4 teraflops half precision

Audio Pros can easily get by with the integrated graphics but for video pros, dual RDNA 3 AMD GPUs would be their best option.

 

[trs96]

Looks like no user upgradable ram according to Mark Gurman.

Apple is also moving the production to Vietnam instead of China.
Supposed to cut costs by doing this.

 

[ramazarusx]

Call me naive optimist but I still do believe that Apple might got with Intel W790 for the last Intel MacPro, this will give them 2-3 years to perfect the Mx Chips to be extremely competitive with AMD/Intel.

I for one need GPU processing, RAM and lots of it and 192GB is not enough. Just my 2c.

 

[trs96]

I still do believe that Apple might go with Intel W790 for the last Intel MacPro, this will give them 2-3 years to perfect the Mx Chips to be extremely competitive with AMD/Intel.

I don't believe it will happen, but it would be great for this community if they did !

 

[craighazan]

I’m really disappointed in Apple that the Mac Pro has been delayed, they failed to transition to M series within their own 2 year deadline!. And now the talk is about keeping the old design but smaller!, and still the Mini Pro gets mentioned. Apple have let me and the Apple community down with their procrastination and inability to go big and bold. Booo…

 

[UtterDisbelief]

I feel that the way Apple Silicon is currently designed there would be no way to add "extra" RAM to a new Mac Pro beyond that which Apple is willing to include. It's all a part of the CPU+RAM+SSD joined-at-the-hip construction.

This makes you seriously wonder what Apple might actually decide to do with the Mac Pro. I think the Mac Studio gave us a preview and it's moved further and further away from the Intel platform. If they decided to stick with a modular build then, oddly, Intel CPUs would be a ... swallows hard ... good idea. The operating-system is already coded for it and the software pros use already out there.

Crazy ideas, eh?