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Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

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Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#311

Post by threeseed »

smoldesu wrote: post #296
evilduck wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://blog.greggant.com/posts/2021/10/13/apple-vs-nvidia-w... Nvidia had a knack for putting Apple into difficult situations.

I think Apple is afraid of the AI people switching to CUDA and neglecting Apple's own accelerators. Whatever the case is, it's entirely petty - Nvidia still ships FreeBSD drivers and would probably gladly pick up Apple support again (at least for CUDA drivers). If it was as simple as "Nvidia was an unreliable hardware partner", they wouldn't go out of their way to arbitrarily limit the drivers you can run.

Apple doesn't arbitrarily limit the drivers you can run.

And up until now there hasn't been a Mac Nvidia could even sell graphics cards for.

Even now Mac Pro users will be such a tiny segment it's probably not worth the effort.

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#312

Post by threeseed »

wilg wrote: post #239
nico_h wrote: post #237

Well there was 3 interesting questions about the apple silicon mac pro going into the keynote: - how will they provide more RAM than the Mac Studio? - how will they provide more GPU than the Mac Studio? - how will they provide more CPU than the Mac Studio? And the answer is « let’s not! » I’m disappointed there was no surprise on that front. I’m sad they mentioned gaming and created a « gaming mode » and then the Mac…

It's bizarre that you'd pay $3000 more over the Mac Studio for zero extra performance, upgradability only for storage, and a bunch of useless PCI slots that don't support GPUs.

There are a lot of professionals who travel with their computers e.g. movie industry who would appreciate being able to fit everything in one box.

Likewise if you're in a studio being able to reduce the amount of equipment in your rack is always a win.

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#313

Post by BXlnt2EachOther »

tiffanyh wrote: post #303

I’m confused, where are the Afterburner expansion cards when you go configure a new MacPro? It’s missing and is basically an overpriced MacStudio without them.

It sounds like they're leaning on the internal video encode/decode of the M2 ("media engine"), which they claim can decode 22 streams of 8K ProRes on the Ultra. It looks like this replaces dedicated Afterburner cards? And would apply to both the Studio and Pro. But I am not a video production professional.

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#314

Post by threeseed »

smoldesu wrote: post #246
nico_h wrote: post #237

Well there was 3 interesting questions about the apple silicon mac pro going into the keynote: - how will they provide more RAM than the Mac Studio? - how will they provide more GPU than the Mac Studio? - how will they provide more CPU than the Mac Studio? And the answer is « let’s not! » I’m disappointed there was no surprise on that front. I’m sad they mentioned gaming and created a « gaming mode » and then the Mac…

The GPU situation is getting really dire, and showing the obvious limitations of putting everything on one die at-scale. The Blender benchmarks tell the entire story now that Metal is supported: https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/query The M2 Max renders on-par with a 90 watt, 12nm RTX 2070 laptop card. From 2018.

So that Blender release contains an alpha release of OSX Metal: https://code.blender.org/2023/01/introducing-the-blender-met...

Would be good to at least see it stabilise and optimised a bit before jumping to conclusions.

And yes Apple could make a better GPU by building a 450W discrete card but given that they make the most sales from lower end devices probably not a sensible strategy.

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#315

Post by geerlingguy »

wilg wrote: post #252
ucm_edge wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the Pro feels like a miss. I figured it would have same specs as the Studio for its SoC but would come with a bunch of options for co processor cards akin to the Afterburner card. So a studio you can kit out for additional specialized performance. Maybe those cards will trickle out over time, but not having them ready at launch makes the Pro feel like an afterthought right now.

It might have been a good idea to put the M2 itself on a replaceable board. Other than adding some professional video out or capture cards, which you could probably just do via Thunderbolt, I'm just baffled by this product.

I would love if Apple used something like COM-HPC or even the new daughtercard approach Intel and Nvidia are using in their high end server CPU+GPU chips.

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#316

Post by wmf »

avidphantasm wrote: post #278
selectodude wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High compared to the Mac Studio, I'd say. $3,000 extra for the exact same specs and an extra 6 PCI slots. I guess if you need them, that's the cost of entry, but $500/slot seems like a tough sell.

Agreed, and the small max memory is disappointing. However, maybe the thermals of the Pro give it a significant performance edge over the Studio?

No, because the Mac Studio doesn't throttle to begin with. (Hilariously, LTT water-cooled one and it made no difference.)

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#317

Post by inconceivable »

m463 wrote: post #299
speed_spread wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty certain you can buy yourself a Linux workstation that just works. ThreadRipper, ECC, NVidia proprietary drivers. Put Fedora on it. The trouble is leaving it alone and not messing with it after you get it going.

Curious - why do you suggest fedora? I'm familiar with ubuntu/debian and arch, but have never delved into why fedora/redhat/centos/rocky.

tons of people run redhat and derivatives in production for various reasons. it's also owned by IBM. you know how the old saying goes...

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#318

Post by mbrochh »

chillbill wrote: post #41

The best thing about this whole event is that they didn't mention AI even once, all they're saying is ML. Which is what it is. AI is a hype word.

They only mentioned "transformer model" several times and one other type of model for generating our avatar (forgot which type that is).

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#319

Post by smoldesu »

threeseed wrote: post #314
smoldesu wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPU situation is getting really dire, and showing the obvious limitations of putting everything on one die at-scale. The Blender benchmarks tell the entire story now that Metal is supported: https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/query The M2 Max renders on-par with a 90 watt, 12nm RTX 2070 laptop card. From 2018.

So that Blender release contains an alpha release of OSX Metal: https://code.blender.org/2023/01/introducing-the-blender-met... Would be good to at least see it stabilise and optimised a bit before jumping to conclusions. And yes Apple could make a better GPU by building a 450W discrete card but given that they make the most sales from lower end devices probably not a sensible strategy.

> Would be good to at least see it stabilise and optimised a bit before jumping to conclusions.

How much further do you think they can optimize? Nvidia cards have hardware-accelerated BVH traversal and have been designed with ray-tracing in mind since 2009. Apple Silicon in it's current incarnation closer resembles a phone GPU with dedicated media engines. Maybe Metal will improve in time, but it's not going to close the performance gap. It probably won't even close the performance-per-watt gap, at least in Blender demos.

> And yes Apple could make a better GPU by building a 450W discrete card

They're already halfway there with the M1 Ultra's 200w TDP. It's concerning that their desktop focused SOC is being outperformed by last-gen 90w laptop GPUs, at least in my book. It signals that scaling the Mac beyond mobile SOCs will require a unique approach.

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#320

Post by sgerenser »

avidphantasm wrote: post #278
selectodude wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High compared to the Mac Studio, I'd say. $3,000 extra for the exact same specs and an extra 6 PCI slots. I guess if you need them, that's the cost of entry, but $500/slot seems like a tough sell.

Agreed, and the small max memory is disappointing. However, maybe the thermals of the Pro give it a significant performance edge over the Studio?

M1 Ultra Mac Studio almost never ran the fans above 1300rpm, I doubt the M2 version is thermally constrained either.
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