Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

9to5mac.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 672 posts

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#411

Post by kaashif »

embedding-shape wrote: post #395
rafram wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But where are you going to find an Nvidia GPU with 128+ GB of memory at an enthusiast-compatible price?

Where are you gonna find Apple hardware with 128GB of memory at enthusiast-compatible price? The cheapest Apple desktop with 128GB of memory shows up as costing $3499 for me, which isn't very "enthusiast-compatible", it's about 3x the minimum salary in my country!

Apple is not catering to minimum salaries in poor countries. Does this really need to be explained?

$3499 is definitely enthusiast compatible. That's beefy gaming PC tier, which is possibly the canonical example of an enthusiast market.

This isn't tens of thousands of dollars for top tier Nvidia chips we're talking about.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#412

Post by x______________ »

giwook wrote: post #407
sippeangelo wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some Chinese sources sell modded Nvidia GPUs with extra VRAM. They're quite affordable in comparison to even a Mac Pro.

And how much do you trust Chinese hardware?

When there's no one left to trust, maybe you need to re-evaluate your criteria.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#413

Post by spacedcowboy »

nottorp wrote: post #409
spacedcowboy wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I’m planning on selling my 512GB M3 Ultra Studio in the next week or so (I just wrenched my back so I’m on bed-rest for the next few days) with an eye to funding the M5 Ultra Studio when it’s announced at WWDC. I can live without the RAM for a couple of months to get a good price for it, especially since Apple don’t sell that model (with the RAM) any more.

Hey didn't they drop the 512 Gb model? https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/03/06/forget-512gb-ram-... You may want to hold on to your M3 Ultra! There's no guarantee there will be a M5 Ultra with 512 Gb ram.

I don’t actually use the memory anywhere near as much as I thought I would. 256GB would be fine for me :)

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#414

Post by wappieslurkz »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #303
chatmasta wrote: post #165

I bet there’s gonna be a banger of a Mac Studio announced in June. Apple really stumbled into making the perfect hardware for home inference machines. Does any hardware company come close to Apple in terms of unified memory and single machines for high throughput inference workloads? Or even any DIY build? When it comes to the previous “pro workloads,” like video rendering or software compilation, you’ve always been…

> But inference is unique because its performance scales with high memory throughput, and you can’t assemble that by wiring together off the shelf parts in a consumer form factor. Nvidia outperforms Mac significantly on diffusion inference and many other forms. It’s not as simple as the current Mac chips are entirely better for this.

Do NVIDIA solutions also outperform the Apple M-series in performance per Watt?

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#415

Post by embedding-shape »

kaashif wrote: post #411
embedding-shape wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you gonna find Apple hardware with 128GB of memory at enthusiast-compatible price? The cheapest Apple desktop with 128GB of memory shows up as costing $3499 for me, which isn't very "enthusiast-compatible", it's about 3x the minimum salary in my country!

Apple is not catering to minimum salaries in poor countries. Does this really need to be explained? $3499 is definitely enthusiast compatible. That's beefy gaming PC tier, which is possibly the canonical example of an enthusiast market. This isn't tens of thousands of dollars for top tier Nvidia chips we're talking about.

Seems I misunderstood what a "enthusiast" is, I thought it was about someone "excited about something" but seems the typical definition includes them having a lot of money too, my bad.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#416

Post by embedding-shape »

giwook wrote: post #407
sippeangelo wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some Chinese sources sell modded Nvidia GPUs with extra VRAM. They're quite affordable in comparison to even a Mac Pro.

And how much do you trust Chinese hardware?

Give that most of mine, and probably yours, and probably most of the world's computers are in fact made in China one way or another, some higher percentage than others, I'm guessing most of us trust our hardware enough to continue using it.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#417

Post by benoau »

midnight_eclair wrote: post #353
chocochunks wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 128GB 2TB Dell Pro Max with Nvidia GB10 is about $4200, a Mac Studio with 128GB RAM and 2TB storage is $4100. So pretty comparable. I think Dell's pricing has been rocked more by the RAM shortage too.

~not unified memory tho~

That won't hold much benefit as SOCAMM2 and LPCAMM2 get more popular.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#418

Post by chocochunks »

cestith wrote: post #408
mciancia wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unified memory on this one

From the spec sheets I’m looking at, it is not. I’m seeing models of the Dell Pro Max with 128 GB of DDR5-6400 as CAMM2, then a separate memory of up to 24 GB on the GPU. CAMM2 does not make the memory unified. There are also SO-DIMM options.

You're not looking at the right thing. Dell's naming is horrible. Dell Pro Max with GB10 (https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/cty/pdp/spd/dell-pro-max-fcm...). It's a very different computer than what you're looking at and has 128GB LPDDR5X unified memory.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#419

Post by EagnaIonat »

readitalready wrote: post #59

Apple really dropped the ball here. They had every ability to make something competitive with Nvidia for AI training as well as inference, by selling high end multi GPU Mac Pro workstations as well as servers, but for some reason chose not to. They had the infrastructure and custom SoCs and everything. What a waste. It really could have been a bigger market for them than even the iPhone.

> AI training as well as inference

Inference has never been an issue for M series, and MLX just ramped it up further.

You can do training on the latest MBPs, although any serious models you are going to the cloud anyway.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#420

Post by tecleandor »

fooker wrote: post #391
chatmasta wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia doesn’t list prices because they don’t sell the machines themselves. If you click through each of those links, the prices are listed on the distributor’s website. For example the Dell Pro Max with GB10 is $4,194.34 and you can even click “Add to Cart.”

I don't mean the small GB10s. If you try to find the pricing of the GB300 towers even on the manufacturer sites, you'll see that it's not listed for any of the six or so models.

Because that's a different price point, that's getting near 100K, and the availability is very limited. I don't think they're even selling it openly, just to a bunch of partners...

The MSI workstation is the one that is showing some pricing around. Seems like some distributors are quoting USD96K, and have a wait time of 4 to 6 weeks [0]. Other say 90K and also out of stock [1]

--

  0: https://www.cdw.com/product/msi-nvidia-gb300-wkstn-72c-grace-cpu/9087313?pfm=srh
  1: https://www.centralcomputer.com/msi-ct60-s8060-nvidia-dgx-station-cpu-memory-up-to-496gb-lpddr5x-nvidia-blackwell-ultra-gpu-1x-10-gbe-2x-400-gbe.html
Post reply on HN