WEBVTT 00:00:00.480 --> 00:00:08.880 $7,000. And that's just for the base model of 00:00:05.279 --> 00:00:11.599 the new Mac Pro. I mean, in fairness, 00:00:08.880 --> 00:00:15.759 Apple has been true to their word here. They have both completed the transition 00:00:13.679 --> 00:00:21.680 to Apple Silicon, which they said they would, and they've offered professionals 00:00:18.320 --> 00:00:24.400 who are invested in the Mac Pro form 00:00:21.680 --> 00:00:29.840 factor some continuity in a product line that has for 20 years been in constant 00:00:28.320 --> 00:00:34.960 flux. But I can't help but feel like this is a 00:00:32.399 --> 00:00:39.760 classic case of malicious compliance where they're bringing this thing back 00:00:36.559 --> 00:00:42.800 to life once again only to prove their 00:00:39.760 --> 00:00:45.840 point that it should have stayed dead. 00:00:42.800 --> 00:00:48.960 And I'm not the only one. With the same 00:00:45.840 --> 00:00:52.000 class of hardware as the Mac Studio that 00:00:48.960 --> 00:00:54.879 costs a little over half as much, the 00:00:52.000 --> 00:01:01.520 Mac Pro has had a hard time convincing folks that it has any reason to exist. 00:00:59.039 --> 00:01:07.280 which won't prevent us from running some interesting experiments on its animated 00:01:03.920 --> 00:01:10.080 corpse. For example, Apple said you 00:01:07.280 --> 00:01:14.799 can't put a GPU in it, but we tried it anyway just to see what would happen. 00:01:12.320 --> 00:01:20.560 And we put it through a battery of tests to search for some 00:01:17.680 --> 00:01:24.400 any reason for this computer to have been built. Like the new M2 Ultra 00:01:22.560 --> 00:01:29.600 version of the Mac Studio that launched alongside it, the new Mac Pro is 00:01:27.040 --> 00:01:33.759 externally essentially unchanged from its predecessor, there's only a couple 00:01:31.520 --> 00:01:37.680 of subtle differences around back. Where the previous gen Intel Mac Pro had its 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:42.640 graphics cards mounted at the bottom of the case, nearest the power supply and 00:01:39.840 --> 00:01:48.079 the dual 10 gig LAN ports, the HDMI ports for the M2 Ultra Mac Pro are up at 00:01:45.520 --> 00:01:53.360 the top, just under the healthy bank of six Thunderbolt 4 ports to go along with 00:01:50.479 --> 00:01:57.920 the two on the top. That total of eight is less than the maximum on the old 00:01:55.200 --> 00:02:01.600 Intel Mac Pro, but hey, at least you get all eight regardless of the hardware 00:01:59.439 --> 00:02:07.360 configuration. Once again, then it's all about what's on the inside. Powering the 00:02:04.240 --> 00:02:11.360 new Mac Pro is Apple's top tier M2 Ultra 00:02:07.360 --> 00:02:13.360 SOC, which is basically two M2 Max SOC's 00:02:11.360 --> 00:02:18.239 glued together with Apple's Ultra Fusion interconnect, which allows them to 00:02:14.800 --> 00:02:21.280 operate as one, which is cool, but it 00:02:18.239 --> 00:02:25.120 happens to be the exact same chip down 00:02:21.280 --> 00:02:27.520 to the maxed out 76 core GPU that's in 00:02:25.120 --> 00:02:33.280 our new Mac Studio. The only difference is that unlike our studio, which we set 00:02:30.080 --> 00:02:36.879 up with 128 gigs of RAM, our Mac Pro is 00:02:33.280 --> 00:02:40.720 equipped with the maximum 192 GB of 00:02:36.879 --> 00:02:43.599 unified memory, which sounds like a lot 00:02:40.720 --> 00:02:49.040 because it is, but you've got to consider the customer here. One of the 00:02:45.920 --> 00:02:51.519 biggest drawbacks to the Intel Mac Pros 00:02:49.040 --> 00:02:59.360 was that some CPU configurations were limited to only 768 00:02:55.280 --> 00:03:03.519 GB of system memory, which again sounds 00:02:59.360 --> 00:03:05.840 like a lot because it is, but was also a 00:03:03.519 --> 00:03:11.200 legitimate reason for some professional users to spring for the higherend chips 00:03:08.400 --> 00:03:15.360 that could address twice as much. So what I'm trying to say is that when it 00:03:13.519 --> 00:03:22.800 comes to folks who are dealing with complex simulations, machine learning or 00:03:18.720 --> 00:03:27.280 any large data set, Apple no longer has 00:03:22.800 --> 00:03:30.159 any option for them at any price. Now, 00:03:27.280 --> 00:03:35.120 this smaller memory pool does have the benefit of being unified, meaning that 00:03:32.159 --> 00:03:41.280 Apple's GPU can address more memory than any PCGU, even ones that cost as much as 00:03:38.480 --> 00:03:46.720 this entire machine. But we are talking about some pretty specialized workloads 00:03:43.760 --> 00:03:51.760 here that what would benefit from a ton of GPU memory that comes at the direct 00:03:49.599 --> 00:03:57.920 cost of having basically no system memory. So, we're finding ourselves 00:03:54.640 --> 00:04:00.640 asking, if the system configuration is 00:03:57.920 --> 00:04:06.400 identical to the Studio and in some ways worse than the old Intel model, what is 00:04:03.200 --> 00:04:09.920 the point of the new Mac Pro? What is 00:04:06.400 --> 00:04:12.480 all this cooling for? We can answer that 00:04:09.920 --> 00:04:17.680 with benchmarks. A quick note before we begin. Apple's product page pits the new 00:04:14.959 --> 00:04:23.840 Mac Pro against the previous gen, both baseline and fully kitted out, which is 00:04:20.880 --> 00:04:29.600 a 4-year-old machine that started for $1,000 less than this one. But credit to 00:04:27.280 --> 00:04:33.840 Apple, it's still a far better frame of reference than their studio comparisons 00:04:31.360 --> 00:04:38.400 were. Now, we don't have either a base model or a fully kitted out Intel Mac 00:04:36.080 --> 00:04:44.000 Pro, so our testing is going to focus on current gen hardware, including a PC 00:04:40.720 --> 00:04:46.320 bench with a Core i9 13900 K and an RTX 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:53.199 4090. Starting with Octane, the Mac Studio is exactly as fast as the Mac Pro 00:04:49.520 --> 00:04:55.440 and costs $3,000 less. Not a great 00:04:53.199 --> 00:05:00.400 start. And Red Shift doesn't give us much to celebrate unless you consider 1 00:04:57.759 --> 00:05:04.560 second a massive win over a machine that is already substantially more expensive 00:05:02.320 --> 00:05:10.160 than the PC bench that is obliterating it. Blender 2 shows the Mac Pro's GPU 00:05:07.919 --> 00:05:15.680 pushing mostly the same performance on lighter renders, but Gooseberry sees an 00:05:13.280 --> 00:05:21.360 8-second gap between the two machines, suggesting that extended GPU loads could 00:05:19.199 --> 00:05:24.720 benefit from the extra cooling at its disposal. I mean, [music] they don't 00:05:23.039 --> 00:05:28.800 benefit enough to justify Apple's refusal to allow their users to install 00:05:26.720 --> 00:05:34.960 more powerful accelerators like the RTX 4090, cuz our PC bench at a lower price 00:05:32.639 --> 00:05:40.400 manages to beat both of them. In our mixed 4K 8K HDR timeline in Da Vinci 00:05:38.160 --> 00:05:44.320 Resolve, we ran into that same bug that cropped up in our Mac Studio review that 00:05:42.720 --> 00:05:48.960 prevents us from comparing these two units. But what we can at least do here 00:05:46.400 --> 00:05:53.440 is see the performance that the M2 Ultra is supposed to have, regardless of which 00:05:51.280 --> 00:05:57.440 machine it's installed in. Internally, we've investigated this bug a fair bit, 00:05:55.280 --> 00:06:01.680 and our best guess right now is that whatever heristics Apple is using to 00:05:59.440 --> 00:06:06.000 determine power states and fan speeds is preventing our studio from achieving max 00:06:03.840 --> 00:06:09.840 performance. The SSDs are nearly identical between the two machines, with 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:13.199 both of them dramatically outperforming the encoding speed, meaning that they 00:06:11.440 --> 00:06:17.680 will never be a bottleneck. [music] We did discover though the Mac Pro's SSD 00:06:15.360 --> 00:06:23.680 seems to have a minor advantage in 4K reads. So, point Mac Pro. And another 00:06:21.680 --> 00:06:28.160 point for the Mac Pro is in our Chromium compile where it shaved just over two 00:06:26.080 --> 00:06:32.639 minutes off of the Mac Studios time, which sounds really impressive until you 00:06:30.639 --> 00:06:38.560 realize that that works out to about a 4% performance improvement. But hey, it 00:06:36.160 --> 00:06:42.639 does at least show again that the additional cooling may be making a 00:06:40.720 --> 00:06:46.720 difference. When we move to synthetics, however, everything kind of falls apart 00:06:44.560 --> 00:06:51.039 again. Performance test has the Pro and the Studio at about the same performance 00:06:48.720 --> 00:06:56.800 level, and Geekbench gives the Pro only a 1 to 2% lead in the GPU and CPU tests, 00:06:54.800 --> 00:07:01.280 respectively. Cinebench surprisingly shows the Pro gain about a 7% lead over 00:06:59.360 --> 00:07:05.840 the Studio, which is especially odd considering the renderer that R23 uses 00:07:03.599 --> 00:07:10.800 is still Intel optimized. But hey, it's something. And something else is 00:07:08.319 --> 00:07:15.680 Blender's CPU renderer, which might not be super relevant to most people, but 00:07:13.199 --> 00:07:20.560 here is one more synthetic test that sees real gains over the Mac Studio with 00:07:18.160 --> 00:07:25.759 performance more closely matching the PC bench in some scenes. Perhaps the pros 00:07:23.360 --> 00:07:30.000 CPU cores are able to more aggressively turbo. Or maybe the massive cooler is 00:07:28.479 --> 00:07:35.440 preventing the system from throttling when the studio otherwise would. To test 00:07:32.720 --> 00:07:42.000 that theory, we set up our combined CPU and GPU stress test and ran it at room 00:07:38.080 --> 00:07:44.400 temperature where oh, lookie here. While 00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:49.360 the GPU clocks are roughly the same throughout the run between our two Macs, 00:07:46.880 --> 00:07:56.240 it seems that the Mac Studio allows its CPU clocks to drop down before the fans 00:07:53.759 --> 00:08:00.479 even get a chance to fully ramp up. That throttle point is visible right here 00:07:58.319 --> 00:08:05.199 when we look at the temperatures. For comparison, here's the more gradual ramp 00:08:02.720 --> 00:08:10.080 on the Mac Pro without the throttling hump. Curiously though, the fans didn't 00:08:07.759 --> 00:08:15.360 kick in for either system until about the 4minute mark of this load. So, the 00:08:13.120 --> 00:08:20.960 Mac Pro's ample cooling system seems to be almost purely for show. And given 00:08:19.120 --> 00:08:25.759 that at room temperature, the Mac Studios fans never approach their 00:08:22.879 --> 00:08:30.400 maximum 3500 RPM, it's pretty clear that with an aggressive fan curve, a Mac 00:08:28.080 --> 00:08:35.279 Studio owner should be able to reach the same level of performance as a Mac Pro 00:08:32.880 --> 00:08:41.120 owner. [music] There's no additional special sauce in the silicon. And all 00:08:37.680 --> 00:08:42.800 while saving enough to buy 150 of the 00:08:41.120 --> 00:08:47.040 new mystery water bottles at ltstore.com. 00:08:44.959 --> 00:08:51.839 As expected, then lowering our ambient temperature to 10° yielded no change in 00:08:49.839 --> 00:08:59.120 performance, and the Mac Pro's fans barely spun. And at 35°, same story, 00:08:55.680 --> 00:09:01.440 except the fans finally broke 1,000 RPM, 00:08:59.120 --> 00:09:08.720 making the Mac Pro the perfect machine for running heavy loads super quietly in 00:09:05.760 --> 00:09:13.519 a really hot environment. Sort of. Actually, I'm not quite sure 00:09:11.200 --> 00:09:18.480 how this works given their nearly identical performance, but the smaller 00:09:15.920 --> 00:09:22.240 studio draws just a third as much power at idle, meaning that the Pro will 00:09:20.480 --> 00:09:29.120 actually kick more heat out into your room. And the Pro also reaches a higher 00:09:25.440 --> 00:09:31.440 peak power consumption at 356 W. How 00:09:29.120 --> 00:09:36.080 much of this extra draw is from the SOC versus the, you know, extra boards and 00:09:33.760 --> 00:09:40.560 fans? We can't say that for sure. But what we can say for sure is that both 00:09:38.480 --> 00:09:46.399 machines are substantially less power hungry than our PC. Both at idle and at 00:09:43.600 --> 00:09:52.800 full bore. The Core i9 13900K and the RTX490 alone can draw upwards of 600 to 00:09:50.480 --> 00:09:57.839 700 watts when both of them are running full tilt. So the Studio offers the same 00:09:55.600 --> 00:10:02.560 performance with a smaller footprint and even less power draw. Surely there must 00:10:00.880 --> 00:10:11.680 be something the Mac Pro does that the Mac Studio can't, right? Ah, cracking 00:10:07.200 --> 00:10:14.800 open the chassis reveals a lot. A lot of 00:10:11.680 --> 00:10:17.760 empty space. That is the Intel Mac Pro 00:10:14.800 --> 00:10:22.000 had eight PCI Express Gen 3 slots, usually with some expansion cards in 00:10:19.680 --> 00:10:27.680 them, while the M2 model features a total of seven PCI Express Gen 4 slots, 00:10:25.600 --> 00:10:33.600 which sounds like not much of a downgrade, but it's more than you would 00:10:30.720 --> 00:10:39.279 think. While six of the slots are full length, only the bottom two are wired up 00:10:36.480 --> 00:10:43.839 for the full 16 lanes with the next four limited to half the total bandwidth at 00:10:41.519 --> 00:10:48.800 eight lanes and the slot that's normally occupied by the Apple IO card haved 00:10:46.160 --> 00:10:51.920 again to a mere four lanes. Meaning that should you choose to use one of your 00:10:50.320 --> 00:10:56.079 Thunderbolt ports as a DisplayPort output and rip that card out and replace 00:10:54.320 --> 00:11:01.040 it with something else, your options would be a little limited. Well, more 00:10:59.360 --> 00:11:05.200 limited. Um, we're going to get to that later. First, on the subject of 00:11:03.120 --> 00:11:08.880 Thunderbolt ports, you might think that you could remove that card, too, and 00:11:07.040 --> 00:11:13.680 maybe get another internal expansion slot, but you can't. The design is 00:11:11.040 --> 00:11:17.760 proprietary. There's no key like a PCI Express slot would have, and the power 00:11:15.839 --> 00:11:22.160 is supplied on the Edge card connector in a shrunk down interpretation of 00:11:19.839 --> 00:11:25.680 Apple's one-off proprietary MPX connector for graphics cards. This 00:11:24.079 --> 00:11:29.360 enables sufficient power delivery without the use of internal cables. It 00:11:27.519 --> 00:11:33.839 really does look pretty on the inside. Now, because MPX is officially gone now, 00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:38.800 these three miniature cable connections then are the only way to get a total of 00:11:36.399 --> 00:11:42.640 300 W of additional power if you need them for your expansion cards. Not all 00:11:40.640 --> 00:11:47.200 expansion cards need that, of course, especially if you're not installing any 00:11:44.240 --> 00:11:52.399 GPUs, but this arrangement means that expansion cards like the 4 bay MPX hard 00:11:50.160 --> 00:11:56.640 drive module that Promise used to sell are no longer compatible with the new 00:11:54.720 --> 00:12:00.480 version of the Mac Pro. That leaves hard drive expansion to just the upper 00:11:58.480 --> 00:12:04.399 chamber where a sold separately two drive bay can be fitted that makes use 00:12:02.480 --> 00:12:08.959 of the connectors just above the IO cards. Good gravy is there ever a lot of 00:12:07.200 --> 00:12:14.000 empty space in here. Turning the computer around reveals that the 00:12:10.880 --> 00:12:16.079 shrouded RAM slots are actually still 00:12:14.000 --> 00:12:22.880 here from the previous model, complete with easy open locks, except 00:12:19.519 --> 00:12:26.639 instead of RAM we get some heat sinks. 00:12:22.880 --> 00:12:31.920 Bummer. But wait. Ooh, that's where the 00:12:26.639 --> 00:12:34.399 SSD slots are now. All two of them. But 00:12:31.920 --> 00:12:39.760 unlike the SSDs used for the Mac Studio, which are bare flash modules, Apple does 00:12:37.440 --> 00:12:45.519 in fact still allow users to upgrade these. So that's one major advantage 00:12:43.279 --> 00:12:48.480 over the Studio. That is assuming that you don't just kit out your studio from 00:12:47.120 --> 00:12:52.639 the factory with all the money you saved by not being a chump and buying a Mac 00:12:50.560 --> 00:12:57.839 Pro. The other major advantage is back with those PCI Express slots. So, let's 00:12:55.600 --> 00:13:02.399 talk a little bit about what we got working in here. To get the obvious out 00:12:59.680 --> 00:13:07.839 of the way first, the Radeon 5700 XT that did work fine in an Intel Mac Pro 00:13:05.279 --> 00:13:12.240 was a no-go here. It wouldn't output anything. And while it is detected in 00:13:10.399 --> 00:13:17.040 macOS, actually, which is farther than I expected to get, it shows that it 00:13:14.720 --> 00:13:21.680 doesn't have a driver. Of course, that is what Apple said would happen. They no 00:13:19.200 --> 00:13:26.959 longer offer support for GPUs, even for AMD ones. So, here's all the other cards 00:13:24.560 --> 00:13:31.760 we tested, and we did find some surprises. What wasn't surprising is the 00:13:29.680 --> 00:13:37.839 biggest issue by far is driver [music] support. Companies like Blackmagic have 00:13:34.800 --> 00:13:40.240 large professional Mac user bases, and 00:13:37.839 --> 00:13:45.360 their products worked without much ado, but others like Elgato and Aver Media 00:13:43.200 --> 00:13:49.894 perhaps rightly feel that there's a larger Mac market for external capture 00:13:47.920 --> 00:13:55.200 dongles than there is for internal [music] cards. It was surprising to see 00:13:52.399 --> 00:13:59.600 the Melanox 100 gig Ethernet card that we grabbed just pick up and run just 00:13:57.760 --> 00:14:03.279 like that. I mean, I would have half expected Apple to remove the driver 00:14:01.279 --> 00:14:08.320 despite NVIDIA who acquired Melanox in 2019. [music] Unsurprisingly then, our 00:14:05.440 --> 00:14:13.199 Apex Storage X21 SSD carrier card didn't work in fairly spectacular fashion. But 00:14:11.279 --> 00:14:16.800 then along came the Honeybadger. Honeybadger don't give a crap. 00:14:14.880 --> 00:14:22.639 Honeybadger does what it wants and it wants to work. Not only did Liquids M.2 00:14:20.399 --> 00:14:26.800 2 card managed to make the SSDs show up in system information. But we were even 00:14:24.959 --> 00:14:31.600 able to use disk utility to create a RAID array on it. Though for some reason 00:14:29.680 --> 00:14:38.365 known only to Apple, they are registered as external drives. I mean, hey, at 00:14:34.800 --> 00:14:39.040 least we can install SSDs in the slots. 00:14:38.365 --> 00:14:45.120 [laughter] Yay. And so between this and the 100 gig 00:14:42.320 --> 00:14:48.800 nick, you know, if the dual onboard 10 gig nicks are not enough for some 00:14:46.800 --> 00:14:54.399 reason, uh we might have found some of the only expansion cards that really 00:14:51.600 --> 00:14:57.839 make more sense inside the Mac Pro than in one of the six Thunderbolt enclosures 00:14:56.480 --> 00:15:02.320 that you could buy for the difference in price and install your expansion cards 00:14:59.760 --> 00:15:07.519 in with the Mac Studio. Oh, there is another card that pros might want to 00:15:03.839 --> 00:15:09.519 use. Avid's HDX. It's $500 and we have 00:15:07.519 --> 00:15:14.000 no use for it, so we didn't buy one. But apparently a driver does exist for these 00:15:11.519 --> 00:15:17.680 cards and it does work on Apple Silicon. It just requires you to relax the 00:15:15.839 --> 00:15:23.680 startup security settings on your Mac, which should be fine, but isn't ideal. 00:15:21.920 --> 00:15:28.480 The more I look at this thing, then the more I'm coming to appreciate the Mac 00:15:25.920 --> 00:15:32.240 Studio, I guess. As much as we ragged on that machine for not living up to 00:15:30.079 --> 00:15:37.279 Apple's hype and for not liking the way that they marketed it, it's safe to say 00:15:34.320 --> 00:15:42.399 that it's more than enough computer for 90% of the people who were looking for a 00:15:39.279 --> 00:15:46.240 Mac Pro. And hey, at least it doesn't 00:15:42.399 --> 00:15:48.880 cost another $3,000 only to do 00:15:46.240 --> 00:15:52.320 almost nothing to address the other 10% of users. 00:15:50.639 --> 00:15:57.199 I don't know what to say other than that this thing is an abject failure and an 00:15:55.040 --> 00:16:03.839 absolute slap in the face to Apple's professional users yet again. Um, does 00:16:02.079 --> 00:16:07.920 anyone want to buy a lightly used M2 Ultra Mac Pro that uh got scratched 00:16:06.639 --> 00:16:12.639 while we were sliding it out of the thermal chamber? No. If you guys enjoyed 00:16:10.720 --> 00:16:19.920 this video, go check out our review of the Mac Studio for our critique of the 00:16:15.440 --> 00:16:19.920 somehow better of the two machines.