M2 Pro and M2 Max

[Jimmyjames]

On a side note I'm resisting to the urge to go and check on the feedback to M2 Pro and M2 Max over at 'the other place'.

I'm gonna leave it to thicker skinned folks like leman to try and bring some balance of reason to the Apple silicon forum over there....


"But it still doesn't run crysis as fast as my intel DinoLake chip with neon blue lights....

Anybody willing to have a game of fishmongers chess benchmark where my rtx4090 spanks the new M2 Max.

Intel never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around (with AMD) and desert you"

It’s gonna be a fiasco. Max tech already have a video up about the new macs…with no confirmed benchmarks or more importantly, real world use.

Shambles.

 

[Colstan]

I'm shocked - literally shocked at just how crappy the trade in allowance is from Apple.

The trade in program from Apple has never been particularly good, and it's gotten even worse in the past couple of years.

On a side note I'm resisting to the urge to go and check on the feedback to M2 Pro and M2 Max over at 'the other place'.

It's exactly what you would expect. The spec bumps aren't enough to compete, they're too expensive, not powerful enough, don't have the right features, the innards can't be upgraded. It's the same old, tired response: "I built a Windows PC for cheaper, it runs games so much faster, and my anime-themed case looks so much cooler! I don't know why anyone would buy a MAC!" Others are declaring that Apple Silicon has failed and it's time to switch the Mac to AMD Ryzen.

Also, even though the next Mac Pro wasn't announced, nor even mentioned, there's already a renewed crisis about that. There are some folks who are convinced that the apparent delay of the Apple Silicon version is a sign that Apple is going to release another Xeon model to "make pros happy" and they are completely serious about that assertion. Nothing concrete has been announced, yet many are already going through the stages of grief, starting with denial. If today's announcement was a display of tumult over at the other place, then the announcement of the real Apple Silicon Mac Pro is going to be like a nuclear bomb going off.

 

[Jimmyjames]

The trade in program from Apple has never been particularly good, and it's gotten even worse in the past couple of years.

It's exactly what you would expect. The spec bumps aren't enough to compete, they're too expensive, not powerful enough, don't have the right features, the innards can't be upgraded. It's the same old, tired response: "I built a Windows PC for cheaper, it runs games so much faster, and my anime-themed case looks so much cooler! I don't know why anyone would buy a MAC!" Others are declaring that Apple Silicon has failed and it's time to switch the Mac to AMD Ryzen.

Also, even though the next Mac Pro wasn't announced, nor even mentioned, there's already a renewed crisis about that. There are some folks who are convinced that the apparent delay of the Apple Silicon version is a sign that Apple is going to release another Xeon model to "make pros happy" and they are completely serious about that assertion. Nothing concrete has been announced, yet many are already going through the stages of grief, starting with denial. If today's announcement was a display of tumult over at the other place, then the announcement of the real Apple Silicon Mac Pro is going to be like a nuclear bomb going off.

Most galling of all, apart from the usual suspects, the newish “moderator emeritus” comes in with some bizarre opinions

 

[Cmaier]

I had always had my eye on the base model Mac Studio featuring the Max SoC, while ticking the box for the upgraded GPU cores for an additional $200. Assuming this general cadence with Apple Silicon holds in the future, then I'll likely be getting an M3 or M4 generation of such a model. That's assuming that Apple regularly updates most of the Mac line with current generation chips. There's some chatter that the iMac won't be getting the M2, and jump straight to the M3. If Apple doesn't release an "Extreme" version for the upcoming Mac Pro, then I could see them keeping the Mac Studio on the M1 generation, so that marketing can concentrate on the M2 Ultra being only featured within the Apple Silicon Mac Pro.

The M2 Pro Mac mini is appealing as a concept, but the pricing pushes those on a budget toward the base model, while the Mac Studio is more attractive for performance desktop users.

My current 2018 Mac mini is now feeling alone, with the last of its brethren having finally met the executioner's axe. Now we wait for the Apple Silicon Mac Pro, while the old Intel model is left forlornly wondering when its turn at the gallows shall arrive. If Gurman is correct, then we can expect it in March, but I suppose it could arrive as late as WWDC. If nothing else, it will be good to finally have the transition complete, and most of the speculation will then become centered around the future of the M-series, rather than exotic solutions for the Mac Pro.

I have been using my old MBP 15” (from 2016) as a server for video at home, but it needs a new battery and I can’t upgrade the OS (which means I can’t use advanced data protection unless I log out of my icloud, which would be fine, except you ALSO can’t even use your iTunes account)…. Anyway, I was thinking of getting a mini to replace it (it can be headless once I set it up, since i just vnc into it when I need to).

But then I flip-flop and think “i should get an M2 MBA for my kid, and use her old M1 MBA as the server…”

Then I think “I’ve got plumbers at the house right now who gave me a $3000 estimate, so maybe I should just turn off advanced data protection.”

That’s where I’ve landed.

 

[Cmaier]

The trade in program from Apple has never been particularly good, and it's gotten even worse in the past couple of years.

It's exactly what you would expect. The spec bumps aren't enough to compete, they're too expensive, not powerful enough, don't have the right features, the innards can't be upgraded. It's the same old, tired response: "I built a Windows PC for cheaper, it runs games so much faster, and my anime-themed case looks so much cooler! I don't know why anyone would buy a MAC!" Others are declaring that Apple Silicon has failed and it's time to switch the Mac to AMD Ryzen.

Also, even though the next Mac Pro wasn't announced, nor even mentioned, there's already a renewed crisis about that. There are some folks who are convinced that the apparent delay of the Apple Silicon version is a sign that Apple is going to release another Xeon model to "make pros happy" and they are completely serious about that assertion. Nothing concrete has been announced, yet many are already going through the stages of grief, starting with denial. If today's announcement was a display of tumult over at the other place, then the announcement of the real Apple Silicon Mac Pro is going to be like a nuclear bomb going off.

On the pro, i wouldn’t die of surprise if the solution was that the processor/RAM is on a daughterboard (so you can swap for new processors with more RAM), and maybe you can have more than one.

I mean, I wouldn’t bet on that, but maybe if someone gave me 30:1 odds i might. Given the thermal capacity of that case and what we know of M2 Max, and the fact that the Mac Pro needs a reason to exist, it makes at least a little theoretical sense (if they can’t get Ultra to work for whatever reason).

As for today’s announcements, they are pretty much square in the middle of what you’d expect Apple to have done. The products are clearly about 6 months later than Apple originally expected, but there’s no way to know why. Could be:

1) technical problems, now overcome
2) manpower problems caused by the M2 Pro not being a chopped M2 Max (unlikely)
3) supply chain issues
4) there was simply no reason to put it out in the market yet because the old machines were still selling great and there wasn’t any competition
5) TSMC N3 was delayed a bit, and Apple wanted to space out the time gaps so that M1->M2 is about the same as M2->M3, instead of a large gap between M2 and M3
6) Some other issue arose

The performance differential between M2 and M1 is very good - if Intel had come anywhere close to 20% year-over-year for the last decade, we’d be in a different place right now.

 

[Colstan]

Most galling of all, apart from the usual suspects, the newish “moderator emeritus” comes in with some bizarre opinions

His most remarkable statement was that he does not and has never seen any sign of trolling behavior on the part of PC partisans. I had tried to give the mods over there the benefit of the doubt; that they were just overwhelmed and couldn't keep track of the various nuances involved with the hardcore PC crowd's intentionally disruptive tactics, but he simply states that all of the posts that he has witnessed have been entirely respectful, and that those who claim otherwise are entirely in the wrong. There are PC users that are so dedicated to their platform that it becomes a religious quest, they are offended by the success of Apple Silicon, then seek out ways to sow discord among the Mac heretics, meanwhile the mods seem to be completely oblivious to what is going on, to the point of actively protecting the zealot cohort. This would go a long way to explain how all of the negativity over there developed, not just today, but for many years now.

 

[Cmaier]

I feel a great disturbance in the force, as if a million Cinebench runs were being put forward as a means of discrediting Apple Silicon!

I"m braced.

Did anyone run stockfish yet?

 

[dada_dave]

Did anyone run stockfish yet?

To be fair, at least it inspired that one poster who was actually a stockfish developer, and quite reasonable/level-headed, to dig in and make additional optimizations to the code along with an actual technical discussion about the issues at play. But yeah that original poster and some of the others too, Eoof.

 

[dada_dave]

His most remarkable statement was that he does not and has never seen any sign of trolling behavior on the part of PC partisans. I had tried to give the mods over there the benefit of the doubt; that they were just overwhelmed and couldn't keep track of the various nuances involved with the hardcore PC crowd's intentionally disruptive tactics, but he simply states that all of the posts that he has witnessed have been entirely respectful, and that those who claim otherwise are entirely in the wrong. There are PC users that are so dedicated to their platform that it becomes a religious quest, they are offended by the success of Apple Silicon, then seek out ways to sow discord among the Mac heretics, meanwhile the mods seem to be completely oblivious to what is going on, to the point of actively protecting the zealot cohort. This would go a long way to explain how all of the negativity over there developed, not just today, but for many years now.

Yikes. What a statement, even MR had to ban a user who was posting PC rage bait constantly (and creating new avatars to do it).

Don’t get me wrong I’ve seen Mac users and iOS users do that too on PC/Android-centric forums, and it’s no more acceptable there. But to claim it doesn’t happen? Huh …

 

[Jimmyjames]

Did anyone run stockfish yet?

The top minds over at the other place are prepping their areas for this important work. Mi7chy is supervising. Stand by for irrelevant comments about openfoam and phoronix, with a micro-dissection of a screenshot revealing "jaggies" as proof that the M2 doesn't do 64x MSAA and therefore sucks.

 

[Colstan]

On the pro, i wouldn’t die of surprise if the solution was that the processor/RAM is on a daughterboard (so you can swap for new processors with more RAM), and maybe you can have more than one.

I mean, I wouldn’t bet on that, but maybe if someone gave me 30:1 odds i might. Given the thermal capacity of that case and what we know of M2 Max, and the fact that the Mac Pro needs a reason to exist, it makes at least a little theoretical sense (if they can’t get Ultra to work for whatever reason).

We've all been speculating about the Apple Silicon Mac Pro for many months now. I know you're not a betting man, so let's keep the odds simple. If you were to give your best prediction, based upon the limited information available to us, then what would you expect the next Mac Pro's specs to be? I get that there are a lot of interesting things that Apple could do, which is why the product is so fascinating, even though almost none of us are going to purchase one. But, instead of theorizing what Apple could do, what do you think they actually will do?

I'm not trying to put you on the spot or see if you have some super secret sources. Feel free to dodge the question if you don't feel comfortable with it, but I'm genuinely curious about your prediction for what will ultimately become the next Mac Pro.

 

[Jimmyjames]

His most remarkable statement was that he does not and has never seen any sign of trolling behavior on the part of PC partisans. I had tried to give the mods over there the benefit of the doubt; that they were just overwhelmed and couldn't keep track of the various nuances involved with the hardcore PC crowd's intentionally disruptive tactics, but he simply states that all of the posts that he has witnessed have been entirely respectful, and that those who claim otherwise are entirely in the wrong. There are PC users that are so dedicated to their platform that it becomes a religious quest, they are offended by the success of Apple Silicon, then seek out ways to sow discord among the Mac heretics, meanwhile the mods seem to be completely oblivious to what is going on, to the point of actively protecting the zealot cohort. This would go a long way to explain how all of the negativity over there developed, not just today, but for many years now.

More cynical minds might assume the mods are fine with that behavior because it drives traffic.

 

[Cmaier]

We've all been speculating about the Apple Silicon Mac Pro for many months now. I know you're not a betting man, so let's keep the odds simple. If you were to give your best prediction, based upon the limited information available to us, then what would you expect the next Mac Pro's specs to be? I get that there are a lot of interesting things that Apple could do, which is why the product is so fascinating, even though almost none of us are going to purchase one. But, instead of theorizing what Apple could do, what do you think they actually will do?

I'm not trying to put you on the spot or see if you have some super secret sources. Feel free to dodge the question if you don't feel comfortable with it, but I'm genuinely curious about your prediction for what will ultimately become the next Mac Pro.

I couldn’t even speculate. The purpose of the Mac Pro, as I understood it, was to be modular in the sense that you can add (more or less) arbitrary cards, storage, and RAM.

It always seemed doubtful to me that RAM was going to be modular with the M-series. I think there will be at least some card support, but I have no idea what cards will be allowed. Storage upgradeability, by itself, doesn’t seem to be a particularly good reason for Mac Pro to exist.

All of that lead me to suggest that it’s at least possible that the SoC will be be easily swappable, and a little less possible that you can install more than one.

As for the SoC, itself, i guess I would expect an Ultra. Yeah, there are rumors it won’t happen. But if it doesn’t happen, it becomes really suspect as to what the purpose of this thing is - if you don’t get massive modularity, at least a Mac Pro should offer massive performance.

 

[Citysnaps]

Even if a MacPro is limited in modular expandability (being able to swap in future SoCs would be a nice feature), a PCIe bus with a half dozen+ slots and a rack-mount option would be interesting as a foundation to build other products on.

 

[Cmaier]

Even if a MacPro is limited in modular expandability (being able to swap in future SoCs would be a nice feature), a PCIe bus with a half dozen+ slots and a rack-mount option would be interesting as a foundation to build other products on.

Sure. But what could you put on the PCI bus? Who is writing those drivers? And will Apple build PCI support in, or do its own thing and limit you to some new type of cards that it blesses? I think there will be slots, but i have no idea what you’ll be able to use them for.

 

[B01L]

Sure. But what could you put on the PCI bus? Who is writing those drivers? And will Apple build PCI support in, or do its own thing and limit you to some new type of cards that it blesses? I think there will be slots, but i have no idea what you’ll be able to use them for.

According to user "deconstruct60" over at the "Other Place", there are 50+ PCIe cards that work (when placed in a TB expansion chassis) with Apple silicon; covering things like storage, networking, video I/O, audio I/O & DSP, and more; I could see where the video I/O (especially the 8K variants) cards (wanting x8 lanes) and the storage (especially the RAID variants) cards (wanting x16 lanes) would need the bandwidth that real PCIe slots provide, as opposed to the watered down bandwidth of a TB chassis...?

And until we see what an ASi Mac Pro brings, I will continue to hope for first-party Apple silicon GPGPUs...? ;^p

 

[Cmaier]

I see stuff like this, and I realize that I need to do a ton more of my “napkin drawings" (the ones @Colstan likes) to set the record straight.

"When there are more transistors on the same size chip, the gap between transistors is smaller. This leads contributes to improvements in performance and efficiency." // https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/17/m2-pro-and-m2-max-performance/

 

[theorist9]

This is the first time Macs have offered 8k support. That seems significant. Looking forwards, do they have anything more than 8k TV's in mind? And looking backwards, while this is over HDMI, will it also be able to drive the old Dell 8k using 2x TB cables?

I'll be interested to hear what they do with the clock speeds on the CPU and GPU—whether they'll be the same as the M2's or (as the leaked GB CPU result suggests) higher on the Max and/or Pro.

 

[Cmaier]

According to user "deconstruct60" over at the "Other Place", there are 50+ PCIe cards that work (when placed in a TB expansion chassis) with Apple silicon; covering things like storage, networking, video I/O, audio I/O & DSP, and more; I could see where the video I/O (especially the 8K variants) cards (wanting x8 lanes) and the storage (especially the RAID variants) cards (wanting x16 lanes) would need the bandwidth that real PCIe slots provide, as opposed to the watered down bandwidth of a TB chassis...?

And until we see what an ASi Mac Pro brings, I will continue to hope for first-party Apple silicon GPGPUs...? ;^p

Sure, storage cards and the I/O make sense, and it’s good to know that there are a bunch that work out of the box. But what people want are GPUs, presumably, and just adding a few slots for storage and I/O doesn’t really give the Mac Pro a reason to exist that couldn’t more easily be served by TB expansion.

 

[Cmaier]

I see stuff like this, and I realize that I need to do a ton more of my “napkin drawings" (the ones @Colstan likes) to set the record straight.

"When there are more transistors on the same size chip, the gap between transistors is smaller. This leads contributes to improvements in performance and efficiency." // https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/17/m2-pro-and-m2-max-performance/

I mean, even the GEOMETRY is wrong. Just because it’s “the same size chip” doesn’t mean the gaps are smaller - the transistors can be smaller. (Even if both chips are on exactly the same node! Because transistors are seldom minimum-sized).

And reducing the “gap” can *increase* delay because of coupling effects. Ugh, this sort of writing just really annoys the crap out of me.