Apple’s new Mac Pro, now featuring M2 Ultra, combines the unprecedented performance of Apple’s most powerful chip with the versatility of PCIe expansion. Mac Pro is up to 3x faster than the previous-generation Intel-based model. Featuring up to 192GB of unified memory, the Mac Pro has far more memory than the most advanced workstation graphics cards, taking on demanding workloads other systems can’t even process.
The new Mac Pro completes the Mac transition to Apple silicon and, together with the rest of Apple’s pro systems, gives users the most powerful and capable lineup of pro products Apple has ever offered.
The Mac Pro introduced in 2023 has seven PCIe slots:
• Two double-wide full length x16 gen4 slots
• Two double-wide full length x8 gen4 slots
• Two single-wide full length x8 gen4 slots
• One single-wide half length x4 gen3 slot preconfigured with the Apple Thunderbolt I/O card
The Apple Thunderbolt I/O card has six Thunderbolt 4 ports and is installed in its own dedicated slot.
Apple Thunderbolt I/O card
Mac Pro comes preinstalled with the Apple Thunderbolt I/O card in slot 7, which has a 3.5mm headphone jack with support for high-impedence headphones, two HDMI ports, and two USB-A ports. The Apple I/O card can’t be installed in another slot, but it can be removed to allow for installation of another half-length, x4 PCIe card instead.
Note: The Apple I/O card included with Mac Pro (2019) is not compatible with Mac Pro (2023).
Graphics cards
Mac Pro is powered by the M2 Ultra chip which features a GPU configurable with up to 76 cores. The GPU is integrated into the M2 Ultra chip and doesn’t support additional graphics processors such as PCIe graphics cards or MPX modules. You can configure the number of GPU cores in your Mac Pro when you purchase it.
Other third-party PCIe cards
You can install many different PCIe cards in your Mac Pro, such as fibre channel cards, fiber networking cards, video and audio I/O cards, storage cards, and ethernet cards. After you install a PCIe card, check with the card’s manufacturer to see if you need to install a driver in macOS to enable full functionality of your card.
Note: PCI cards that use 32-bit Option ROMs aren’t compatible with your Mac Pro.
Auxiliary power
The PCIe slots on your Mac Pro each provide up to 75W of power. Mac Pro also provides up to 300W of AUX power through two 6-pin (75W each) and one 8-pin (150W) connectors.
MacDailyNews Note: If your PCIe card requires additional power, use the Belkin Aux Power Cable.
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[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
The problem is not that it has six open PCIe Gen 4 slots (four 8 lane and two 16 lane). It’s that the CPU does not support 64 lanes actively using Gen 4 speeds. If you put a card in that maxes out one of the two 16 lane slots then the other five slots are severely crippled.
That is beside the fact that the new Mac Pro cannot utilize the very top end AMD and Nvidia GPUs, which for some needs provide a far, far better capability than the M2 Ultra (any variant) ever will.
Max 150 power through the 8 pin output of the Mac Pro? What about those non GPU PCIe cards that require > 300 W? (There’s even one out there that requires 750 W.) Obviously, the new Mac Pro was not designed to support any very high end cards.
Apple has intentionally limited the new Mac Pro. As an Apple user since ’78 and Mac purchaser and user since ’84, I’m very disappointed in the new Mac Pro. I’ll definitely skip this generation for personal and work — as I did with the trash can Mac Pro. I’ll keep this 2019 beefed up Mac Pro for a while longer and swap out PCIe cards as I need to do so even though they’re only Gen 3. I’ll wait to see what the next generation brings (if it shows up at all).
This is apple milking their customers with a façade of a desktop. Not allowing support for multiple GPUs shows they are more focused on controlling what end users can do than giving them the choice of what they want to do. We know AMD has released drivers that support metal.
Sure network cards will be used by some people but GPUs is what must of us want. From walled garden to handcuff holding cell.
And woke, too…
Apple moved to it’s own Silicon for many reasons that have been better documented elsewhere, but it was mostly due to being limited by the Intel chips inside them. It was always a pain that if you wanted the best performing Macbook Pro, you had to get the 15 (and later 16) inch models. The 13 inch, which many of us preferred from a size standpoint, was never as powerful.
The Mac Studio now fills the needs of most professionals. I just took delivery of a new M2Max model myself and it is amazing. For 4k and 8k video work it just powers through things, far faster at rendering using Davinci Resolve than what was my very high end editing PC.
So no, they are not focused on “controlling what end users can do”. What they are doing is making a product that works for the vast majority of their customers. Yes, the new Mac Pro is lame in many ways. But it’s a niche product and I’m happy to have a crazy powerful video editing machine in the same footprint as a Mac Mini.
This product most likely exists in this form factor to get rid of the thousands of Mac pro chassis in inventory. Apple is so greedy they might as well put an iPad Pro inside the case.
The Mac Pro shouldn’t be called the Mac Pro… only 192GB RAM, not ECC either… no GPU support…
Is Apple afraid people might realize that the GPU in their chips is just… average?
The only thing Apple silicon beats the competitors on is performance per watt.
Aside from CPU, a previous gen Intel Mac Pro with a 6950XT or three would probably still be better in many ways