MAC Pro does not get external GPU support for PCIe ports

[10:02 Sat,17.June 2023 by Rudi Schmidts]

Now it&s official. Heise has received an official statement from Apple regarding future support for PCIe graphics cards. And it&s clear: There simply won&t be any.

Like all previous Mac Pros, the new model has many slots for PCIe expansion. But while these used to be used in Mac Pros (as well as still in virtually all typical, PC-based workstations) primarily for massive GPU computing power, this will no longer be possible with the new Mac Pros.

We had the background to this

already explained, but we had hoped until the end that Apple would leave a door open for power users here.

According to Heise, this has now been

definitely closed.
According to the hardware engineering manager John Ternus, they don&t want to support graphics cards from other chip manufacturers, because they deliberately built and optimized the Apple Silicon architecture with a shared memory for CPU + GPU. It is not clear how another graphics processor should be integrated sensibly.

This means that 27 TFlops with a maximum of 192 GB unified RAM at 800 MB/s is the maximum computing power of a current Mac Pro. More won&t be available until further notice. And those who don&t need PCIe otherwise will also find this performance in the new Mac Studio model.

Personally, we find it a shame that Apple does not allow for more GPU power here, especially since it can be used quite powerfully not only for 3D modeling but also for real-time video editing. However, Apple does not seem to be able to serve these pro markets with its highly integrated Apple Silicon for the time being. Even though the fat case might suggest otherwise.

more infos at bei www.heise.de

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