New Mac Pro M2 Ultra announced. PCIe Gen 4. Looks like no external gpu but slots for days.
The best part is the Unified Memory which means you can have a GPU with essential the full amount of RAM of system. Linux, biggest GPU is 48GB.
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So, gen 4 PCIe for non external GPU = flash HDD storage expandability? Capture cards? Iām really curious how this will play out in flame world, since I was holding out on either getting a Studio or Pro till after WWDCā¦ Aside from increased proc speed and ram, what would be the sell of a pro vs. a studio?
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Mac Pro if you need cards. Studio if you donāt.
Wow. Under $12k fully loaded Mac Pro. Less than Intel for sure.
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Super aggressive pricing. Letās see the benchmarks, but this could be a huge contender against x64 architecture for Flame.
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Iām looking forward to hearing about color accuracy for the new Vision Pro. Virtual sessions on a ācinema screenā could be rad.
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Having the virtual screen may just be enough to make me switch to macOS. Makes my escape to Hawaii much easier logistically. Hauling a 42 inch 5K screen around isnāt easy.
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Very curious as well. Those slots have auxiliary power available, so Iām hoping Apple and Nvidia can get over whatever their issue is. I mean, I know it isnāt going to happen but it would be nice to have a variety of GPU compute available on the Mac again.
Does any PCI card that isnāt a GPU require auxiliary power?
I highly doubt there will ever be a 3rd party GPU on macOS again. Apple wants full vertical integration and control. They kinda touched on in the Keynote, but you can use the full United Memory for GPU too. So instead of being limited to 48GB on the top Nvidia Quadro card, you can effectively have an almost 192GB GPU of Apple Silicon. For Flame this is very important.
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Yeah I donāt see Apple and Nvidia making amends. Plus apple owns the whole shebang now, which is def their style. And I mean hello. Those Apple Silicon Macs are fly.
a āFlame specā mac Pro is cheaper than a mac studio by quiet a big margin to be fair, all comes down to how much thunderbolt storage costs, if you dont need this then its a different story.
Prices in USD
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I was all prepared to hate on the Vision Pro but I kinda want one. Of course, Iāve been excited about VR/AR in the past and always found the experience far from engaging. Also not looking forward to the return of shooting/comping/delivering latlongs. Not sure if that will be a thing with this though. The video doesnāt really feature 360 content. I wonder if Apple TV is producing a 360 show.
BTW, anyone see Paul Schraderās The Card Counter? Best use of a 360 camera in a film 
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Actually, coincidentally, watched it again last night! And yes, best use of 360 camera ever. Schraderās a genius
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Damn. Thatās super cheap for flame hardware upgrade compared to years past.
Assuming I could just use my nvme array from current Mac Proā¦
Wish it took nvidia but happy not to buy a gfx card.
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Itāll be interesting to see what the performance is like. I like the power consumption and noise level alreadyā¦
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Ordered a MacStudio today. Will arrive end of July. Expect test results early August.
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So, deciding between a Studio and a Proā¦ I think it really comes down to what type of internal RAID options might be available for the Pro, since max proc, RAM, and internal SSD can be maxed out identically between the two. Racking a Pro would be pretty sweet, and tidy/self-contained, if there are internal PCI RAIDs available for it for a framestore. Otherwise, I think Studio all the way. Does anyone know if there are internal RAID options for the Pro that are flame-worthy?
Yup. Look for any NVME RAID cards like Sonnet, Highpoint. Most of the 4 banger cards are like $400 plus Samsung Pro 970s are dirt cheap right now. So, for right around $1,000 you can get 8TB of shit hot 10GBs+ storage.
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Edit: Does Flame use MoltenVK for Metal support? When Derivative TouchDesigner switched to MoltenVK the performance 
on Mac. I didnāt think Flame used Vulken but looking at docs maybe my assumptions are wrong.
TouchDesignerās graphics API is now Vulkan and uses MoltenVK, a portability project allowing Vulkan to be used on top of Appleās Metal framework
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Well OpenGL is deprecated, and probably being removed in the near future. It seems ADSK is committed to Flame on Mac. So.