[jeroenhd]

If you buy anything labeled as "workstation", you're paying twice the price already.

The article describes the M2 being blown out of the water by a 4080 and a 13900KS. That's about $2000 + RAM, motherboard, and power supply. Plus you can use the built in GPU in your CPU for acceleration things like transcodes.

You can get a pre-built gaming PC with a 4090 for about $4000, that'll crush the M2 in compute if you use any kind of GPU acceleration.

Of course the M2 has some other advantages (the unified memory and macOS) and some other disadvantages (you're stuck with the amount of RAM you pick at checkout, macOS, you have to sacrifice system RAM for GPU RAM) so it all depends on your use case.

I think the M2 still reigns supreme for mobile devices, though AMD is getting closer and closer with their mobile chips, but if you've got a machine hooked into the wall you'll have to pay some pretty excessive electricity rates for the M2 to become competitive.

[DaiPlusPlus]

> If you buy anything labeled as "workstation", you're paying twice the price already.

The price of workstation-class machines also includes the cost of higher build-quality and stability, things like same-day support and service - at least the option for a long-term (5-6 year) warranty, and FRUs - you don't get that with consumer-grade computers - and those things matter when a machine is something you depend on professionally.

[sounds]

Your random acronym decrypter:

FRU: Field-Replaceable Unit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-replaceable_unit

What the poster means is that a "workstation" is designed with quickly swappable components, often not even needing to use any tools. Businesses may benefit from this.

While it doesn't necessarily mean the swappable components are standardized or easy to procure, they usually are. That's a separate item that "workstation" machines typically offer: longer availability of replacement parts.

[Nullabillity]

$4k will buy you a hell of a lot of troubleshooting time before "same-day service" actually wins out.

[xbar]

I agree with your take. My plugged into the wall machine is a 128GB 13900k 4090 system. My mobile machine is an Apple Silicon Macbook Pro. There are some tasks that are still better on the unified memory of the Macbook, but only a handful. There are many tasks that are more pleasant on the Macbook because of the absurd power efficiency (DAW, Final Cut Pro).

Both machines have a quality that I appreciate: they are never, ever slow.

[avidphantasm]

You’re forgetting the benefit of everything just working and never having to thinking about effing with drivers ever. To me, it’s priceless. Anything truly performance bound (CPU or GPU) is going to be done on HPC systems, not on a fake Windows “workstation”.

[rbanffy]

> If you buy anything labeled as "workstation", you're paying twice the price already.

We are not comparing MacPros to low-end desktops.

> You can get a pre-built gaming PC with a 4090 for about $4000, that'll crush the M2 in compute if you use any kind of GPU acceleration.

Yes, but the gaming PC will not as well built as the workstation-grade machine. And pretty much any GPU you can install on a gaming PC you can install on a MacPro - it's just that it won't be there out of the (Apple branded) box.

> you're stuck with the amount of RAM you pick at checkout

Sadly, this has been Apple for some time now - you buy the machine as it will be used for its whole intended lifetime. With the MacPro you can at least add internal storage and one or more GPU cards.

[goosedragons]

AFAIK the 2023 Mac Pro doesn't support PCIe GPUs for the same reason AS Macs don't support eGPUs. It has PCIe slots you can use for other things like capture cards or whatever but not GPUs.

RAM was something you could upgrade with the 2019 Mac Pro and something you could get a lot of. 1.5TB worth. The new Mac Pro caps out at 192GB which is barely better than consumer AMD/Intel systems at the moment.

[rbanffy]

I agree some MacPro users will be forced to move to workstation or server-grade PCs, but I am sure Apple knows that and they considered having integrated memory inconsequential for the majority of their users.

Also, remember, terabytes of RAM cost A LOT of money. The Dell I priced for comparison can go way higher than 192GB, but it’ll also cost you a lot more than 7K.