Battle of M2 Ultras: Mac Studio 2023 vs Mac Pro 2023

Apple finally updated the Mac Pro in WWDC 2023, thus completing the transition from Intel processors to their own Apple Silicon. In the same event, Apple also updated the Mac Studio lineup to feature the M2 Max and for the first time, M2 Ultra.

What’s surprising is Apple released a Mac Pro which is essentially an M2 Ultra Studio but with PCI-Express slots. Everything else is basically what you get in the Mac Studio: the memory and storage options, the graphic options, and no option for upgradability. Is the Mac Pro worth the $3,000 premium that it commands?

Background

Over the decades, Apple has sold a “professional” Mac for the top users and the form factor is pretty much the same: a tower-like PC with Apple customization. The only hiccup was the 2013 Mac Pro aka the “Trash Can” Mac Pro where Apple designs a cylindrical Mac. Everyone hated that Mac Pro but I think it was too ahead of its time. That 2013 Mac Pro is today’s Mac Studio which everyone loves, proof that a lot of power users are OK with the form factor is the internals are good enough.

The Mac Pro always commands top dollar because it has top performance and more importantly, it’s very customizable. When released in 2019, the Mac Pro uses Intel’s top-of-the-line Xeon Processor and can support up to 1.5 terabytes of memory. Today, the 2023 Mac Pro uses the same M2 Ultra which can be found in the Mac Studio as an option.

So, who is the target audience for the Mac Pro? The people who seek maximum performance for very long tasks?

Performance

As expected, performance in the Mac Pro, for all intent and purposes, is identical to the M2 Ultra counterpart in the Mac Studio. Yes, the Mac Studio provides superior cooling than the copper heatsink in the M2 Ultra Mac Studio, which translate into a little bit of performance improvement. However, that infinitesimal improvement does not justify the $3,000 premium that the Mac Pro commands.

PCIe: Where it matters

Enter the PCI Express, commonly known as PCIe. These are electronic slots that sit on a computer motherboard. They are commonly seen in custom computers which computer enthusiasts would put in expensive graphic cards like the Nvidia GTX 4090 for improved graphic performance.

While technical generational improvements of the PCIe standards are driven to cather high-performing graphic cards, PCIe standards provide an avenue for non-standard capabilities that are simply unavailable from the bulk of Macs: customization.

While, you can’t upgrade your memory, storage, or graphic choices with the M2 Ultra Mac Pro, the PCIe slot is a very useful slot that caters to the demanding professional.

Ultimately, these PCIe slots are remembered for being graphic card slots, but here are some of the customization that you can do with your Mac Pro because of the PCIe slots:-

• Storage: Options for the M2 Ultra allows you to put up to 8 TB of storage with average speeds of around 1-2 GB/s, which is quite fast. With PCIe, you can put up to 64 TB with a transfer rate of around 26GB/s.
  • OWC Accelsior 8M2 has 8SSD slots on a single PCIe card, which supports up to 64TB of storage and has theoretical maximum data transfer rate of 26GB/s.
    

    

• Networking: The Mac Pro comes with dual 10GBe ports, which are quite fast. But you can put a 10GB/s fiber card or even a 100GB/s. Furthermore, fiber is far lower latency than ethernet cables.
  • ATTO FastFrame N312 can support upto 100GBe, 10 times the speed of the onboard 10GBe on the Mac Pro.
    

    

• Video capture card: Back in the day, Apple introduced the Afterburner card to handle 8K ProRes streams. The M2 Ultra has that custom core inside the chip, but as of now, it mostly caters to people who are in the Apple workflow. If you using other professional formats like DNxHD or DNxHR.
  • BlackMagic DeckLink capture card is like the Afterburner accelerator card but supports other 8K picture formats.
    

    

• Audio interface: Yes, the M2 Ultra is one powerful chip and can run any audio plugin you throw at in Logic Pro, but there is a great reason why a professional audio engineer would spend thousands of dollars on a PCIe audio interface card: they sound better.
  • Pro Tools HDX System is the audio interface card of choice for audio professionals.
    

    

• Other specialty cards: The PCIe is just an interface to put in almost any device. There are other specialty cards like a TV tuner card when you can capture TV signals and record them straight into your Mac.
  • Time Card is an example of an atomic time card that you can install on your Mac Pro where having a super accurate clock is required.

Conclusion

The Mac Pro, in its present state, is one step forward and two steps back. While moving to Apple Silicon is the right step for the Mac Pro, the lack of an upgradability path for the major components such as CPU, graphics, and memory is an issue when compared to the previous generation of Mac Pro. Yes, raw performance is better than the last generation of Mac Pro, but the memory support for only 192 GB looks far inferior to the 1.5TB support in the Intel box.

The Mac Pro, for now, is a niche in a niche market. There’s perhaps 3% of power users need an M2 Ultra for their work. And a small percentage of that power user will need a PCIe expansion slot which only the Mac Pro provides. But those top users are the ones that are pushing the boundaries of what is possible, hence why Apple is still keeping a foothold on these incredible machines.

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