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The biggest issue was actually that the Mac Pro was designed specifically for dual GPUs- in the era of SLI this made some sense, but once that technology was abandoned it was a technological dead-end.

If you take one apart you'll see why, it's not the case that you could have ever swapped around the components to make it dual-CPU instead; it really was "dual GPU or bust".

Somewhat ironically, in todays ML ecosystem, that architecture would probably do great. Though I doubt it could possibly do better than what the M-series is doing by itself using unified memory.

by SpecialistK20 hours ago|

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I'll admit that while I've used the trash can but never taken it apart myself. But I can't imagine it would have been impossible to throw 2x Polaris 10 GPUs on the daughterboards in place of the FirePros.

by dijit20 hours ago|

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I think on a technical level you're right, but you need to run two of them and they'd need a custom design like so:

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/RQIAAOSwxKFoTHe3/s-l1200.jpg

For what is essentially a dead-end technology, I'm somewhat doubtful people would have bought it (since the second GPU is going to be idle and add to the cost massively).

the CPU being upgraded would have been much easier though I think.

by SpecialistK14 hours ago|

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That's the crux, I think.

Apple even in 2017 had the money and engineering resources to update or replace their flagship computer - whether with a small update to Skylake & Polaris and/or a return to a cheesegrater design as they did in 2019.

But they chose not to. They let their flagship computer rot for over 2000 days.

by jasomill20 hours ago|

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Aside from the GPU mess, the 2013 was a nice machine, basically a proto-Mac Studio. Aside from software, the only thing that pushed me off my D300/64GB/12-core as an everyday desktop + front-end machine is the fact that there's no economically sensible way to get 4K video at 120 Hz given that an eGPU enclosure + a decent AMD GPU would cost as much as a Mac mini, so I'm slumming it in Windows for a few months until the smoke clears from the next Mac Studio announcement.

At which point I'll decide whether to replace my Mac Pro with a Mac Studio or a Linux workstation; honestly, I'm about 60/40 leaning towards Linux at this point, in which case I'd also buy a lower-end Mac, probably a MacBook Air.

by SpecialistK20 hours ago|

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I'm in the Linux desktop / Mac laptop camp, and it works well for me. Prevents me getting too tied up in any one ecosystem so that I can jump ship if Apple start releasing duds again.