We last week highlighted the four differences between the 2023 Mac Pro and 2023 Mac Studio – with the Mac Pro PCI card slots as the most significant of these. We also talked about what you can’t plug into these slots. Apple has confirmed this, and listed the cards you can use.
Of the seven slots, one is occupied by the Apple I/O card – though you can remove this if you don’t need any of the five ports this provides …
Almost the same machine
Even before Apple announced the machine, I wondered who would buy it.
And indeed, we illustrated last week that the 2023 Mac Pro is essentially the same machine as the 2023 Mac Studio (giving identical benchmark scores), just in a bigger box. However, we did highlight the few differences between them, one of which was the Mac Pro PCI card slots.
You can’t upgrade CPU, GPU, or memory
We noted at the time that Apple Silicon architecture, placing everything in a single system-on-a-chip, means that you can’t upgrade the CPU, GPU, or memory. Some did wonder whether GPU upgrades might somehow be possible, but Apple has since confirmed that it’s not.
Options for the 2023 Mac Pro PCI card slots
So what can you plug into them? Apple has listed the main options:
The company does caution that, even with these things, you need to check with the card manufacturer whether a macOS driver is required, and available.
Some have questioned the limited power availability if you want to make full use of the card slots. That’s because each slot is limited to 75W of power. However, Apple says there’s a solution to this.
And if you do need all seven slots, you can remove the supplied Apple I/O card.
Still, given the price differential, and limited functionality of the PCI slots, I think it’s clear that the 2023 Mac Pro is even more niche than it has ever been.
Top comment by Cuban Missiles
Liked by 2 people
I expect that this was a compromise to get off intel and close out the transition. It is my expectation that they will be able to ramp this up and create more separation from the studio over time.
But yes, for this initial version, there are very few situations where the Mac Pro would be needed since the Mac Studio can handle most of the situations.
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