The Apple Silicon Mac Pro Is A Serious Downgrade For Users Who Wish To Swap Out Core Components For Better Hardware

wccftech.com:

The Apple Silicon Mac Pro will be a deal breaker for anyone that has a spare AMD Radeon GPU lying around because the company’s latest workstation does not support any PCIe graphic cards. In fact, the updated mighty tower is a severe downgrade for consumers who are used to swapping out previous-generation hardware for more powerful components, and you will know why shortly.

Prior to the official announcement at WWDC 2023, there was a rumor doing the rounds stating that the Apple Silicon Mac Pro’s storage could only be upgraded, which would not be difficult to believe, as the technology giant’s custom chips have the CPU, GPU and memory baked onto a single die, making it impossible to swap out. The previous Mac Pro’s RAM and storage could easily be upgraded, and although it took some work to get the heatsink out to remove the Intel Xeon processor, it was still possible to add a more capable chip.

With the new Mac Pro, it is only possible to add storage through one of the seven PCIe slots. Apple has noted the following in its support document that while it is not possible to add a discreet GPU, potential buyers can add more GPU cores to the more powerful version of the M2 Ultra to get higher performance. Keep in mind that the base model of the workstation costs $6,999 and offers the M2 Ultra with a 20-core CPU and 64-core GPU. To get the most powerful variant of the M2 Ultra, touting a 24-core CPU and 76-core GPU, you will have to spend an extra $1,000, bringing the grand total to $7,999.

“Mac Pro is powered by the M2 Ultra chip which features a GPU configurable with up to 76 cores. The GPU is integrated into the M2 Ultra chip and doesn't support additional graphics processors such as PCIe graphics cards or MPX modules. You can