Apple Mac Pro with M2 Ultra chip starting at $6999 does not support discrete graphics cards

Last week, Apple introduced the Mac Pro desktop computer powered by the new M2 Ultra processor. How

It became known that it did not receive support for discrete video cards.

What is known

Mac Pro has a large chassis and motherboardimmediately with six PCI Express 4.0 x16 slots. In theory, this configuration allows you to connect discrete graphics, but Apple decided to leave computer buyers without this option.

The desktop PC was originally designed withapplication of the Apple M2 Ultra, which uses a powerful graphics chip with 60 or 72 cores. It has access to unified memory, the maximum amount of which is 192 GB.

According to the manufacturer, the GPU at any time hasaccess to more video memory than any discrete graphics card can offer and more than any workstation graphics card. For example, the GeForce RTX 4090 is equipped with 24 GB of GDDR6X VRAM.

An Apple spokesperson also noted that the companyfocused on the most important features for customers, and it does a good job of it. This was in response to the question that the lack of support for discrete graphics could harm Apple's reputation, since, for example, NVIDIA GPUs are widely used in training artificial intelligence algorithms.

As for the PCIe 4.0 slots.They are not installed for the sake of beauty. They can be used to connect network cards or additional drives. By the way, in the new Mac Pro, four of the six PCIe 4.0 slots work in x8 mode, not x16.

In conclusion, we would like to add that Mac Pro salesstarted today, June 13th. The cost of the computer starts at $6,999 and exceeds $12,000 in the maximum configuration with pre-installed software and accessories.