WWDC 2023 | Apple Mac Pro offers M2 Ultra and PCIe Gen 4 expansion for US$7,000

For years, pro users felt that the Apple Mac Pro wasn't given its due. While Apple focused on the Mac mini and the Mac Studio for its latest in-house silicon, the Mac Pro was not really in the reckoning. That changes today.

At WWDC23, Apple announced that the Mac Pro will be getting the latest M2 Ultra SoC. While Intel-based Mac Pros started with an 8-core CPU and up, all Mac Pro configurations offer the M2 Ultra with a 24-core CPU, 32-core neural engine, and 800 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The base configuration offers a 60-core GPU and 64 GB of unified memory, but pros can fully deck up the SoC with up to a 76-core GPU and 192 GB of unified memory.

The Mac Pro is also the first Apple silicon Mac that supports PCIe expansion. A total of six full-length PCIe Gen 4 slots are available of which two are x16 and four, x8. A half-length PCIe Gen 3 slot comes with Apple I/O card installed. Supplying power to these slots are two six-pin connectors that can deliver 75 W each and one 150 W 8-pin connector.

A total of eight Thunderbolt 4 ports are present, six on the back and two on the top (or front, in case of rack enclosures). Other ports include 2x USB Type-As, 2x HDMI, 2x 10 GbE, and a 3.5 mm audio jack. Apart from these, the Mac Pro also one internal USB-A and two SATA ports. The Mac Pro is also perhaps the first modern Mac machine to support Wi-Fi 6E.

The new Apple Mac Pro with M2 Ultra starts from US$6,999 for the tower and from US$7,499 for the rack variant.

Buy the 2021 Apple MacBook Pro 16 with M1 Max (Refurbished) on Amazon