Mac Pro with Apple Silicon, will only the storage be upgradable by users?

The Mac Pro it is the only system not yet upgraded by Apple to Apple Silicon processors. However, the fate of the macOS PC dedicated to the most extreme productivity is sealed and, sooner or later, it will leave behind the Intel CPUs once and for all. The rumors circulating in the last few hours suggest a system that is decidedly different from what has been seen in the past and from what is desirable.

According to the always well-informed Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, the next Mac Pro may not allow users to upgrade the GPU nor the RAM memory, thus leaving storage as the main upgradable component. “To date, Apple Silicon on Macs do not support external GPUs and you must use the configuration you purchase on the Apple site. But the Mac Pro’s GPU will be powerful and have up to 76 cores“, reads a tweet.

It should be noted that in the past Gurman believed that the GPU could be upgraded via an expansion port on the motherboard, so perhaps his source isn’t entirely sure of this aspect, which leaves us hopeful. It shouldn’t even change the design, which will remain identical to that of the current Mac Pro with Intel CPUs. “The big difference between a Mac Pro and a Mac Studio, other than the move from the M1 Ultra to the M2 Ultra, should be the performance from the increased cooling.” The current Mac Pro is equipped with Intel Xeon processors and AMD Radeon Pro W6000X video cards.

As for the cores of the GPU integrated in the M2 Ultra processor, we would be faced with a doubling compared to the M2 Max recently introduced on the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros.