3D Rendering on Apple Silicon, CPU&GPU

[ader42]

Yeah I can definitely provide some tests / benchmarks. I’ve got the 48 GPU Ultra. Anything of interest that comes to mind ?

If I can butt in how about starting with the Blender 3.2 BMW scene, can you try it more than once to see if turning off tiling affects the render time.

With my M1 Mini (8 gpu core) I got 120 seconds with tiling off and 129 seconds with tiling on.

I’ll do the same with my MBP 16” Max 32core when it arrives.

 

[Lone Deranger]

Yeah I can definitely provide some tests / benchmarks. I’ve got the 48 GPU Ultra. Anything of interest that comes to mind ?

Thank you. That's very kind.

I guess whatever is most convenient for you.
Blender, Redshift (seems to be the most optimised for M1 so far), anything 3D really.

 

[Herbert123]

Added M1 Ultra results for comparison. Scaling from 48GPU to 64GPU doesn't seem worth +$1000 which is almost the cost of the laptop at top of list or 3080ti FE.

Blender BMW
16.39s - Nvidia 3060 70W mobile (GPU OptiX Blender 3.0)
20.57s - AMD 6900xt (GPU HIP Blender 3.0)
29s - 2070 Super (GPU OptiX)
30s - AMD 6800 (GPU HIP Blender 3.1)
34s - M1 Ultra 20CPU 64GPU (GPU Metal Blender 3.1)
37s - M1 Ultra 20CPU 48GPU (GPU Metal Blender 3.1)
42.79s - M1 Max 32GPU (GPU Metal Blender 3.1 alpha)
48s - M1 Max 24GPU (GPU Metal Blender 3.1 alpha + patch)
51s - Nvidia 2070 Super (GPU CUDA)
1m18.34s - M1 Pro 16GPU (GPU Metal Blender 3.1 alpha + patch)
1m35.21s - AMD 5950X (CPU Blender 3.0)
1m43s - M1 Ultra 20CPU 64GPU (CPU Blender 3.1)
1m50s - M1 Ultra 20CPU 48GPU (CPU Blender 3.1)
2m0.04s - Mac Mini M1 (GPU Metal Blender 3.1 alpha + patch)
2m48.03s - MBA M1 7GPU (GPU Metal Blender 3.1 alpha)
3m55.81s - AMD 5800H base clock no-boost and no-PBO overclock (CPU Blender 3.0)
4m11s - M1 Pro (CPU Blender 3.1 alpha)
5m51.06s - MBA M1 (CPU Blender 3.0)

For comparison (BMW benchmark):

8.21s - Nvidia 3080ti (Windows 10)
7.23s - Nvidia 3080ti (Linux Mint 20)

Blender on Linux renders faster than Windows in my experience.

 

[shuto]

Yeah I can definitely provide some tests / benchmarks. I’ve got the 48 GPU Ultra. Anything of interest that comes to mind ?

ooo yes please! Could you do the Redshift benchmark on your 48core?


If you don't have it I think you need to download it from here...

Maxon - Downloads

All Maxon products are available as free, fully functional trials. To use the application you will have to register for a Maxon account and accept our…

www.maxon.net

How to run it...

The redshiftBenchmark tool - Redshift Documentation - Global Site

docs.redshift3d.com

You might need to sign up to the forum to access the forum. And also if it doesn't work to download redshift you might need to download a free 14 day trial of Maxon One (Thats what got it working for me on my PC)


Very interested to see how the 48core compares to 64core with this benchmark. In this redshift forum people are posting render times around 7m30s for the 64core.

https://redshift.maxon.net/topic/41339/m1-ultra-performance/111

Many thanks!

 

[jinnyman]

I ran BMW bench with my Razer Blade 10th gen, 3080 mobile, and it took 13.13 sec to complete.

 

[sunny5]

M1 Ultra vs Intel 12900KF + 2x 3080 TI.

 

[JimmyjamesEU]

M1 Ultra vs Intel 12900KF + 2x 3080 TI.

Really informative. Thanks for posting this.

 

[sunny5]

Really informative. Thanks for posting this.

Be aware that Blender is not 100% optimized and still a long way to go.

 

[JimmyjamesEU]

Be aware that Blender is not 100% optimized and still a long way to go.

Oh I’m very well aware!

 

[mi7chy]

M1 Ultra vs Intel 12900KF + 2x 3080 TI.

This is the same guy who posted BS Blender results last year then removed from his video after it was pointed out.

 

[JimmyjamesEU]

This is the same guy who posted BS Blender results last year then removed from his video after it was pointed out.

I assume yo’re upset because he left hardware acceleration on for both systems? Unlike the video you posted.

 

[ader42]

If I can butt in how about starting with the Blender 3.2 BMW scene, can you try it more than once to see if turning off tiling affects the render time.

With my M1 Mini (8 gpu core) I got 120 seconds with tiling off and 129 seconds with tiling on.

I’ll do the same with my MBP 16” Max 32core when it arrives.

So my MBP arrived.

16” 32 core M1 Max with 64GB RAM.

Fastest render time I got for the BMW scene using Blender 3.1 alpha was 41 seconds (41:12).
With 3.1 (stable release) fastest I got was 51:47 seconds.
With 3.2 alpha release fastest I got was 51:17 seconds.

I tried different tile sizes and a few fixed thread counts but the various render times were very similar.

 

[satcomer]

This is the same guy who posted BS Blender results last year then removed from his video after it was pointed out.

I love the way he uses a wider display on PC to laptop screen!

 

[sirio76]

You do realize that is the number of pixels that matter and not the dimension, do you? I don’t know about that Dell monitor but is even possible that is only 1920 pixels versus 3024 pixels of the MBP.

 

[MayaUser]

Now that im on the Ultra...i have to say, im on 3D animation and visual effects software Maya 2022.1 and there are some improvments vs M1 max...for now the same project performance sits around like this M1 max 32gb Ram < Intel i9-12900K+3080<M1 ultra 64gpu 64gbRam

 

[ader42]

ZBrush is working really well on my M1 Max MBP, just hope they make a native version - which I expect they will now it has a new home.

 

[BootLoxes]

ZBrush is working really well on my M1 Max MBP, just hope they make a native version - which I expect they will now it has a new home.

I worry they will wait until Zbrush eventually goes subscription only and then release the native version forcing Mac users to either use the subscription model, or stick with their perpetual Rosetta version.

 

[Lone Deranger]

I worry they will wait until Zbrush eventually goes subscription only and then release the native version forcing Mac users to either use the subscription model, or stick with their perpetual Rosetta version.

On the matter of perpetual Rosetta, I think we need not worry. In this post here, Matthew Yetter (long time Pixologic Customer Support Manager), indicates that they indeed intend to provide a native Apple Silicon version of ZBrush. He does refrain from providing an ETA though.

I do hope an AS native version will once and for all solve the heat/fan issues that have always plagued ZB when run on Apple laptops. Speaking of which, how does the Rosetta version fare on M1 laptops regarding that? Anyone know?

 

[sirio76]

Even if runs in Rosetta you should not be concerned about performance or noise:

 

[vel0city]

Speaking of which, how does the Rosetta version fare on M1 laptops regarding that? Anyone know?

ZBrush user here. Very happy with the performance under Rosetta (M1 Max 16" 64GB) and have not heard the fans at all during sculpting high density meshes with a lot (100+) of subtools. My Zbrush skills have kind of stalled and I don't use many of the newer features so I'm probably doing some things the long way around, but for general sculpting using the Move brush/dam standard/snake hook etc, using alphas, displacement on highly subdivided meshes and so on, the program is completely responsive and stable. On Intel Mac laptops and iMacs the fans would spin up as soon as you started sculpting, M1 Max in contrast is totally silent and runs cool.

I would have assumed it was running natively if I didn't know otherwise.

Don't have a Keyshot bridge license so haven't been able to test that.

 

[Lone Deranger]

ZBrush user here. Very happy with the performance under Rosetta (M1 Max 16" 64GB) and have not heard the fans at all during sculpting high density meshes with a lot (100+) of subtools. My Zbrush skills have kind of stalled and I don't use many of the newer features so I'm probably doing some things the long way around, but for general sculpting using the Move brush/dam standard/snake hook etc, using alphas, displacement on highly subdivided meshes and so on, the program is completely responsive and stable. On Intel Mac laptops and iMacs the fans would spin up as soon as you started sculpting, M1 Max in contrast is totally silent and runs cool.

I would have assumed it was running natively if I didn't know otherwise.

Don't have a Keyshot bridge license so haven't been able to test that.

Very happy to hear that. I don't doubt performance as much, I'm sure it's great, as ZBrush has always been insanely well optimised for performance.
I've got a 2019 16" MBP and as you say, it's a furnace. In ZBrush the fans kick in even configuring the GUI. It's awful. ?

 

[jujoje]

Random link of the day; newe RNDR app from Otoy brings rendering to the iOS

https://twitter.com/x/status/1507039604800634886

 

[jujoje]

The forums did something super weird in a trying to embed that link; it's the second video, although the first looking kinda interesting too....

 

[Xiao_Xi]

Reading the blenderartists forum, I came across this.

Mac: M3 - *Hardware accelerated RT (Part 1)

yes I think something is “wrong” with 12.3 Not about the ultra but still makes you wonder. And if it affects that one it affects the ultra too

blenderartists.org

Does anyone know what is going on?

 

[vinegarshots]

Now that im on the Ultra...i have to say, im on 3D animation and visual effects software Maya 2022.1 and there are some improvments vs M1 max...for now the same project performance sits around like this M1 max 32gb Ram < Intel i9-12900K+3080<M1 ultra 64gpu 64gbRam

How are you comparing performance? Render times? What are the specifics?