im sorry what? gaming yes, but thats because of the very low adoption , not because of the hardware...but suck for 3D?
Im sorry for almost over a year my M1 max/ultra systems are running day and night for 3D animations, modelling, rendering toolsets
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3D Rendering on Apple Silicon, CPU&GPU
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Im sorry for almost over a year my M1 max/ultra systems are running day and night for 3D animations, modelling, rendering toolsets
Runs well enough; if you fetishise performance metrics you're probably going to be disappointed, but if you just want to actually play games, then it's fine and the HDR looks great on RE. Games are a secondary both in terms of what I use a Mac for and the topic of this thread. There are plenty of other threads on game performance; no need to derail another one.
Finding the same with Houdini compared to the workstation at work; on the Mac it's far more stable and less inclined to glitches. I feel this, ironically, might be due to the Mac still being on OpenGL4.1 - while the viewport doesn't support some of the fancy viewport features (AO on volumes), at this stage it's rock solid.
And I know a 3D Artist who believes the earth is flat; I suspect he might be wrong though...
While big studios and film production are all about the cheap commodity hardware and linux, a fair few of the boutique places, particularly for advertising and mograph use Macs and there's a definite market out there for them (hence the Mac Studio and C4D and Houdini's strong Mac support etc).
At the end of the day Maxon and Sidefx wouldn't support the Mac if there wasn't a market for it.
Why even bother replying to the paltform wars BS, just ignore it. No one cares. Waste of time and bandwidth.
Just to be sure you don’t equal reasonable critique and worry of not getting a decent workstation with flame wars. If the current mp has perf of let’s say “100” points, I sure expect a new 2023 version to be at least at “200” points for the same price. If the competition at 2019 was at “200” and now is at “800” there sure is an issue. Customers don’t care of the platform we use, they want results. And if you can’t stay at similar perf levels as the competition it is easy to get run by and dumped. And from a business perspective that may force many of us to shift platforms even though we wouldn’t prefer to. Ok?
This thread is about 3D rendering on Apple Silicon. Any discussion about other platforms is completely irrelevant and annoying to scroll past when we're just looking for the latest Mac 3D rendering news. Please take it elsewhere.
Agree, and my customers are perfectly happy with the service I provide using a Mac.
This may depend by the workflow, but in may case for example going from a MacStudio Ultra to a 64 core Threadripper/Nvidia 4090GPU would increase my productivity no more than 5/10% (assuming you don't have Windows related issues, that I often experience on all my PC).
There is also the fact that a professional generally needs far less power than a novice, because they can achieve higher quality output with far fewer resources. They know how to optimise their scenes, how to use GPU instancing and other techniques, and they also know how to configure their renderer and which settings they can reduce without hugely affecting visual quality.
Sure there are cases like yours where rendering is just a small part and you are used to a specific workflow that spits out a few stills per project. Archviz and product viZ are like that if animation is not required. And for simple anims you can use a render farm for those occasions. I get this. This market doesn’t really need super high performance by modern standards. But, there are many other use cases where you might have to spit out many many frames every day, maybe short animation sequences etc. and there rendering power actually matters.
For CPU rendering, the mac studio seems quite adequate to be honest even if it has taken some time to get here. Still no native maya to host arnold yet for example.
Anyway, looking forward to getting
While this is oc correct, I don’t get why some of you are content with paying more and more for less. The imac pro was quite capable when it was released and today it can still use 4 extra gpus in egpu chassis resulting in at least 5x the perf of a mac studio for rendering. And the final 2020 imac was a total steal compared to what we have now. Finally, the mac pro 2019 while expensive will neatly host two of the shelf 7900xtx if there where drivers giving those who investednin that system a good upgrade New macs absolutely need to have something that solves the terrible gpu power situation that we are in right now. Or, once again the mac will be just for people with very limited needs in 3d wich is odd with all the efforts apple have made to help port to metal and even introduce metalrt. I guess we’ll see, but let’s hope that we’ll see something compelling and competitive.
And yet people still think that AS Mac's GPU is powerful in 3D. Am I suppose to believe that? Then stop spreading false information instead.
Hardware is also another problem. Apple is just slower than Nvidia's old tech. Being efficient is not really mean anything for the workflow when rendering time is important.
M1(8c) 2.6 Tflops
GTX 1650 2.984 Tflops
M2(10c) 3.6 Tflops
GTX 1060 3GB 3.9 Tflops
M1 Pro(16c) 5.2 Tflops
RTX 3050ti 5.3 Tflops
GTX1660ti 5.4 Tflops
GTX 1070 6.4 Tflops
RTX 2080 10.07 Tflops
M1 Max(32c) 10.4 Tflops
RTX 3060 12.7 Tflops
M1 Ultra(64c) 20.8 Tflops
RTX 3070ti 21.75 Tflops
RTX 3080ti 34.1 Tflops
That's just your PERSONAL opinion. Doesn't represent all.
It's just another proof that Apple Silicon Mac's performance is still far for 3D stuff. Hell RTX 30 series are not even 5nm based.
Without proofs? I dont take it.
If you just wanna talk about 3D stuff on Apple Silicon Mac, then that's fine. But the point is some people still that Apple Silicon Mac is as powerful as Nvidia GPU which is totally false. Stop dreaming. Apple will never be well known for 3D field.
No, I totally agree.
Apple Silicon is in a bad place right now, and it's mostly down to Apple's greed.
The whole point of the transition should have been that it allows Apple to very cheaply pile on a massive number of cores. Instead we have the situation where going from 48 GPU cores to 64 GPU cores costs $1000. There's either something incredibly wrong with how much it costs to manufacture Apple Silicon, or Apple are just incredibly happy ripping people off.
I'm fully locked into macOS at this point though so there's not much I can do about it other than hope Apple gets their GPU game together.
On the subject of Apple Silicon being in a sorry state, pretty disappointing news, if true, about about the rumoured Extreme chip being cancelled, particularly on the CPU rendering front.
The rumoured 40 core chip would have nicely filled the space as a render / simulation workhorse. Just putting an Ultra chip in a Mac Pro would be underwhelming. Kind of feels like Apple are shooting themselves in the foot, particularly given the pro apps teams' efforts to get pro 3d apps back on Mac...
Hopefully Gurman is wrong and Apple have something up their sleeve; it just seems bizarre that Apple would go through all this effort without properly planning how the high end would transition to the new hardware would work (particularly given how they messed it up before).
The rumoured 40 core chip would have nicely filled the space as a render / simulation workhorse. Just putting an Ultra chip in a Mac Pro would be underwhelming. Kind of feels like Apple are shooting themselves in the foot, particularly given the pro apps teams' efforts to get pro 3d apps back on Mac...
Hopefully Gurman is wrong and Apple have something up their sleeve; it just seems bizarre that Apple would go through all this effort without properly planning how the high end would transition to the new hardware would work (particularly given how they messed it up before).
Both video and music are already great on Mac but not in 3D related as Nvidia dominating that market especially with CUDA. Without it, Apple has no chance to compete with them. Many 3D software require CUDA to work and Nvidia is just superior in external GPU market by 80~90% of market share. AMD still sucks in many ways. Apple Silicon GPU itself is not better than Nvidia so it's both hardware and software issue to deal with. Pros need performance, not performance by watt in actual workflow so there are no reasons to stick with Mac.
Why is it irrelevant? Apple likes to talk about the RTX 3090 in their keynotes. So its good know where the others are so we know that Apple is keeping up or falling behind.
I care about every thing 3D.
They also charge a LOT for RAM. So its the "Apple are just incredibly happy ripping people off" part is correct.
I totally agree. It was Apple who started this. They start comparing M1 Max to mobile RTX 3080 or 3070TI and M1 Ultra to RTX 3090 but in what kind of software? It's totally misleading. So far, video and music are proven to be powerful but in 3D stuff? It's totally slow. For video, Apple implanted media related chips to boost the performance so cant really say it's a pure GPU power.
Since they compared with RTX series where they are good at 3D works such as games, 3D graphic, and more, not comparing with them is such a stupid idea. PC and Nvidia is leading 3D fields and they are more powerful than Mac. How come we are trapping inside of Mac ecosystem by not comparing with PC just because it's Mac?
So guess what? Mac is slow and not comparable with 3D works and yet some people still believing that Apple Silicon Mac is powerful.
Feel that the Mac Studio is great for a lot of cases; to a certain extent it's pretty much the ideal workstation for interactive stuff (gpu cbb). It's decent at rendering, but have a few cases where more cores would be helpful and the Mac Pro would come in (final frame rendering, wedging simulations etc). TBH for my workflow some more CPU cores and 128-256GB of ram would probably do it (fingers crossed on the M2 ultra).
Quote for truth
In terms of renderer's though, really liked 3Delight's approach - pixel samples, volume samples and component limits, works for 99% of use cases and no esoteric settings that magically make things faster.Find that it kind of balances out as a package; when I bought my iMac Pro spent a while comparing it to PC workstations and price wise it was pretty competitive (cheaper actually, once you factor in the 5K screen). The problem is more due to how (in)frequently Apple updates their desktops and prices. After a year, not so much; two years, poor value.
I don't really understand some people. Why compare 3090 or 4090 to AS? Before AS, did you have the option to purchase an iMac with 3090? No. Did you have the option to purchase a Macbook Pro with 3070M? No.
Why not compare the current AS offerings to the previous Intel offerings from Apple? If you compare Apples to Apples, any AS mac kicks ass of any non AS mac of the same category.
And you can be sure that when Apple releases an AS Mac Pro, it'll be faster than the current Intel one, both in CPU and GPU. Otherwise Apple won't release it.
Why not compare the current AS offerings to the previous Intel offerings from Apple? If you compare Apples to Apples, any AS mac kicks ass of any non AS mac of the same category.
And you can be sure that when Apple releases an AS Mac Pro, it'll be faster than the current Intel one, both in CPU and GPU. Otherwise Apple won't release it.
It's fundamentally a question of value.
It's also healthy for Apple to take criticism because that's the only way they ever change.
Intel got into trouble because it started taking its customers for granted, and thought they could just keep selling underperforming hardware for a premium, until one day they woke up and Apple had dropped them and people were buying AMD cpus in droves. There's no reason the same thing can't happen with Apple's pro users - and if that happens then they'll be taking their software with them.
What's the point of the transition if Apple is just going to take over Intel's position of resting on their laurels and releasing overpriced hardware that isn't competitive in the wider market?
I want Apple Silicon to succeed, and that means Apple need to be able to get new users into the Apple ecosystem. The importance of comparing the M1 Ultra with a 4090 is to point out the fact that as it stands today Apple is 100% unable to tempt people from PC into coming over to Mac.
It's also healthy for Apple to take criticism because that's the only way they ever change.
Intel got into trouble because it started taking its customers for granted, and thought they could just keep selling underperforming hardware for a premium, until one day they woke up and Apple had dropped them and people were buying AMD cpus in droves. There's no reason the same thing can't happen with Apple's pro users - and if that happens then they'll be taking their software with them.
What's the point of the transition if Apple is just going to take over Intel's position of resting on their laurels and releasing overpriced hardware that isn't competitive in the wider market?
I want Apple Silicon to succeed, and that means Apple need to be able to get new users into the Apple ecosystem. The importance of comparing the M1 Ultra with a 4090 is to point out the fact that as it stands today Apple is 100% unable to tempt people from PC into coming over to Mac.
My take is that it is the Apple Mac development team pushing AMD and Intel for GPUs and CPUs that fit into their product vision and roadmap. I don't think the Mac team has changed their product vision much.
So now the Mac team is pushing the Apple Silicon team. So I think the situation is a little different from the AMD and Intel scenario, since the one doing the pushing has not changed. Only the one getting pushed has.
Until Apple does what Intel did, this is just a thought exercise. Since the release of AS, it has been the best chip in terms of performance per watt, and it has been the fastest chip in Apple computers. It's still the same fallacy as before. It would be "cool" if Apple developed a 4090 level GPU, and if they wanted they could probably develop an even faster one. The question is, would it make sense for them to develop one? After M1, does anyone doubt that Apple cannot do a fast silicon, be it CPU or GPU, on their own?
There was a time when the fastest GPU in your Mac Pro really was immensely useful for the majority of things you did. That time is long gone and nowadays, 4090 level GPU's are only manufactured for AAA gamers, a small portion of 3D artists and cloud computing for A.I.
There was a time that the top of the line iMac had difficulties playing modern games at 15 fps. Today, even a M1 Max Laptop can play most games at 60 fps at reasonable settings.
I was a PowerMac + Mac Pro user for 20+ years. Then I switched to iMac, which was enough, and now I only use a MBP, which is enough. I can play many games in this laptop at really good framerates, which was impossible in all the previous MBP's I've used in the past, and I have always used the top of the line MBP's from the G4 to Intel times.
Yes, it would be very cool, yes Apple probably could do it, and 100000% yes Apple should do it.
The M1 Max and below are incredible value, but who is going to make the software for your M1 Max? Do you think game developers want to work on a Mac Studio? You think the people working on high end light transport simulations want to work on a Mac Studio?
If Apple doesn't have a machine that can trade blows with a 4090, then absolutely every developer who is writing high end software will use a 4090. This is why we have the situation where 50% of the software the people in this thread want to use is written in CUDA.
Apple Silicon will live or die based on software compatibility, and without a good value high end machine, Apple Silicon is just going to have to survive on scraps, shoddy ports, and compatibility layers.
For the 3D software to achieve similar performance on Apple Silicon as on high-end Nvidia GPUs, Apple needs to improve its hardware and the 3D software needs to better adapt to Apple Silicon. Until that time comes, we could focus on how 3D software improves on Apple Silicon. For example, Apple developers have almost finished the Metal backend for the Blender viewport and Blender will enable it soon.
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What I find particularly surprising is the fact that nobody addressed that the studio Macs kinda are akin the trashcan. Great performance - if new. Storage and RAM upgrades outrageously expensive. Non-upgradeable. Just like the trashcan was. Didn‘t Apple confirm the shortcomings of the 6.1? Why then did they repeat them?
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