Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I think they have to be 5 different up addresses and serial numbers. Possible to fake but who would go to the trouble?
People who want supporting evidence for their PoV. ;)

What I am certain of are the following

- it will outperform any/all Macs before it
- it may outperform any/all Intel/AMD/Nvidia as of the time launch at the same price point & samy physical quantifiable technical metric
 
There are M2 Max scores that hit over 140k, so maybe if these scores are from binned review units with 76 cores…

But yeah the fact that geekbench doesn’t distinguish between say the 30 and 38 core maxes means their entire chart is weird.

That said I’m not sure if there is a way to query the number of GPU cores in metal, so it might be Apple’s fault.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Numa_Numa_eh
There are M2 Max scores that hit over 140k, so maybe if these scores are from binned review units with 76 cores…

But yeah the fact that geekbench doesn’t distinguish between say the 30 and 38 core maxes means their entire chart is weird.

That said I’m not sure if there is a way to query the number of GPU cores in metal, so it might be Apple’s fault.
Good points. Time will tell.
 
But yeah the fact that geekbench doesn’t distinguish between say the 30 and 38 core maxes means their entire chart is weird.

That said I’m not sure if there is a way to query the number of GPU cores in metal, so it might be Apple’s fault.
While the Blender benchmark may not reflect the performance of the Mx GPU as well as Geekbench, it is easier to reason with because it distinguishes the Mx GPU by the number of GPU cores.

Hopefully people will soon start sending benchmark results to https://opendata.blender.org.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Macintosh IIcx
Also while I'm fairly sure there is no way to query GPU cores from Metal directly, you can query it on the command line with "ioreg -l | grep gpu-core-count" which I'm guessing is how Blender is doing it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Xiao_Xi
There are M2 Max scores that hit over 140k, so maybe if these scores are from binned review units with 76 cores…

But yeah the fact that geekbench doesn’t distinguish between say the 30 and 38 core maxes means their entire chart is weird.

That said I’m not sure if there is a way to query the number of GPU cores in metal, so it might be Apple’s fault.

Part of that is on Apple. With Intel and AMD CPUs, the CPUID string hardcoded on the processor denotes the specific model (e.g., Core i1-13900k, Ryzen 9 7900x, etc.). That is where Geekbench pulls its CPU info from. Assuming Apple just tags all M2 Pro/Max/Ultra configurations identically, Geekbench wouldn't be able to see core counts unless it was doing low level querying. On the x86 side, the CPUID string can be cross-referenced to find the number of cores a given processor has.
 
I'm not surprised that we're starting to see scores.
The complaint was that Geekbench gives M2 Ultra on average over 280k, but all results are below 225k.

1686416317112.png

 
If the review units have the lower core counts, they would by default score lower than the high-end configuration. This isn't rocket science by any means...
It's more likely that the stock 60 core machines are arriving in customer's hands 2 days early.

Meanwhile the 76 core machines are in the hands of reviewers, but they have an embargo which is why they're not publicly uploading their scores.

I don't think Apple ever sends the cut down models to reviewers.
 
  • Like
Reactions: aytan
It's more likely that the stock 60 core machines are arriving in customer's hands 2 days early.

Meanwhile the 76 core machines are in the hands of reviewers, but they have an embargo which is why they're not publicly uploading their scores.

I don't think Apple ever sends the cut down models to reviewers.
The calculated average would only make sense if it uses results that are not published on the website.
 
Continuing my trawl through the WWDC sessions, came across this one:


Some pretty neat things in there. What stood out for me was:

- Model tag allows displaying USDZ in Safari (no more exporting to gltf)
- USD Files can be added Freeform(!)
- Contributed to the Maya USD implementation, hopefully making it suck less (had to use it recently and still bitter)
- Contributed to Blender USD support in 3.5, added USDZ support
- Support for materialX in Preview/MacOS along with a materialX editor in Reality Composer Pro
- Improved USD schema support in Preview (this plus metal support for MaterialX shaders could be awesome).

And then there were some nice performance bits and pieces:
- Can now display the high res version of the Alab scene (26GB GPU memory) on a laptop. Now super smooth (before it was...slow, so assuming this tied to updates to the Storm delegate)
- Blender 3.5 is full native metal app; metal viewport can be up to 4x faster than the old OpenGL one.

All of which puts paid to the idea that 'Apple doesn't care about 3D' and the old chestnut that has been repeated ad nauseam on the Mac Pro threads, 'Macs can't do 3D'. The integration of 3D via USD into the OS far exceeds that of Linux or Windows, and seems Apple are pretty keen to make 3D a first class citizen of their OS's from collaboration and review (Composer / Freeform) to supporting DCC apps used or authoring 3D content (Houdini, Maya and Blender all got a mention). It feels like most of these have been edging along in the background for a few releases now, but with the release of visionOS and the need to create 3D content for that all these various tools are really coming together.

tldr; after this wwdc feeling pretty sanguine about the future of 3D on AS
 
Continuing my trawl through the WWDC sessions, came across this one:


Some pretty neat things in there. What stood out for me was:

- Model tag allows displaying USDZ in Safari (no more exporting to gltf)
- USD Files can be added Freeform(!)
- Contributed to the Maya USD implementation, hopefully making it suck less (had to use it recently and still bitter)
- Contributed to Blender USD support in 3.5, added USDZ support
- Support for materialX in Preview/MacOS along with a materialX editor in Reality Composer Pro
- Improved USD schema support in Preview (this plus metal support for MaterialX shaders could be awesome).

And then there were some nice performance bits and pieces:
- Can now display the high res version of the Alab scene (26GB GPU memory) on a laptop. Now super smooth (before it was...slow, so assuming this tied to updates to the Storm delegate)
- Blender 3.5 is full native metal app; metal viewport can be up to 4x faster than the old OpenGL one.

All of which puts paid to the idea that 'Apple doesn't care about 3D' and the old chestnut that has been repeated ad nauseam on the Mac Pro threads, 'Macs can't do 3D'. The integration of 3D via USD into the OS far exceeds that of Linux or Windows, and seems Apple are pretty keen to make 3D a first class citizen of their OS's from collaboration and review (Composer / Freeform) to supporting DCC apps used or authoring 3D content (Houdini, Maya and Blender all got a mention). It feels like most of these have been edging along in the background for a few releases now, but with the release of visionOS and the need to create 3D content for that all these various tools are really coming together.

tldr; after this wwdc feeling pretty sanguine about the future of 3D on AS
Would this benefit GPU cores with Ray Tracing in a future iPhone (Sep 2023), M3 (Q1 2024) or M3 Extreme (Q1 2025)?
 
Would this benefit GPU cores with Ray Tracing in a future iPhone (Sep 2023), M3 (Q1 2024) or M3 Extreme (Q1 2025)?

There's nothing in there that would obviously from new raytracing cores; the Storm renderer is view much a viewport renderer for previewing USD files (the original version runs on OpenGL) so there's nothing fancy there.

That said the move to MaterialX does open some possibilities given that it supports subsurface, transmission, reflection and refraction (assuming apples PBR material is similar to the MaterialX Standard Surface material). TBH doubt they'll go full raytracing for assets but it would be awesome to be able to quicklook a scene and get proper raytraced shadows/reflections in Finder or Preview.

AR view on the phone could benefit from raytracing to better situate objects in the environment but would slightly undermine the still (at that stage) unreleased headset.

WWDC shows that Apple has put extra effort into its weakest points: 3D, gaming and machine learning.
At least as far as games and 3D, it seems that in both cases multi year projects finally reached tipping point. They'd been occasionally bits and pieces for the last year or two (some Metal improvements here, some RE:Villiage there), but feels like there's now a cohesive plans and direction in both areas.
 
  • Like
Reactions: aytan and Longplays
Hey everyone. I have some rendering questions for anyone that is able to answer. I am a character and creature artist. My personal workstation, (3900x, 64gb ram, gtx 1080), is struggling at the moment with cpu rendering. I am primarily using Arnold for latest my latest works but moving onto Karma for current groom projects. I have an M2 Air with 24gb ram, where I can do some basic tests, but, I am looking at upgrading my desktop to an M2 Ultra Studio sometime in the summer - fall.

What I am wondering is, what GPU renderer would you recommend for the Mac, specifically for character shading? Meaning, a good hair shader, sss, and performance. I saw that Apple has advertised Octane with the latest machines, but I don't understand the OTOY website. I signed up for a free trial, but it says that the Maya plugin was last updated for 2021. Is this what I want to be testing?

How does Octane compare to Redshift? I used Redshift pre Maxon acquisition. Attempted to test it a few months back but the hair shader was broken on OS X.

Lastly, I see that VRAY is supporting AS. Does anyone have any experience with this? How does it perform? Also, is their GPU rendering equivalent to Redshift/Octane?

Thanks!
 
Hey everyone. I have some rendering questions for anyone that is able to answer. I am a character and creature artist. My personal workstation, (3900x, 64gb ram, gtx 1080), is struggling at the moment with cpu rendering. I am primarily using Arnold for latest my latest works but moving onto Karma for current groom projects. I have an M2 Air with 24gb ram, where I can do some basic tests, but, I am looking at upgrading my desktop to an M2 Ultra Studio sometime in the summer - fall.

What I am wondering is, what GPU renderer would you recommend for the Mac, specifically for character shading? Meaning, a good hair shader, sss, and performance. I saw that Apple has advertised Octane with the latest machines, but I don't understand the OTOY website. I signed up for a free trial, but it says that the Maya plugin was last updated for 2021. Is this what I want to be testing?

How does Octane compare to Redshift? I used Redshift pre Maxon acquisition. Attempted to test it a few months back but the hair shader was broken on OS X.

Lastly, I see that VRAY is supporting AS. Does anyone have any experience with this? How does it perform? Also, is their GPU rendering equivalent to Redshift/Octane?

Thanks!
Vray works fine with AS Machines. Mx Ultra is fast with Arnold and Vray based on CPU rendering. Redshift and Octane are different story on AS Macs. If M2 Ultra will be equal 3070 ti or 3080 you could use it for your compute demands by Rddshift and OCtane ( Both of them works well with C4D, Redshift works well on ZBrush ). You can check for 1st generation AS M1 Ultra rendering differences by render engine here.
 
  • Like
Reactions: spaz8

First benchmark for Blender appeared (M2 Ultra 76 GPU cores), slightly better than 3070 Laptop. It seems to scale quite well compared to M2 Max
 
  • Like
Reactions: aytan and Xiao_Xi
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.