MP 7,1 GPU rendering on the new Mac Pro. News, updates, chat.

[vel0city]

Now it’s a question of Redshift vs Octane. Performance, price, stability. I’m running Octane at the moment, but could quite happily switch if Redshift is more performant and even slightly more stable, especially as I use C4D anyway.

Rats. No demo, just the beta for existing license holders.

I wonder if CPU rendering is going to be a more viable option now that we've seen such impressive performance from the M1. I'm very interested in performance of Corona, Arnold, Cycles4D and Keyshot on the M1. If Arnold gets a massive performance boost from Apple Silicon then it's game over for the other renderers on the Mac as far as I'm concerned.

 

[sirio76]

I'm perfectly fine with CPU renderer speed for what I do, realistically Apple can scale the performance of M1 to something like Threadripper and that will be even better.
Only problem I see is that the CPU won't be socketed probably so if you'll need the top end CPU you'll need to get that from the start. That may not be a problem though... I always bought the CPU I need from the start, the only reason why I've bought only an 8core 2019 is because Intel obscene price of the 3275M, hopefully no Apple CPU will cost that much and even Intel price of future CPU will need to drop to stay competitive with AMD
BTW, you forget Vray5 among the CPU renderer
I was involved from the alpha version and it's already very powerful, snappier than Corona IMO and faster for final render, here is a work I've made during the alpha testing and a 4K image was done in a few minutes: https://www.behance.net/gallery/106399307/Apple-Mac-Pro-2019-3D-Render-V-Ray-for-Cinema4D

 

[vel0city]

Lovely render, absolutely beautiful work. Thank you for sharing. I did indeed forget V-Ray!

 

[sirio76]

About Vray, I asked today to developers and M1 native engine should be ready in the first half of 2021(I don't know if it will run in emulation in the mean while).
A GPU version based on Metal is not coming for now, but I asked if is possible to get at least a Metal based Interactive denoiser leveraging the neural engine.

 

[blackie36]

There is a public beta version of Redshift that supports AMD cards - have been running it for a week with dual W5700X cards in my 7,1 and very happy with stability / performance.

 

[skippermonkey]

There is a public beta version of Redshift that supports AMD cards - have been running it for a week with dual W5700X cards in my 7,1 and very happy with stability / performance.

Are the W5700s quiet? I have dual Sapphire 5700XTs and the fans spin up when Octane is running (though mainly for the live viewer).

 

[ondioline]

W5700X doesn't have fans

 

[skippermonkey]

W5700X doesn't have fans

But they're more than twice the cost of the GPUs I bought! Man, Apple's margins on these things is ludicrous.

 

[deconstruct60]

But they're almost twice the cost of the GPUs I bought! Man, Apple's margins on these things is ludicrous.

What costs more, 4 lbs of industrial grade aluminum plus machining cost or 2-3 general plastic fans?

There is more VRAM than any of the cheaper mainstream 5700 modules. ( so a partially semi-custom GPU package)

there are two Thunderbolt controllers and associated circuitry on the MPX module. ( price any simple Thunderbolt v3 dock lately? ).

It cost more , but also does more. You may not want the 'more' but it is still there.

 

[skippermonkey]

I only need the processing power for Octane, so yeah, the ‘more’ is unnecessary. Plus they’re reallly only temporary until I can successfully put some Big Navi in there.

 

[MarkC426]

Has anyone recieved their free Octane license yet.
I assume it is not perpetual, but the rental version for a year.

 

[skippermonkey]

Has anyone recieved their free Octane license yet.
I assume it is not perpetual, but the rental version for a year.

Nope. Doubt we’ll hear until OctaneX is properly out of beta. But I hope they honour their promise.

 

[MarkC426]

They did say it would be available with Big Sur release.

 

[gabrielefx]

Let's imagine Apple builds a full lenght pci-e card with 4 or more M1 processors accessible from our Mac Pro 7.1 as accelerators for rendering tasks....bye bye gpus...

 

[IanK MacPro]

Let's imagine Apple builds a full lenght pci-e card with 4 or more M1 processors accessible from our Mac Pro 7.1 as accelerators for rendering tasks....bye bye gpus...

As a longtime C4D user using Redshift renderer with 2x 12-core 5.1’s with dual 1080ti’s in each, GPU rendering has transformed my work flow.

Real-time rendered feedback when you are working on reflective surfaces is a real eye opener, moving light domes etc and watching raytraced reflections updating in real-time cuts the look-dev time down drastically!

Also for animation, final render time is about 40x faster on GPU for my typical scenes over CPU, plus you can easily update GPU’s without the cost of a new machine for newer processors.

I can’t ever see CPU’s catching up with GPU rendering, GPU’s are built to process 3D data, whereas CPU’s need to be able to work for a much wider variety of tasks.

If you haven’t tried a GPU renderer, take the plunge, I was shocked by the difference!

 

[skippermonkey]

As a longtime C4D user using Redshift renderer with 2x 12-core 5.1’s with dual 1080ti’s in each, GPU rendering has transformed my work flow.

Real-time rendered feedback when you are working on reflective surfaces is a real eye opener, moving light domes etc and watching raytraced reflections updating in real-time cuts the look-dev time down drastically!

Also for animation, final render time is about 40x faster on GPU for my typical scenes over CPU, plus you can easily update GPU’s without the cost of a new machine for newer processors.

I can’t ever see CPU’s catching up with GPU rendering, GPU’s are built to process 3D data, whereas CPU’s need to be able to work for a much wider variety of tasks.

If you haven’t tried a GPU renderer, take the plunge, I was shocked by the difference!

Us C4D users are a bit biased though because C4D's native renderer is possibly the slowest on the planet. I have Keyshot, which on Mac only uses the CPU and it's blazingly fast – at times it's a match for Octane and my dual GPUs. But if/when I can shove some 6800s in the Mac I think Octane will fly, for sure.

 

[shuto]

Are there any benchmarks that compare PC GPU rendering compared to Mac GPU rendering?

I'd love to know for example how a RTX 3090 compares to a Radeon Pro Vega II Duo.

Or just comparing any Nvidea card on PC to a AMD card on a Mac for octane or redshift.

(I'm still hopping between the two, using my MacBook Pro for design work, and PC for GPU rendering when needed).

 

[whosjohnnie]

Are there any benchmarks that compare PC GPU rendering compared to Mac GPU rendering?

I'd love to know for example how a RTX 3090 compares to a Radeon Pro Vega II Duo.

Or just comparing any Nvidea card on PC to a AMD card on a Mac for octane or redshift.

(I'm still hopping between the two, using my MacBook Pro for design work, and PC for GPU rendering when needed).

Otoy posted their Metal scores here

View topic - NEW: Octane X - is finally here! [MEGA FAQ THREAD]

View topic - NEW: Octane X - is finally here! [MEGA FAQ THREAD]

render.otoy.com

Includes scores for AMD, integrated Intel graphics, A13 and M1

Here are the PC scores

OctaneBench 2020.1 Results • OTOY

Vega II Duo is between a 3070 and 3080 under Big Sur

3070 - 404 OB
Radeon Pro Vega II Duo - 446 OB
3080 - 459 OB
3090 - 657 OB

 

[blackadde]

For the price of a Vega II Duo ($5600 USD) you could almost buy* 4x 3090s ($1499 USD).

Puget built a franken-box with just that setup and scored 2640, which is a 6x uplift over the Vega card.

* Well, not really. They're sold out everywhere. Also this would sound like a jet engine taking off unless you build a custom water-loop.

 

[richinaus]

For the price of a Vega II Duo ($5600 USD) you could almost buy* 4x 3090s ($1499 USD).

Puget built a franken-box with just that setup and scored 2640, which is a 6x uplift over the Vega card.

* Well, not really. They're sold out everywhere. Also this would sound like a jet engine taking off unless you build a custom water-loop.

Yep, this is why I am done with macs at present for visuals / 3D work. Hoping to have my mind changed though with the next M ranges.

I had a chat with a genius at Apple who is also a PC builder, and was saying that my PC build is better for what I do than any Mac Pro [at a third of the price], He said those machines are made for video work on Apple apps, not 3rd party 3D apps, which is what I also thought prior to the chat.

Getting a PC box was a bit of a revelation to me, and was only forced into it due to Covid. But those trying to convince others that it is all even and just as good, are basically just trying to defend their decisions.

Buy the right tool for the job is my way of thinking. So now operate macs and PC’s.

 

[skippermonkey]

PCs have always been better for 3D than Macs, that’s not exactly a revelation. Personally I Just prefer using macOS and I only do 3D as a hobby so the Mac Pro is ideal.

 

[richinaus]

PCs have always been better for 3D than Macs, that’s not exactly a revelation. Personally I Just prefer using macOS and I only do 3D as a hobby so the Mac Pro is ideal.

This is the big difference - 3D as a hobby against those like myself who are under constant pressure to deliver. It makes all the difference in what you use

The revelation was the move to gpu rendering. Up to that point I was happy with CPU rendering on my Mac. its all about Nvidia unfortunately.
Octane on the M looks promising and will look to embrace that more in my work, but its all about speed of workflow for my uses, and PC's win it out.

 

[skippermonkey]

I'm not disagreeing. If I did this work professionally (I have done some but not very much), for sure I'd have a PC with four GPUs in it. But I'm happy that, for once, the Mac is actually a viable machine for 3D and for GPU rendering. We'll have to see where we are in three or four years time, if Apple decide to produce a really powerful Apple Silicon Mac Pro and include its own GPUs.

 

[Ritsuka]

Octane X is now available on the Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/octane-x/id1548355081?mt=12 https://home.otoy.com/octane-x-launch/

 

[vel0city]

Interesting, it runs on Apple Silicon as well as Metal. Anyone tried it?