UrbaneLegend

crowley said:

UrbaneLegend said:

crowley said:

UrbaneLegend said:

crowley said:

UrbaneLegend said:

I think the Mac Pro, if it has the expected 4x SOCs, will show even worse performance scaling just as the Threadrippers initially showed. I expect the Mac Pro to have an Apple discrete GPU but if this GPU is a PCIe based GPU I think it's function will be akin to a built-in eGPU as again the latencies of the PCIe bus will mean developers choose to use the integrated GPUs for most interactive workloads like video editing and the discrete GPU for heavy compute operations like science simulation calculations and rendering.

You realise that all (modern) discrete GPUs use PCIe right?  "Built in eGPU" isn't a thing, that's just a graphics card.

You missed the point. Well done.

I used the term eGPU to differentiate it from a typical discrete GPU usage. I think most people who are using eGPUs are not using them as frontline GPUs and are using them for compute applications. It's common for Mac 3D artists to use eGPUs for rendering. Did you trigger yourself before you completed reading the paragraph?

The M1 architecture uses integrated GPUs which makes communication with the CPU vastly more efficient by being on the same package and using the same unified memory. A discrete GPU sat on a PCIe bus no matter how powerful can perform worse than these integrated GPUs for certain tasks i.e. akin to an eGPU in the previous Intel generation of Macs. I thought the readership here was a bit more savvy to be honest.

That's not the common usage of eGPU.  Try using the same language as everyone else and a bit less of the tossing out of insults.

I don't disagree with the rest of your post.

I'll try and use more Fisher-Price level language that leaves less for you to interpret incorrectly in the future.

I didn't interpret incorrectly, I understood you perfectly; I pointed out your incorrect use of a word.

Are you always this salty when someone finds fault with you?  Maturity, it's a good look.

Clearly you STILL don't understand. I was clearly talking of its function and not its type, I even prefaced the term with 'akin to'. More intelligent people will have understood what I was saying, sorry you didn't and still don't.

crowley said:

UrbaneLegend said:

I think the Mac Pro, if it has the expected 4x SOCs, will show even worse performance scaling just as the Threadrippers initially showed. I expect the Mac Pro to have an Apple discrete GPU but if this GPU is a PCIe based GPU I think it's function will be akin to a built-in eGPU as again the latencies of the PCIe bus will mean developers choose to use the integrated GPUs for most interactive workloads like video editing and the discrete GPU for heavy compute operations like science simulation calculations and rendering.

You realise that all (modern) discrete GPUs use PCIe right?  "Built in eGPU" isn't a thing, that's just a graphics card.

You missed the point. Well done.

I used the term eGPU to differentiate it from a typical discrete GPU usage. I think most people who are using eGPUs are not using them as frontline GPUs and are using them for compute applications. It's common for Mac 3D artists to use eGPUs for rendering. Did you trigger yourself before you completed reading the paragraph?

The M1 architecture uses integrated GPUs which makes communication with the CPU vastly more efficient by being on the same package and using the same unified memory. A discrete GPU sat on a PCIe bus no matter how powerful can perform worse than these integrated GPUs for certain tasks i.e. akin to an eGPU in the previous Intel generation of Macs. I thought the readership here was a bit more savvy to be honest.

@fastasleep ;

Yes I do hark back to the days of Steve Jobs' Apple, IMHO the very best Macs were built under that version of Apple. The Classic Mac Pro cheese-grater of which I own two, one of the first and one of the last, are the pinnacle of desktop computer designs. The very public falling out of nVidia and Apple hurt one group of people, that was the professionals who'd come to rely upon Apple Macs and nVidia GPUs for their business, people like me. Actually, they were the glory days of Mac ownership, when nVidia GPUs were compatible with the Mac.

I'm glad to see Apple supporting Blender because in recent times Blender has become a very popular, highly respected, incredibly powerful tool and the new version of Cycles is a game changing renderer not because it's free but because the performance is as good as anything around. Performance of Cycles is a moving target, there was an update this week which added performance and I can remember in recent times nVidia and AMD have added patches which improve performance on their own hardware so Apple is not alone in being able to add optimisations as a matter of course. Nothing is fixed so the argument that people are using to suggest that we wait to judge Apple's true performance is a false argument. Benchmarks are a snapshot in time and right now the M1 performance is what it is.

Well a high core count Mac Studio will suit AE nicely after Adobe finally multi-threaded AE. Unfortunately there's very little creative software that can lean on 20 or even 40 CPU cores (Mac Pro?) unless rendering, Apple's own AE competitor Motion which was better in every single way to AE leaned heavily on the GPU rather than the CPU. I wish Apple had loved Motion as much as I did and had kept developing it at pace but instead it languishes in a 'what might've been' state. With a bit more drive they could've owned the layer based compositing space and consigned AE to the history books. So much software leans heavily on the GPU these days it makes the M1 architecture choices look odd for the desktop, I want 10 or 20 CPU cores max but with 2x or 4x the GPU performance which would be a better fit for the software I use like Houdini, Blender, Resolve and Fusion. I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking this.

I thought I was a Mac user for life but unfortunately the Mac Pro strategy from 2013 onwards was a joke which forced me onto the PC which was a second class experience but moving to Linux has given me most of the Mac experience back. The Apple Silicon architecture is amazing for phones, tablets and laptops which are second to none but I'm not convinced it is right for what I need in a workstation. I remain open minded until Apple unveils the new Mac Pro, can they pull one out of the bag? If they don't I'll continue with buying PCs and Macs, no doubt when I replace my trusty iMacs it will be with a Mac mini or Studio. I can't see me ever not having a Mac.

entropys said:

why are you doubling down on blender benchmarks when it has been shown quite clearly in a number of spots, with quotes from the developers, that it is a very early work in progress, a miracle it works at all on M1s?

let's revisit blender benchmarks in a few months’ time.  

Blender and other benchmarks reflect the performance of M1 as of right now exactly as they do other hardware. Only in Mac land do we see this neuroticism where it's impossible to accept the state of play as it is and kick the 'real performance' can down the road to an unspecified date and unspecified performance level which best suits your argument. You really could not make this nonsense up. You buy an M1 Mac now and this is the performance you get. What is so difficult to understand?

It's not a miracle the Blender and other 3D rendering software works on M1 at all, Apple has done a huge amount of work ensuring that Redshift, Octane and Cycles runs on M1. Apple had to update the Metal spec to get Redshift running on Metal so they learned a lot during this process which directly benefitted Cycles and any other renderer or compute heavy application. BTW, Blender has been running natively on M1 CPUs pretty much from day one when the first M1 Macs were released.

Shall we revisit the Blender Benchmarks when AMD and nVidia release their next-gen GPUs which are specced to double performance over their current ones? Be careful waiting for Mac software developers to unleash mythical levels of M1 performance as that might coincide with the release of new hardware which makes the gulf in performance even more stark even for a fully maxed out Mac Pro coming later this year.

As a Mac Pro buyer myself I don't want a maxed out $10K to $15K computer with GPUs as powerful as a mid range nVidia GPU, when I can buy a PC workstation for $5k-$7k with a 4090 or 7900 at the end of the year that are likely to be 2-3 times faster. It's time to get a bit more realistic where Apple's GPU performance is sitting right now.

lkrupp said:

With all the claims of inferiority made by the ‘experts’ here it’s a wonder anyone uses Apple hardware, right? I mean, according to these ‘experts’, Apple exceeds at nothing, is always two years behind every curve, lacks pro features, and is overpriced to boot. Why would any ‘pro’ user select Apple hardware? 

What makes an 'export'? Is it someone who has bashed nearly 10,000 posts in a forum?

Speaking as someone who has been in the creative industry for over 25 years and has owned a succession Power Macs and Mac Pros during that period from my point of view and I suspect many other 3D artists wanting to come back to the Mac will look at the performance of the Studio's GPUs will give it a hard pass.

Apple has one more chance with the Mac Pro to deliver the necessary GPU performance, maybe with their own custom GPU and if they can deliver that then they have a chance to get many former Mac based 3D artists back who were lost after Apple's Mac Pro releases went to rat shit in 2013 and became a laughing stock.

Professionals have different needs to fanboys who enjoy Macs vicariously through the medium of web forums, Professionals need performance which exceeds their preference for an operating system which is why so many had to reluctantly move on from their beloved Mac Pros. With Apple Silicon Apple has sewn up the video editing market, you'd be a fool to choose anything but a Mac for video work but 3D is one area that brute GPU performance is an absolute necessity and based on the Studio benchmarks Apple is still way off.