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Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

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Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#221

Post by berkut »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #217
berkut wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mental ray is no longer heavily used in the industry for feature films: it hasn't been since ~2013 (when Arnold came around). After Effects doesn't really belong on this list? Gazebo is a preview renderer explicitly designed for GPU use, it's not designed for accurate lighting or material look. Manuka is not GPU accelerated (it used to be when first written, but it wasn't worth it given complexity of build setup for…

> Mental ray is no longer heavily used in the industry for feature films You didn't say "feature films", you said "film and TV." You're goalpost-shifting / no-true-scotsman'ing. > it hasn't been since ~2013 (when Arnold came around). The Arnold I mentioned that is GPU accelerated? Or a different Arnold? Just checking. > high end VFX facilities Again with the goalpost shifting / no-true-scotsman-ing > aren't really us…

I think you're confusing me for the other poster - that was the first time I've responded to you...

I haven't moved any goalposts.

Arnold has only been GPU accelerated for a few years - not since 2013. Same with Renderman - XPU only came out this year, and still doesn't support everything on the GPU, including custom shaders (like Arnold GPU doesn't).

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#222

Post by reacharavindh »

Just for fun, I would run PostgreSQL on this Mac with 64GB of memory and see how it flies. Heck even install Linux on it and then put on Postgres. It might just put some baremetal servers to shame if 64GiB of memory is enough.

If only I had enough money to splurge on such curiosity experiments… :-(

For my personal machine, I’d wait for Framework with Ryzen 5000 series…

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#223

Post by Tsiklon »

saagarjha wrote: post #200
bredren wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they will with a new release of the “Afterburner” card, this time powered by Apple Silicon instead of FPGAs. https://www.gettingtechnologyright.com/apples-mac-pro-wheels... >The second bit of design is in the optional “Afterburner” video editing card. The discussion of it starts at around the 1hr. 26 min. point in the Keynote. It is described as a custom FPGA-based HW accelerator. It is claimed to be capable…

Isn't the point of a FPGA that you can reconfigure it? It seems like a waste to expend it on another CPU.

I’ve certainly seen in low volume specialty equipment (think things like Video Routers, and surprisingly some high end audio equipment) FPGAs being used where an ASIC would be a better fit. I suspect however this comes down to a business decision, that the time and money spent getting a run of an ASIC with the same logic put together may be better spent elsewhere.

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#224

Post by jbverschoor »

Thaxll wrote: post #80
glasshead969 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has to be 3x faster to match M1's efficiency given the TDP is 30 vs 105.

I could care less about efficiency, it's still 2x faster for 2/3x less expensive. Isn't the m1 max tdp between 60 and 90w?

You're comparing a single CPU with a complete machine

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#225

Post by glenneroo »

dagmx wrote: post #129
bhouston wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it is a bit stale. 3D artists these days want their render boxes to be filled with gpus so they can use cycles or redshift or octane to render fast. Old school artists use cpus these days.

Completely untrue. Most feature films are CPU rendered. Good luck getting a lot of high end production scenes rendering on a GPU.

Since when was the discussion purely feature films? Our little studio can't afford racks full of Xeon CPU renderers, so we do as GP said, using redshift, etc. and just have a ton of GPUs.

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#226

Post by jbverschoor »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #66
MangoCoffee wrote: post #9

>in order to give the M1 Max some real competition, one has to skip laptop chips entirely and reach for not just high end desktop chips, but for server-class workstation hardware to really beat the M1 Max this is really interesting

When these chips hit the rackmount Mac Pro, the server competition will be very interesting. It's kind of a unique package for a server, which such a powerful GPU, but that has advantages for some compute types too of course.

Wait max 2 years when the AWS contracts expire

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#227

Post by salamandersauce »

Dagonfly wrote: post #218
Thaxll wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An AMD Ryzen 9 5950X cost $700 and is almost 2x faster than an m1 max in multi core.

Ok, lets build an equivalent PC. These are prices in Germany (incl. VAT): A 14' Macbook Pro (M1 Max with 32 GPU cores, 32 GB RAM, 512 GB storage) is 3440€. A PC: 5950X (750€), 32GB RAM (150€), Mainboard (130€), WD SN850 500GB (90€). Now if you build from scratch you need a PSU, CPU cooler and a case (~200€ together). That's 1320€ without a GPU. Depending on your workload the GPU performance seems to be between a desk…

TBF GPU prices are nonsensical at this point in time. The MSRP of a 3060 Ti is $400, a 3080 should be $700.

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#228

Post by cma »

microtonal wrote: post #181
Thaxll wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An AMD Ryzen 9 5950X cost $700 and is almost 2x faster than an m1 max in multi core.

Except in benchmarks outside GeekBench it isn't. See e.g. the last graph in https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc... The 5950X is only 55% faster than the M1 Max on multi-threaded integer benchmarks. The M1 Max is even 26% faster than the 5950X on multi-threaded FP benchmarks (maybe it has two AMX units?). The M1 Max is really in 5900X/5950X territory... in a laptop. I agree on the pricing (I a…

> Both companies have done impressive work the last few years.

Apple bought timed-exclusive access to TSMC 5N and also now 5NP. On the same node the differences would be less.

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#229

Post by jbverschoor »

partiallypro wrote: post #55
MangoCoffee wrote: post #9

>in order to give the M1 Max some real competition, one has to skip laptop chips entirely and reach for not just high end desktop chips, but for server-class workstation hardware to really beat the M1 Max this is really interesting

Intel's Alder Lake benchmarks show that their new mobile processor is faster than the M1 Max. So, this domination doesn't seem to be a long term thing.

The same Intel that faked the CPU performance in 2018 by overclocking it and using some insane cooling?

Intel is playing this PR game where they release / announce or leak info, so people might try and wait for what Intel has to offer. It's super obvious, weak, and disingenuous.

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#230

Post by dagmx »

glenneroo wrote: post #225
dagmx wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely untrue. Most feature films are CPU rendered. Good luck getting a lot of high end production scenes rendering on a GPU.

Since when was the discussion purely feature films? Our little studio can't afford racks full of Xeon CPU renderers, so we do as GP said, using redshift, etc. and just have a ton of GPUs.

Because the commenter I replied to said that only old school artists render on the CPU. People pick the renderer that suits their needs, and it's not just a matter of old school people picking CPU pathtracers because it's what they know. You picked GPU rendering because you're, as you said, a smaller studio. That suits your needs. It's however not old school for big studios to use CPU rendering because GPU renderers just can't handle the scene complexity required yet.
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