mac studio / mac pro m2 ultra

[BigAl3D]

So the Corona site shows an example using an i9-13980HX, which is a very recent chip. It came in at 7.5 million so the M2 Ultra scores faster than that chip, but I don't think that's the fastest version. Looks like the i9-13900KF comes in at 14.5 million. Not surprisingly, the Threadripper dominates the benchmark tests. The top chip comes in at a whopping 26 million. You pay for that of course. I believe you can buy a maxed-out Mac Studio for less than just that chip. Then you need the box and a massive cooling system for the Ripper too. Depends on your situation.

Just to show how things have indeed gotten better for Mac users, I ran it on my 2017 iMac Pro 28 core, 128 GB RAM and it came in around 6.4 million. The new chips are much better, but I would have thought that after almost 7 years and new architecture, that difference would be much wider. For me, at least, moving to a new box that's twice as fast would be huge change.

[Philw]

Yep - the main reason I sit here using the M1Max Macbook Pro for the majority of my Corona/C4D work is the lack of heat, noise and power draw from the wall. Makes such a huge difference in the current energy mess.

[prince_jr]

Here's the score for the Ultra...

thanks for the benchmark. :o) so, this is it…11.0m r/s for mac studio m2 ultra!?
i’m curious, does ram (128gb or 192gb) have an additional impact on faster render times? because the benchmark test was done with (only) 64gb ram.

[Philw]

I wouldn't say so on the benchmark, no. Only in real life on heavy geometry scenes.

[Philw]

If I was buying it would be a long term investment so I'd be getting 192GB. My M1Max with 64GB is stuggling with heavy scenes.

[burnin]

... and as I gathered, RAM not used by CPU can be used by GPU... which I consider quite a smart thing.

[Philw]

Maybe :-)

Currently trying to work out what's starving my C4D/Corona/M1Max on heavy scenes and I THINK its the VRAM aspect of it. So greedy C4D viewport actually ends up starving RAM for CPU and then boom...

Ongoing investigation for me.

[burnin]

This shouldn't happen.
Likely a mem. leak... (see, if same happens w/ Blender)

[BigAl3D]

Unless I really need to see materials and colors in the viewport on a larger scene, I just turn them off until I need to see them. Makes a big difference for me.

[Philw]

It looks like it MIGHT be a combinaton of issues on C4D vs MacOS 13.x in combination with the :automated out-of-core textures" in render settings.

Still testing.

[wsiew]

Hello,
there is something I still do not quite understand. In the old benchmark, the MacPro 2019 (Xeon W-3275M 2.50GHz) achieves 12,178,400 rays. The MacStudio M1 ultra achieves 6,780,610 rays in the old benchmark. It is only half as fast as the MacPro.
In the new benchmark, the MacStudio M2 ultra achieves 11,029,942 rays (see page 2 in this thread). The MacStudio M1 Max achieves 4,753,992 in the new benchmark. The M1 ultra would be twice as fast (i.e. approx. 9,500,000).
Unfortunately there is no MacPro 2019 result for the new benchmark. How fast would it be. Would it also have 12,178,400 rays? If so, that would be about 10% faster than the M2 ultra.
I am considering buying an M2 ultra. But a MacPro 2019 Xeon W3275 would also be a good alternative. E.g. you could alternatively render on this machine with AMD cards redshift GPU.
Have I classified and estimated the benchmark results correctly?
Many greetings, Wolfgang

[Jef Teerlinck]

Just got my Mac Studio with the M2 ultra. I've uploaded the result of the benchmark to the user-submitted results for all who was waiting for that. The result is very similar to what PhilW posted before.

[frv]

Just benchmarked my Mac Studio M1 128Gb / 2Tb ssd.
9144775

20% slower than the M2 ultra posted here. 20% is also the difference in cores, 24 to 20. So the m1 or the m2 is apart from the core count more or less the same. I think Apple had to raise the cores from 20 to 24 otherwise there would not have been a noticeable difference.

I wonder if there is a difference between the 128 and the 196 model for the benchmark. The same for 60 or 76 GPU.

Looking at the benchmarks the much higher core/thread count of the i9 and the 7950 only makes a 20% difference compared to the m2. The m2 cpu could be much more effective compared to the i9 and 7950 considering the workflow before rendering.

What takes a bit out of the fun working with Apple is that you can buy a 20% faster PC for less than half of the price of a Mac Studio not even considering the much less expensive monitors you would most likely get for a PC. You can get two PC's for the same price as a Mac Studio and be over a 100% faster......or keep working on the other PC while rendering....

Just checked prices:
AMD PC 7950x cpu / 4070ti gpu is 2800€ incl. vat
20% slower rendering for the Mac Studio m2 at 6300€ incl. vat


I just benchmaked my late 2015 4 core (4000MHz) 32Gb iMac. 1533353. 6 times slower than my 20 core m1 Studio. So for the benchmark processor speed per core hasn't changed much over 8 years......I am a bit surprised actually. Apparently core count is all that matters. Hence the scores of the threadrippers.

[Philw]

For me the difference in power draw from the wall with the M1/M2 is a big deal right now.

[frv]

I wonder how much difference is that. I think you have a few years to go before you've made up for 3000€.