Mac M2 Render Speed Test

[zoomer]

7 minutes ago, Christiaan said:

That 128 GB RAM was purchased from MacSales.com at the time.

 

Each time I want to upgrade or build a machine .... I am regularly also on

the wrong side of the RAM/memory price pork cycle .....

 

Currently I should better buy SSDs, but do not really have a need for it now.

[Don Seidel]

2 hours ago, zoomer said:

But who would buy RAM from Apple,?

 

Everyone, unfortunately.

For the last few years Mac's ram has not been user-changeable. Soldered to the logic board. And now with M-chips, the ram is part of the actual chip. That's part of what makes them so fast. But the ram size is locked in at purchase, impossible to ever change unless you've got some pretty sophisticated equipment, if possible even then. We're not talking repair shop stuff here.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Don Seidel

[zoomer]

But it was about a 2019 Intel iMac 27" (?)

 

Yes, no chance for M1/M2 Macs.

Even the rumors for a "modular" Mac Pro upgradeability look strange.

Slots for something yes, but not for extra RAM or GPUs, maybe for an SSD !?

In same 2019 MP chassis, may contain a lot of warm air ...

 

 

[E|FA]

6 hours ago, Pat Stanford said:

Maybe I need to break out laptops separate from stationary machines so we don't get confused by the "extras" included in the laptop price.

I think that would be helpful if it's not much of an effort.  I would probably include iMacs with the laptops due to the cost of a separate 5K monitor.

[line-weight]

4 hours ago, Pat Stanford said:

I agree that the Value calculation does not work well. Can you suggest a different option? I have tried $/Render, and Renders/$ both give misleading information.

 

Here is a version of the table that just shows the number of renders per day for each system instead of the Value.

 

 

here I have made the "value rating" (renders per day) / (price) x 100

 

Higher "value rating" means better value

 

[E|FA]

The updated chart makes me really curious as to how a Mini M2 (not Pro) with 24GB memory would do.  $1200 with 512GB SSD.  Add $200 for 1TB.  Not my dream machine, but likely the best value for my purposes.

[line-weight]

If anyone is willing to indulge me....

 

 

 

[grant_PD]

On my machine I get 11 min 30 sec to render the file.  

But, if I Send to C4D, with the exact same render settings (vw exports them for me, I'm not adjusting anything), I get 1 min 26 secs.

Just food for thought.  

[FBernardo]

My Render time with an M1 Pro 16", Base line, with OS 13.2 ( not connected to power and around 35% of battery down, a few apps open and safari with a few tabs.

 

14m20s.

Ventura 13.2

M1 Pro 16"

CPU - 10 Cores

Ram - 16GB

HDD - 1TB

GPU - 16 Cores

Edited February 4, 2023 by FBernardo

[neal-2002]

Thanks for this - very interesting. I’d recently worked out spec wise with geek benchmarks that the new mini m2 max was at least >2x faster than my current hackintosh (i7 6700 24gb vega56 8gb) which is a rule I try and stick to (upgrades need to be x2 better!🤣).

 

my test renders taken 31m…but rendering in vw is pretty irrelevant nowadays for me due to twinmotion. (Only do sketch B&W shaded or paper white renders with lines in vw since TM - or maybe its because VW is so slow at it on MY machine.)

 

but based on this table - m2 pro mini may just be what I need and looks to be a great balance £/performance - I only do private residential extensions (vw 3d/bim) and exports to twinmotion 3ds. (So nothing too big really (<400mb VW files)). M2 pro with 32gb (is therefore similar memory total to what I currently have too.)

 

only thing I’m weary about is the lack of native gpu raytracing for twinmotion (I’m currently doing final rendering on a rtx3700/amd 32gb Lenovo  laptop I bought for this specifically along with VR twinmotion at clients homes)…just weary of buying this and typical Apple making that only available to the newer M3/4....

 

maybe I should just take the plunge....£400 markup for 16GB!! maybe ill just get a used Studio M1 max then!😡

Edited February 7, 2023 by neal-2002

[zeno]

I repeated the experiment with no open applications and no external monitors

 

M2 MAX 92 GB 16"

 

9:26

 

But couldn't we do a test of the same file with render in GPU and redshift?

[Mark Aceto]

10 hours ago, neal-2002 said:

only thing I’m weary about is the lack of native gpu raytracing for twinmotion (I’m currently doing final rendering on a rtx3700/amd 32gb Lenovo  laptop I bought for this specifically along with VR twinmotion at clients homes)…just weary of buying this and typical Apple making that only available to the newer M3/4....

 

Modeling in VW on ARM is wonderful but keep the Windows machine for rendering in TM/UE.

[Mark Aceto]

On 2/1/2023 at 2:53 PM, line-weight said:

 

here I have made the "value rating" (renders per day) / (price) x 100

 

Higher "value rating" means better value

 

 

Would be great to find someone with a 13900 and 4080 for half the cost of that top row:

 

[Mark Aceto]

6:18

 

Mac Studio

• Apple M1 Ultra with 20-core CPU
• 64-core GPU
• 32-core Neural Engine
• 128GB unified memory
• 2TB SSD storage
• macOS Monterey 12.6.3

No other apps open. Last restart was 6 hours ago.

 

Looking at the table, it's pretty clear that with CPU rendering like FQRW / Cinema, the number of cores is the biggest factor (which we've known forever). As I've said elsewhere, based on my experience with this M1 Ultra, the gains from increasing 12 to 20 cores are almost exclusively with RW. I got this Studio for FQRW. If I ever decide I don't need FQRW / Custom RW, I'll happily replace it with a M2 MBP.

 

Screenshots for context... 

 

Max CPU, min GPU/RAM:

 

Min CPU, max GPU/RAM:

 

(BTW my RAM is parked at 18% while I type this)

 

App timer (there was about a 5 second delay after pressing the Update button before there timer and SBBOD launched):

 

Phone timer:

 

 

Edited February 8, 2023 by Lunar Waneshaft

[zoomer]

9 hours ago, Lunar Waneshaft said:

Would be great to find someone with a 13900 and 4080 for half the cost of that top row:

 

 

[Huug]

33:35

 

Quad core i7 - 3,4 GHz (6700)

32 GB ram

Radeon RX 580  

 

expected worse, but time to upgrade anyway

[Mark Aceto]

6 hours ago, zoomer said:

 

 

 

I stopped watching these clickbait cringe clowns sometime in 2021 or 2022. They're the worst.

[Mark Aceto]

15 hours ago, Lunar Waneshaft said:

Would be great to find someone with a 13900 and 4080 for half the cost of that top row:

 

@The Hamma are you running anything comparable to this system that you could test the file with?

[The Hamma]

5 minutes ago, Lunar Waneshaft said:

@The Hamma are you running anything comparable to this system that you could test the file with?

 

Sorry, No not yet. 

[neal-2002]

On 2/8/2023 at 1:45 PM, Huug said:

33:35

 

Quad core i7 - 3,4 GHz (6700)

32 GB ram

Radeon RX 580  

 

expected worse, but time to upgrade anyway

pretty much same as my build/times - same cpu but Vega 56 and slightly less memory (24) - upgrade - only if you use for rendering I guess - rest of my system works fine with VW drawing/modelling.

Edited February 9, 2023 by neal-2002

[Huug]

I'm waiting for the Mac Studio M2, to see how the base model compares to a fully loaded Mini M2 pro. I would prefer the Studio for the bigger cooler, it might help against throttling with Cpu intensive tasks.

[Christiaan]

On 2/8/2023 at 5:06 PM, Lunar Waneshaft said:

 

I stopped watching these clickbait cringe clowns sometime in 2021 or 2022. They're the worst.

I think you're missing out. Notice the question mark at the end of the title? It's all in very good humour. It's actually extremely informative.

Edited February 10, 2023 by Christiaan

[Don Seidel]

On 1/31/2023 at 11:27 AM, sdfireguy said:

Can someone tell me how to run rendering this file?

If you're talking about the original speed test file, it's a VP on a sheet layer. Simply select the VP and hit "update" in the Object Info Palette

[ColinW]

8:11, AMD Risen 7 7700, 64Gb Ram, RTX 3070 OC 8Gb, Windows 11 (£1,520 in 2023)

27.20, MacPro 2013 12 Core, 32Gb MacOS 12.6.4 (£4,000 in 2014)

 

 

[Dave Donley]

Dropbox says the link was deleted, can someone share this file please?