Mac: M2 Ultra - *VR (Part 2)

CNN Breaking News: $6,000 computer now includes a keyboard and mouse.

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is it just me or does anyone else find the mac pro case really ugly? :slight_smile: those stands, the handle, the much too big cheese grater holes,ā€¦ and does it even have dust filters?

i find the design really strange for apple.

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If you look at the design of the Airpods Max first, the Mac Pro becomes beautiful.

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Itā€™s pretty terrible. I really liked the original aluminum G towers, those still look nice. And still think the vintage (pre-iMac) cases look great. But that mac pro - yeah, awful. Itā€™s like someone said ā€œi need more cowbellā€, and they started by drilling holes IN a cowbell.

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Mac Mini M4 Pro now comes with 24GB Ram and 12-core CPU and 16-core GPU for 1399 $ or with 14-core CPU and 20-core GPU for 1599 $.

Now we switch from waiting for specs to waiting for benchmarks :slightly_smiling_face:

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:partying_face:

Mac mini

  • Apple M4 Pro chip with 14ā€‘core CPU, 20ā€‘core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
  • 64GB unified memory
  • 8TB SSD storage
  • 10 Gigabit Ethernet
  • Three Thunderbolt 5 ports, HDMI port, two USBā€‘C ports, headphone jack

$4,699.00

funny and good advertising!

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Watch out: Since CyclesX its not recommended to NOT use tile rendering. In other words: Cycles is fastest if you donā€™t set tile/bucks size yourself, but let the renderer choose. Only in some edge cases is manual tile size faster. Cycles will pick the best size for GPU and CPU tiles. If you donā€™t use tiles on larger frame sizes, memory usage will be too high.

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Screenshot 2024-10-29 at 16.39.05
These GPU features are very interesting to Blendheads. Most if them were introduced on the M3 GPU, but may the ā€œimproved schedulerā€ is better than M3.

Watch out for the 6 efficiency cores in the M4 CPU thoughā€¦ only 4 performance cores.

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The Mac Mini Pro as an interim computer seems like a possibly good option, I would consider sticking with 24gb of RAM and perhaps upgrading to a 1Tb internal (although once again as an interim machine 512gb is workable as a system drive.

Where I would consider upgrading is the CPU/GPU cores.

With those specs, the price is a more workable $1600 (or $2000 with the 48gb RAM upgrade).

My next question would be ā€“ how would this compare to an M2 Studio Max (which is also $2000)? If the performance is faster, and the render times considerably better due to the RT cores and faster processing, it seems like a pretty good deal.

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Cycles: 2X for HWRT, another 30% for generational speed increase. Eevee/Viewport: mostly only the latter, probably a little boost from the Dynamic Caching, Mesh Shading is more for games I think.

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Leak! Too many leaks. I think itā€™s all perfect marketing. :smiley:

About the Mac Mini M4 ā€œThe memory bandwidth is also higher, going from 120GB/s in the M4 to 273GB/s.ā€

I wonder if this means more efficient memory swapping that will require less actual physical RAM to get the same performance?

I assume the internal storage specs are also faster than before.

:joy::joy:

LOL! :laughing:

As usual, the price of a maxed-out Mac Mini is reasonably comparable to a base-model Mac Studio.

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RIP USB-A on Mac mini (2005-2024)

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Good riddance! I am sure I have wasted countless hours trying to plug something in, reverse it, then reverse it again!

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This is according to the Apple info: ā€œCompared to the M2 Pro Mac mini (released in 2023) it replaces, Apple states that the M4 Pro ā€œcompletes 3D renders up to 2.9x faster in Blender.ā€

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Iā€™m eagerly awaiting the M4 Pro Mac Mini benchmarks, and how they compare to NVIDIA GPUs.

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Letā€™s wait for Thursday, then the Mac Studio will certainly arrive. Friday the Mac Pro BIG :smiley:

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Cycles actually do nothing here. Itā€™s totally stupid when it comes to GPU memory. The only thing that kicks in, is the tile size maximum. Yet thatā€™s is how you control it. I recommend 512 pixel size, because I had tons of memory problems, especially on Windows (16GB is kind of standard on render farms). Also I render mostly in 4k size.
If you use displacement, GPU really is your enemy.

If you come from Octane, like me, you may thing GPU with 4-8 GB is enough, but Blender waste a lot memory. For example if you use Eeves viewport before, restart Blender or your memory is already full.

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