Hi, Michael Jones publish a patch for Apple Silicon providing 40% performance boost, if I understand correctly, for review.
https://developer.blender.org/D14645
Cheers, mib
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Nice sure seems to have a bigger impact the more cores you have. Curious to see how that does on my 14 core.
It seems to be 33 % on the 24 core and 40 on the 32 core 
.
If that scales the ultras could really benefit.
Would that make like 54% on the 48 core?
Also interesting that would get the 32core the to between 6600 XT and 6700 XT perf 
And the 64 core close the expected 6800 XT, shame that model in so steep in price.
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I still kinda want to get a Mac Studio, but all these recent stories have been scaring the crap out of me.
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I wanted too but now I am definitely waiting till WWDC.
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Very interesting. This is exactly the type of thing that I hope keeps happening over the next few months, hopefully resulting in a considerably faster speed than what weāre seeing right now.
As I mentioned above, perhaps the speed increases will eventually make purchasing a Mac Studio like a much more sensible investment than it currently is.
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Itās looking more and more like the M1 is for the early adopters willing to put up with the caveats of a new technology line.
It wouldnāt be so bad waiting for the next iteration if Apple would release their entire lineup on a yearly basis, instead of staggering it by low end 1st year, high end the next.
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Yeah I know to think that the M2 Max is probably like 18 month out or so 
I wish they would surprise us, but donāt think so.
Still hoping to see the M2 teased at WWDC however.
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Does here anybody actually have a studio max ?
Iād say my current M1 Max machine feels like way less of a gen 1 machine than the one from 2018 it has replaced. that old machine had constant kernel panics from the t2 chip, faulty keyboard design, glitchy Touch Bar, and ran hot (at release I remember videos of people putting them in fridges to try to adequately cool them)
I think the main perceived shortcoming of these new machines is that apple themselves have invited the comparisons to the fastest CPUs and GPUs in the consumer market. the CPU chest thumping is reasonably justified. but their GPU claims were just setting themselves up for embarrassment.
and its a bit unfortunate since these GPUs are still a substantial improvement over their previous generation and a definite step in the right direction. its just that they had a LOT of ground to make up on the gpu side of things, and thereās still a ways to go.
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I know there has been recent discussion about optimization related to how the chip handles memory, but I also wonder what Blender can do if parts were optimized for the 3D cache debuting with AMDās new 5800X3D chip (available now).
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D review - Introduction (guru3d.com)
AMD designed the chip for games (which currently benefit the most from extra cache) and in that case it is performing exactly as designed. I do wonder if Eevee can already net significant benefits from the design since the realtime graphics are not exactly dissimilar to what is found in a modern game engine.
Beside that it sits on an extra Layer on top of the usual die,
I think it works just like any other L3 cache - and so needs
no code optimizations (?)
Opposed to Apples tiled rendering which needs special code
to fill and access memory, without overloading their ātoo smallā
cache.
Which needs lot of changes and is not compatible to anything
else than Apple ARM. So I do not expect that many of
cross platform Apps are much interested in doing so.
They have, or are still working, on supporting a second Graphic
API just for Appleās Metal.
Are there any up-to-date benchmarks from the new Studio models for Blender demo scenes rendering that I could check on?
I know there was an attempt a while back to build a comprehensive database but I donāt think it caught on.
Mostly wanting to see what render times people are getting on the Pro and Max configurations (Ultra would be cool also, but 1. I donāt think anyoneās got one and 2. Iām under the impression that at the moment the code isnāt really taking advantage of it).
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The Macs Fan Control tool now supports the Mac Studio as well. 
I guess the heat sink should be enough to cool the machine when itās idle.
As fas as I read you canāt turn them off and they will always run at min 1100 RPM.
On a side note.
I am really crossing my fingers now for the M2 Pro mini with my guess 12 CPU cores and 20 GPU cores at a reasonable price (announced at WWDC).
Would love to see how that performs even if it might make my decision more difficult.
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I think Apple will always keep the Mini as entry level and and the Studio as the more powerful device. They may put the pro in their iMacs though.
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Even the pro in the Mini would make sense as you canāt get it in the Studio and there is the higher end intel one that they still did not replace.
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Just wanted to chime in with a Hackintosh/AMD/Metal update. Yesterday I started posting and I was initially unsure if the whole AMD/Metal thing was working, but after running some tests today I have to say Iām really impressed.
It took me a bit to update to Monterey, first because there was no need to, then because 12.3 created issues with AMD GPUās which werenāt resolved until 12.3.1; and finally because I was in the middle of another project and didnāt have time to re-do my whole system.
I mentioned before that I much prefer to reformat and reinstall everything from scratch when doing a major OS update, even if itās not entirely necessary. Itās a PITA for sure, but itās always kept things neat and tidy, and itās a good Spring cleaning habit to get into since after a year+ my system drive becomes bloated with a bunch of stuff I donāt use.
I was looking into getting a Studio Max (I still am), but until the ARM/M1 gets further optimized in Blender Iām not 100% sure this is the best option for me. Iām currently running a 5700XT, and Iāve been looking to update to a 6900XT, but first wanted to get a sense if it was a worthy expenditure, even if the GPU prices are finally coming down to something resembling the MSRP.
I will be doing more tests of course, but in the meantime here are some initial results based on my iMac Pro Hackintosh which has the 18-core i9 and the 5700XT. I also ran the same tests on my Mac Book Air M1 (7-core model, 16gb) as a comparison. This is running in Blender 3.1.2
Classroom:
Mac Book Air M1 CPU only: 13:35
Mac Book Air M1 GPU only: 6:41
Mac Book Air M1 CPU/GPU combo: 5:33
Hackintosh CPU only: 3:41
Hackintosh GPU only: 1:16
Hackintosh CPU/GPU combo: 1:11
Monster Under the Bed:
Mac Book Air M1 CPU only: 20:40
Mac Book Air M1 GPU only: 10:50
Mac Book Air M1 CPU/GPU combo: 8:20
Hackintosh CPU only: 5:46
Hackintosh GPU only: 2:04
Hackintosh CPU/GPU combo: 1:43
So in broad strokes, the addition of the GPU roughly doubles the speed on the M1, and roughly triples the speed in the Hackintosh compared to the CPU, and adds some minor bump when using both the CPU and GPU for rendering.
Iām probably going to be picking up the 6900XT within the next two weeks. Based on the Geekbench Metal scores, the 5700XT gets a 75,000 and the 6900XT gets almost 200,000. If the scalability is roughly the same for Cycles, that would imply a doubling or even tripling the render speed on the Hackintosh, potentially yielding a Classroom render time of about 30 seconds and a Monster render time of about 45 seconds. This is just speculative at this point since I wonāt know for sure until I install the new GPU and actually run the same tests, but in either case this would make the Studio Ultra not even close in terms of render speed. Itās really too bad that Apple has decided against supporting eGPUās. It seems to me that, even with an external GPU bottleneck, it would be a substantial improvement for rendering. Perhaps Apple is thinking that allowing eGPU would affect the motivation for customers to get the higher-GPU options, but as of right now theyāre only making me not want to buy the Studio which makes me think that this is a rather short-sighted strategy on their part if that is their reasoning.
Anyhooā¦more to come!
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Nice thanks for sharing.
I also believe that the eGPU not working is intentional and not technical.
I found out about the cutest GPU Nvidia makes and it only uses 70 watts.
Gets a decent score of 2083 in blender open data bench.
Unfortunately no nvidia driver for Hackintosch.
Would have been a great GPU to build a small Hackintosch Studio 
Seems to be a quite impressive little card consider it is not far of the 6900 XT it seems at like 4-5 less power, what is Nvidia doing 
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Got a brand name for that? I tried looking up 70 watt Nvidia GPUs, and got a lot of links for everything else but.