Yeah, if Apple is trying to put RT cores in their phones then I’m sure they are thinking about their mobile PCs.
I just hope the power draw isn’t so high that they remove it from those too. We already know Apple likes to pride themselves on the fact that their laptops run the same unplugged as plugged in.
Maybe, and I’m completely ok with this, I always am.
Gotta remember even if it does come soon that it took Nvidia a few “known” generations to get where they are with the Ada series chips.
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Agreed. I’d rather a good performance per watt solution than sacrifice too much of the efficiency I’m currently enjoying. The Mac Studio audience might feel differently though.
Overall I am eager to see some RT solutions (I was pretty confident they’d be coming eventually), and just a little sad that there might have been some setbacks.
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I also wondered why, after I read the MR article, it took so long
until traffic rises here 
After the MR article, which I did not consequently read first, there
came also typical copy/translate/paste articles on german media,
where I am not sure about the wording …
So I went to the original source, to check how exactly it was worded,
but before I came to Raytracing, the text dimmed behind the paywall.
So I am not sure,
was there explicitly said that the GPU really had RT hardware ?
Or just like MR sounds more like, things like RT.
MR said unexpected power consume, which “could” lead to fast
battery drawn and thermal issues.
While the german article said it actually caused … these things …
And can Apple really swap all A14 GPU things and replace them
by A13 GPU things for that SoC that fast and easy ?
Were all things still green at the time the Mac Pro was said to be
introduced at another day ? And rumored to be cancelled after
Apple got aware of and because of the A SoC incident ?
Some article also said, the reason was that Apple restructured the
chip team … before or after the “snafu” ?
And was it restructured because many important developers (up to 40?)
left to found these new 3rd party startups … ?
Or was the restructuring because the snafu, or because later even more
developers flew to the 3rd Party startups ?
The setbacks don’t surprise me. I have been with Apple since the Mac Plus and my last three purchases have had unacceptable quality problems including requiring swapping my iPad Pro for anew one which also had the same problem. Adding also the trash can Pro and the other disappointments, I think Apple has serious problems in the Mac realm since Steve Jobs.
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The (2017 ?) Mac Book keyboard and in general dilemma may have
been a sad peak. But I think there was enough to complain already
while Steve Jobs was still Apple CEO.
And I could swear, Trash Can was a 100% Steve Jobs product.
And it was some years before when let us (Modo CPU Render users)
know that he thinks CPU power is deprecated.
I just say, “you are holding it wrong …”
I think, after fixing 2019 Macbook Pro models, Big Sur and finally
first M1 devices … Apple was back on track with products AND
reliability.
But I notice that since Steve Jobs went away,
the premise went from “we wanna build the best products” more
to we want Apple to be the best company and therefore mainly
boutique products … and prices.
I think it was an 100% Jony Ive product.
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I think at least with 100% agreement of Steve Jobs.
Single CPU but 2 GPU clearly a Steve Jobs guideline.
I think real Jony Ive, without a missing Steve Jobs’s influence
was when everything got thinner and function started really
suffering under form.
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And I think, at that time,
Apple was already thinking of M SoC desktops and really believing
that the iPad would really kill the PC completely soon.
OSX/macOS stagnation, desktop hardware stall, …
But however, strictly denying a merge of macOS and iPadOS OS
and devices, Pen Input on Desktops, … until today.
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Yes, the MR article references the original Information article as saying raytracing issues. But if you want a little more, the 9to5 article actually quotes the original Information piece with the words “hardware-accelerated raytracing.”
“…the new GPU would have supported advanced features such as hardware-accelerated ray tracing, according to The Information.”
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Thank you very much !
So now we can speculate for a few months if they will be able/willing
to produce M2 Pro/Max/Ultra/Not-so-Extreme SoCs with hardware RT
in the near future.
Or if it will need smaller process to make it feasible, power consuming
wise for iOS, iPadOS or even only macOS (?), at all.
Or several more architecture revisions (M3, M4, …) (?)
So no more excuse for Unreal Engine/Twinmotion to point to no Apple
RT hardware acceleration ?
(I personally think it is just that because they based their whole
Path Tracer, RT and things on Nvidia and DirectX !?)
I would think it would be embarrassing, but not unlikely that Apple
ignores RT hardware accelerations for several reasons.
But if it is reliable that Apple worked on hardware RT cores.
And we know they work on Blender in 3D.
we may have great times ahead of us.
I still think, at one point, Ton talks to us from a WWDC keynote
one day. And Apple will tell that an optimized 3D Software will
be faster with a 35 Watt Apple ARM SoC in 3D than a usual
current Threadripper Nvidia combo with 800 Watts.
At least I hope so 
On the other hand,
If M2 Pro/Max/… will be released soon - but without hardware RT cores …
do I have to wait another 2 years until I could buy a Studio (?)
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If that’s your approach you will always be waiting for the next bigger better thing and never upgrade.
My personal approach is to evaluate if a newer machine is a substantial improvement over my current one, and then go ahead and buy it, even if rumors speculate on something even more awesome around the corner. Apple stuff keeps pretty good value so I have been known to sell my older stuff when I buy a new Mac to offset the expense.
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Precisely. IMO no “insanely great” products in their priorities.
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Yes exactly and why I will upgrade probably in March or April as even without RT cores I can expect like 3 x performance improvement in GPU alone as I am running a 14 core at the moment and the M2 Max will have 38 cores (or so rumors say).
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I really really really hope that between the Metal back-end, further optimizations in Cycles Metal in Blender 3.6, and a decent bang-for-the-buck in the $3000 range for the M2 Mac Studio that I will finally feel compelled enough to give Apple more money (well…besides the $250 I gave them for a pair of Air Pods Pro 2).
For me, this machine would have to clear a fairly high bar in terms of performance in Blender since it would have to beat, or at least reasonably match the renders I’m getting on my Hackintosh with the 6900XT GPU.
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Unless they are really amazing with what they do with the Cycles optimization I am not sure if you can expect that from the M2 generation (unless there is RT cores and it gives us a big boost).
My best guess is M2 Max might reach AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT level performance.
Base M2 Ultra probably AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT.
With a maxed out (minus SSD) M1 Ultra Mac Studio coming in at $5800, it’s going to be ultra tempting, and almost me choosing it over anything else, if the Gen 2 Studios have RT cores this go around.
The new workstation RTX 6000 (48GB VRAM) cards released December 3rd (don’t confuse with RTX A6000 from several years ago) are going to cost anywhere from $7500 to $8500 if initial listing are correct.
If a Gen 2 Mac Studio is just half the speed of that card I will take the Studio with 128GB VRAM, no questions asked. The 48GB in that $8000 card vs 128GB VRAM Studio is NOT a good deal. Holy Fs, the card alone will cost more than the maxed spec Studio! Also found out that Nvidia removed NVlink from the new workstation cards… 
My reasoning is pretty simple. I want to load any scene or simulation into the GPU without any work arounds or stipulations. I really couldn’t care less if the render is a minute faster if it can’t even fit in the VRAM.
If the Studio RT can give me 3090 raytraced speeds at with a 128GB VRAM… sold!
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Tested 3.5 with Metal on intel iMac Pro 8 core Vega 56. My animated Christmas Card (1 fully rigged character speeding through a city) went from 5-6 fps to 20-21 fps in Viewport Shading! There’s depth of field, Bloom, AO in my previews.
This is great news, even for older hardware. Image attached to give you an idea of the scene. No heavy compositing in Blender, just Crypto.
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Just a little appreciation post for Michael Jones, Michael Parkin-White, Jason Fielder, and anyone else has been involved in getting Blender optimized on Apple hardware!
I was looking back on the first posts in this thread, and along with excitement about Apple silicon there was a lot of trepidation about Blender’s future on the platform. Two years later, what we’ve ended up getting is honestly more than I could have ever anticipated.
Personally, I went from the most disappointing Apple hardware I’d ever owned (2018 Macbook Pro) to probably the best (2021 M1 Max). Between Apple’s code contributions and Blender’s own work on Cycles X (and the promise of Eevee Next), we’ve seen some of the largest software side speedups in such a short timespan, too.
Anyway, I know there’s still plenty of hope for further improvements in both hardware and software, but sometimes its nice to sit back and appreciate the great work thats already been done. So kudos to those involved in making it happen!
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Hi all
Silly Mac dude question:
My aging 5.1 macpro 2012 I feel is falling behind fast now.
So I am considering for the windows based apps like Revit - ansys discovery etc to get a pc.
Where would be a good cost effective place to gonto?
It seems the cpu is less a need than an rtx nvidia card.
What would be an adequate rtx card in your point of view?