thanks! no bug report yet since i haven’t been able to construct a shareable file to demonstrate the issue (plus it might involve letting 2000 frames render over a couple hours to fully get a system out of memory crash, although memory usage creep should be quite evident sooner in activity monitor).
also, i guess to be thorough i should try out 4.5 on my 2080 ti pc, although it can get unstable at the resolutions i do in its own ways (less vram than apple silicon, so its a bit apples to oranges for memory usage).
i’m actually rendering large scale projection walls using eevee. so sometimes the outputs go up to 11k! but i have observed the ram creeping up even on a smaller render that was 1024x768 and less than 1000 frames.
not using any new eevee shader displacement or adaptive subdivision stuff, although i do use geo nodes, but often for relatively simple setups with no simulation zones or caches.
something else that has occurred to me is that i’m doing ffmpeg exports rather than image sequences (bad practice i know, but its to keep file sizes and wrangling sane with outputs of this size.) i wonder if the ffmpeg library in blender has had any updates that could be leaking memory. the addition of prores was one of the things i wanted to try out in 4.5, but this leak occurs for me when using any of the codecs like h264 or h265.
oh and last thing i should probably be verifying is if compositor makes a difference since i’m trying to use that more since it got gpu accelerated (although again i’m not seeing these leaks in 4.4 which also has the same compositor setup).
anyway, plenty more i can be doing to isolate the issue on my end. mostly just wanted to raise awareness in case other people happen to notice something similar!
one thing I have observed is extremely high memory usage when trying to denoise large images using GPU. I had a 12000x8000 image crash on that, was trying to use 80Gb VRAM. I reverted back to CPU denoising.
Really hoping for some help from you guys on what to buy. First of all let me start by saying that this year has been disastrous work wise which means I am limited with my budget, but I can no longer hold off on buying an ARM Mac…so here goes:
Option 1. Refurbished Mac Studio M4 Max, 48gb Ram, 512gb SSD, 16 core CPU, 40 core GPU, 16 core Neural Engine - $2300 (currently not available, but hopefully more units will be available soon enough)
Option 2. New Mac Studio M2 Ultra, 64gb Ram, 1tb SSD, 24 core CPU, 60 core GPU, 32 core Neural Engine - $2500 (from Costco, currently in stock).
I should also mention that in addition to Blender,I work heavily in Resolve as well as After Effects.
Depending on the consensus, I might make a purchase as soon as possible.
Looks like the M4 Max is 80 % faster in Blender Rendering (I didn’t expect that). CPU multi-threaded on par, but much faster single core performance for overall usage experience.
But I think 48 GB memory is on the lower side and (my upgraded!) 512 GB SSD was nearly full on my M1 Mini after 4 years. Although I have all data external, but too much Software …
If that is no limitation for you, I would go with the M4 Max.
I have never seen any reasonable priced refurbished Mac from Apple. That is nearly the price for what you get a new Macs in 3rd party online shops. And even with their prices, if you compare power and features, discontinued Mac Model offers weren’t really attractive also.
Hmmh, no, I would not go for the M2 Ultra.
Besides you find a used one for 2000 or less …
I’d go for the M4 Max. It’s a better investment for the near future. Next to the arguments of the previous replies, the M2 Ultra will also be obsolete faster, requiring you to buy a new Mac sooner.
The main issue is really the amount of RAM – 48 vs 64. Is that an issue that will limit me?
The Blender Benchmarks is the first place I looked, but I am also very aware that it’s a fairly narrow set of data points and doesn’t necessarily paint the full picture. For instance, my Mac Book Air M1 feels snappier and can render almost as fast in EEVEE Next as my Hackintosh with 4 times the RAM and a 6900Xt GPU.
Overall it was not really a problem with my 16GB Mini to open large projects. I just ran into problems if a single App wanted more than these 16 GB - OS, then it starts to get very laggy. No problem if all Apps together need more memory than available, then it can swap fine.
Take a look at Blenders typical memory consumption for your kind of projects and Resolve in Activity Monitor. And estimate how that could rise in its future usage.
When I had my Mac Studio M2 it had 32 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD and that was fine (with external SSDs and NAS of course) in terms of resources. So 48 GB RAM will work nicely IMHO.
Probably all depends on what you do. I’d personally probably feel the sting of an m2 before the 48gb (because I agree 64 does feel like a nice to have in media creation - but I’d rather see faster renders all the time rather than the flexibility of not hitting swap disk on rare occasions with particularly large projects, but ymmv)
I would rather take a MacBook. It will be faster in most cases. However, the Studio also has advantages. It is certainly quieter under load (my MacBook M3 Max sometimes is annoying and M4 Max is even louder). It is also easier to organize the desk, connect additional devices. For the MacBook, a Thunderbolt Dock is practically necessary (although this is not necessarily a big expense - I bought a used one for $40). Not everyone is comfortable working on a MacBook with an additional monitor above it. On the other hand, when working with an external keyboard and placing the monitor and MacBook side by side, the MacBook’s screen becomes small. All in all, a lot depends on your work style, as in my opinion, this may be more important than minor differences in performance. If it were the Studio M4 Max and the MacBook M4 Max and I were working stationary, I would definitely choose the Studio, but in this case (M4 Max vs M2 Ultra) I would bet on the newer technology.
Thank you all…decision is made. M4 Max with 48Gb it is. Now I need to wait for the Apple Refurb store to get them back in, hopefully they’ll refresh their inventory soon.
Actually I just rendered on a MBP 2023 with just 18 GB Ram… and once the damn texture and displacement memory management will be redone in Blender, I’m sure that even 8 GB will be enough.
I think they update their inventory every day at 7AM, so on that front, you probably won’t have to wait too long. The problem is, waiting for an affordable refurbed Max to arrive is like waiting for hen’s teeth. From what I’ve seen, people who buy the Max usually opt for maximum storage and RAM, so you’ll be paying a premium even buying used.
Maximum RAM, maybe, but TB5 performance is good enough to not pay the premium for more than 1TB internal SSD. Maxing the internal SSD is crazy expensive.
I agree, but I’m talking about what’s usually available on Apple’s refurb store. There may be some rare occasions where someone buys a Max, and only opts for 32GB and a 1TB drive, but more often than not, they’re always priced in the $5000+ range, which means that people almost always go for the upgrades alongside the pricier chips.
…and I could see why. When you’re already spending that much, there comes a point where you just look at your wallet, and say “you know what? **** it.”
What sort of lifespan can one expect from Apples SSDs?
A soldered drive essentially means the machine will die together with the drive. Larger SSDs have better endurance, therefore, a more capacious drive would translate to a longer lasting computer as well. A larger drive is usually faster too, especially when a good portion of it is free. Wouldn’t that justify the somewhat extortionate price jump to at least 1TB?
I have never owned an Apple computer before, but may be considering one soon. Some insights about the purchase/use strategy regarding the SSDs would be appreciated.
There are starting to be some 3rd party options which make the most sense. Here is an article in reference to the M4 Mini, but I think they’re also starting to make upgrades for the Mac Studio machines as well.
