I think one of the advantages/disadvantages of ARM has been the very predictable pacing and specs for the Mac line. In a way, you know exactly what’s coming, you know what the price will be give or take, and you pretty much know when it’s coming out.
You can take the M3 Max performance results and pretty accurately extrapolate what an M3 Ultra will be able to do.
Probably only because we saw that the M2 scales GPUs well. But before that an M1 Ultra didn’t scale GPUs well at all.
BTW
It got a bit calm now about Blender updates from the Apple Team.
(Or is it just because I stopped following Blender Today ?)
Honestly I expected a firework of support and new features because
of the Vision Pro release …
Or did I just miss something and Blender Apple ARM support is
already finished and Classroom Cycles will now render in 20 s
instead of 54 s on my M1 Mini ?
Maybe yes, maybe no. In my opinion, it is better to buy a graphics card with good and quiet cooling than to put on water cooling…
… or even better - buy a Mac, replace it from time to time and have peace of mind. At the moment, Apple’s line of computers finally looks stable. Thankfully, the chaos of the Intel era is behind us.
But then I would have to use a Mac. Been there, done that, done with that. 
Well, some people like apples, others prefer potatoes. Diversity enriches us.
I would say if a GPU produces 400 Watt of heat,
there is no difference in Air or Water Cooling, if both finally work by a Fan
with a radiator translating heat to air of a room…
Both Fan solutions have to bring away that 400 Watt heat.
I think the problem is more that a GPU in its 2 or 3 Slot space has not
much room for larger more quiet Fan solutions.
While a AiO or central Water Cooling solution usually has.
And an extra … ok fish tank pumps are usually not that loud or disturbing
sounding and a risk of leakage.
On the other hand, theoretically there also could be a PC Case standard
that allowed GPUs to have vapor chamber pipes to bring the heat out of
the rare PCI slot space to a heat exchange system that distributes the
heat of various components to a giant air radiator with a silent 450 mm
fan at the side of the case.
Would likely occlude the usual view on components through the smoked
glass panel, which could be a deal breaker for PC users or make it quite
complicated to redirect the heat pipes to the opake side of the case.
Apple is a bit more intelligent as they did not think only about how
to dissipate heat more quiet and pleasant (!) but by just not producing
or allowing that much heat …
A nice Mastodon profile, posting all kinds of Apple hardware through the years:
This is incorrect, as the fan is only part of the equation. Basic HVAC principles apply here.
It water cooling wasn’t a benefit, then modern combustion engines wouldnt be using a radiator… (Nor would air conditioning be a thing, for that matter.)
If the power and waste heat gets higher at small space (like the PCI space)
you can no more dissipate the heat. Of course water can transport more
heat than air. So the water is just used to transport the heat away to
a radiator that finally dissipates the heat to air again.
Just like the GPU AiO water cooling does.
And there is an advantage with better heat transportation in heigh power
engines where heat concentrates to small areas at the cylinder head.
But for less power dense engines air cooling works still great like it does
for reasonable power hungry main stream GPUs. (a typical Harley V2 ?)
On a car you have a large radiator that normally works fine by driving
air flow. But in a hot city traffic jam you may also get annoyed by the
electric fan audible rushing in.
PCs usually don not move much so they need the fan s permanently.
For air cooled motorbikes (or chain saws ?) there were often forced
fan solutions, which also work reliable on low speeds.
I stay with this, if PC waste heat is finally dissipated to room air,
there finally needs to be the same capacity of moving air (by fans)
through a certain air radiator with a certain area. No matter if water
based or air only. Eitherby a larger area or more air volume,
which is usually loader.
I think all of the exciting stuff is mostly done, and the devs are busy with the boring non-headline grabbing stuff. I also think that until the new M3 Studios are out, most people in cg aren’t particularly likely to advertise benchmarks and the likes.
I myself am a bit unclear on whether Cycles takes advantage of the new RT cores yet or not, or if it’s still a half assed implementation.
Basically we need new M3 Studios, especially since I don’t think many Blenderheads bought the MBP M3 Max.
In the current situation I would have bought a M3 Max.
But not a MBP but a Studio Max, as another stop gap,
but which isn’t available.
It was clear that Apple would not announce anything during the
Vision Pro release “hype” period. So unfortunately WWDC I thought.
But reading rumors about release of a Studio in “second half of this year”
is not really what I need.
(Could mean December 2024 with availability in March 2025 !?)
If this is true it should be at least a, we skipped M3 Ultra and offer the
next (4) gen M4 2nm Ultra, a completely new unique SoC, not just 2 M3
glued together - and here is our new M4 Extreme, which is 2 M4 Ultras
glued together anyway.
After all the years, it looked so good again from M1 - M2 that Apple does
regular reliable upgrades again.
Had to realize that too already with the Trash Can …
But even the PC I started in 2018 with following upgrades
did not fully replace standard room heating.
Nothing heated so well as my Mac Pro 2.1 8 core with
registered RAM did. Those 3 moths a year I even like
his noise …
I find it hard to believe that Apple wouldn’t release the new M3 Studio at WWDC (or close to it). Their sales must be affected by the anticipation for the new machines. I for one have about $4k saved up for the M3 that I have no intention of putting toward M2-anything. I can’t possibly be the only one who is holding off from buying a new computer until the new Studios are released…can I?
Exactly this, even on an M1 Ultra which has been fantastic (but still turned out overkill) for my needs, I would definitely entertain an M3, maybe even downgrade to Max as that would be legit enough.
But for sure I’m not buying M2 anything either and definitely not a MBP (2+ years in with an M1 Pro does 99.9% of what I need portable side, easily keeping it for the next 3 more years maybe more).
They are kinda dragging their feet with the desktop form factors… even if the ultra isn’t ready, they could very well start already with the M3 Max Studios. That already does loops around whatever was offered beforehand.
I still hope too of course.
But theoretically Apple could already have released a shy Studio M3 Max
month ago. If they would show some empathy for (Pro) users.
Yes, as it is nearly as fast as a M2 Ultra, it would no more make sense
to sell a M2 Ultra Studio in parallel. So why not glue together 2 M3 Maxs
in a reasonable timeframe also !? Did not happen.
Instead we get rumors of M3 Studio getting a 3nm E or such process.
So why not wait for a A18 architecture with 2 nm ?
At lest I can no more (iMac 24", M3 Studio, Mac Pro …) recognize a
reliable hardware upgrade strategy
(which I thought to finally see again with M1).
Hey, Corona is ignored now, supply chain issues no more such a big deal, …
So I have to think it is again a long year clogging in Tim’s Pipeline.
I’m sure it all makes more sense from the inside of that massive circular building. If Apple had already released an M3 Max Studio, I might be tempted to grab it depending on the price/specs, but I might also be more encouraged to hold off for the inevitable Ultra.
Ultimately, at least for me, what I’m really compelled by are the new RT cores, especially if they do have a substantial impact on render time and functionality of, say something like Unreal Engine.
There’s recent OIDN GPU support and a ton of fixes to get Eevee next running on Apple Silicon. The Apple team is also working on AMD Metal bugs/support
I was looking at Unreal Nanite and Lumen performance, supported by M3 atomics and HWRT, previously not a part of Apple Silicon. These 2 should make Unreal for Mac quite a bit more enjoyable. I’m tempted to learn Unreal as a Blender companion for massive geometry scenes.
Sadly for whatever reason even the latest 5.4 which is currently in preview release doesn’t support HWRT on m3. So no raytraced lumen, no raytraced lights, no pathtracer.
As for nanite the performance didn’t improve over previous supported version which is absolutely horrible and I suspect it also doesn’t utilize m3 mesh shaders. There also some issues with virtual textures.
On top of all that the preview version on mac is performing for some reason even worse than 5.3. But that might be due to it being “preview”…
I really hope HWRT and proper nanite support makes it’s way to final 5.4 version but I also find it suspicious that it wasn’t already in some form in the preview. There are sometimes multiple preview versions before relase so there is still hope…