M4 Max chips are super impressive, replaced my base M1 with the binned M4 Max and it renders on average 17 times faster in Blender. Comparing it to the 4080, the fact that a tiny laptop GPU can reach around 50% of the performance of the strongest desktop GPU while using a fraction of energy is ridiculous.
It all comes down to the fact that the GPU for the mac is on the same chip as the ram, and cpu. The amount of energy and latency that comes about sending signals across centimeters of wires vs nano meters of wires is huge. The M4 series memory bandwidth makes even ddr5 ram seem slow in comparison for this reason and the same goes for cutting down delays of sending data from the cpu to the gpu
@@zoltanf86 I need to bring a Blender project on an portable with Blender portable to Best Buy and run a benchmark on their floor model M4 Max to compare to my M2 Max, haha.
The M4 Max isn't tiny, the overall SoC size (including the CPU GPU etc.) is bigger than the 4080 Super and probably close to the 4090's 609mm2. If you're comparing the cooling systems it might be.
Very interesting comparison, crazy to see an SoC keeping up so well. Your charts are a bit wonky though. The Monster Under the Bed one for example the 4080 and the M4 Max look nearly identical because you compare it to the slowest possible, when really the 4080 is 43% faster than the M4 Max finishing in 22 sec vs 34. That's 12 seconds or ⅓ less time. Essentially including the very slow M4 (so few GPU cores) as your baseline makes everything relatively much closer together because the gap between M4 and everything is so huge, it makes all the other gaps seem small.
16” MBP M3Pro 18 Core GPU 36GB RAM. Settings GPU only, Kernel = Full, MetalRT = On, Denoise = On, GPU = On. Multiple renders, average = Monster = 1:08. Lone Monk = 5:37. Also waiting for the Mac Studio with 60+ GPU Cores. Rendering Lone Monk with a second monitor (4K at 4K) and laptop screen on, added (avg) 18 seconds to the render. FYI. Thanks for the truly useful video!
Cool test, thanks for uploading! I just purchased a 16" M4 Max Macbook Pro. Monster under the bed scene, Macbook gets it done in 25 secs, while 4090 is 16 secs. Not bad at all.
@@seriessplayer62747 not so stupid considering 128GB of unified memory, 4090 has only 24GB. Right now you can load huge LLMs into a Macbook and run them fast, you can't do the same with 4090.
I intended to build a rendering PC with an RTX 4070 and was eying Apple's newest stuff to see if it'd be worth it to just go with that instead. And it 100% is. I've been watching Apple's hardware improvements since they started using their own silicon in their products, and I was waiting for something like this to happen. It's mind-boggling how much they're improved in the past 6 years, going from being a product that you got for just the logo to a legitimate threat to Windows PCs for productivity purposes.
According to most rumors (search for Mark Gurman), the Mac Studio (and Apple Silicon M4 Ultra) ETA is mid 2025, with Mac Pro (tower) shortly after. The M5 chip design is rumored to be complete, so the M5 line up will start rolling late 2025. Ultra is always last to show due to its cumulative complexity. So don’t expect M5 Ultra until late 2026 (or so). The other rumor which has never manifested is the Apple Silicon “Extreme” which is 2xUltra. Perhaps that will become reality (Mac Pro tower) with the M4 round of Apple Silicon (2H 2025)? TY for the graphics comparisons.
@joerama Apple will release the M4 Ultra by mid 2025. But M5 Ultra probably won’t be a thing and they will most likely directly jump to M6 Ultra. Honestly, that’s the way to go. Very few people actually upgrade these high end desktops frequently
what is this mac 😂wait it will consume 4x the M4 max the worst for 2026 and the price of $10,000 (apple gave us gpu support on the mac pro it's possible) around 400w
Nice work, my OG M1 iMac with 8GB took quite a bit longer 😝 35 min for the second one. One minor quibble is your chart graphics makes it feel like the bottom one is fastest (without reading labels) because it has the shorter bar....
Thanks Robbie, this is super helpful!! I’m in a similar situation. I’m most likely going to switch from a PC to a Mac Studio M4 Ultra once it’s released. Since I render most of my longer sequences in the cloud anyway, this might be the right move.
Very informative video, thank you! I think the most impressive thing is not the ultimate performace of the M4 Max (we are also a couple of months away from the 5000 series from Nvidia) but how efficient it is and how little power it uses to achieve such results. In the lifetime of the machine i think the amount of energy you save while working is huge compared to a desktop or even a Windows laptop with similar performace. I'm very tempted to buy a mac mini with the M4 pro for 3D since i was looking for a Windows mini PC but there's none with the same amount of efficiency and performace, unfortunally. Thanks again!
Thank you, I was waiting for this! So basically almost 4080, which is kinda impressive how with each generation of AS they're closing the gap. With M5/M6 they should be on par with the fastest RTX's.
Well the M4 studio will hopefully be out next year and at least be on par with the RTX. They should honestly add 10 more cores to the Max or give the option.
@@noisetinThat would be the Ultra variant which would be a lot more expensive. Also we might get the rumored “Extreme” Chip this time which would be two Ultras fused together
Love the no-nonsense approach - instant subscribe! Quick request: any chance you could compare Metal vs NVIDIA DXR real-time ray tracing? GravityMark should let you test this - it's a comparison we haven't seen yet!
Literally the exact video I've been waiting for. Thank you for this! I think if they release a M4 Ultra in a Mac Studio I'll be making the switch from PC.
Thank you. Your perspective answered and touched on some unanswered points I had in my head. and by what you briefly described as your background, I assume you know know. Nice video. New sub
I think this would be more interesting using laptop dGPUs instead of desktop, but cool to see. Looks like with M4 and beyond Apple has finally caught up to nvidia with a power efficiency advantage. Very exciting
I'm a 2d motion designer and I don't do 3D, but i was hoping the M4 Max would be enough for me to start learning on it, thank you for the video, because it made me confident that it will be plenty :)
Thank you so much for covering this! I have been wondering about MacBook Pro M4 Max chip being the perfect portable machine for 3D rendering/animation, video editing and coding. I love the battery life and the sturdiness of this laptop. I don’t even have a MacBook Pro, just an underpowered intel MacBook Air. If I ever save up enough, one day I’ll get myself the M4 MacBook Pro. ❤
Great video. Thanks! Just a little FYI: current Mac rumors point to a June (Apple Developer Conference) release for the M4 Ultra Mac Studio. They could surprise us though but I wouldn’t count on it.
This is mindblowing! 😮 I am astonished how much every generation of processors still advances so much over the last one! That Macs will ever beat a high end graphics card of the last Generation is groundbreaking
They’re definitely impressive! I’ve been using an M2 for a while, but recently switched back to Windows. While the Mac performs great in benchmarks, I found it sometimes lags in real-life scenarios. For example, when I have multiple browsers open or visit pages heavy with banners, it noticeably slows down. I also missed the customization options on Windows. I recently got a 42-inch OLED monitor, and it works seamlessly with Windows. With my Mac, finding a good monitor setup was always a challenge.
I just got a M4 max for personal use. I also have a 4080 (non super) at work. I did a couple scenes back to back and the M4 max was faster on all scenes. I have 64gb ram on windows machine and 48gb on the mac
M4 ULTRA will come soon. Wait for that. I recently switched to Mac - M3 MAX - after years of Windows use. My last PC had a Threadripper 3960x + RTX 3090 + 128GB RAM. Mac is so much better. I'm very happy that I switched over. Blender, After Effects and Davinci all run very smoothly.
@@BANNANA_DEV I don't believe it, he now uses his tower and (for rendering after finishing)when he's at home and uses his Mac when he's away from his tower, it's really a big downgrade
@@BANNANA_DEV no I now use RENDER NETWORK (Otoy) for rendering. And my Macbook Pro outperforms my PC. So it replaced both my PC and my Windows laptop. I sold both of those and replaced them with 1 macbook. It runs extremely smooth, and consumes a fraction of electricity compared to a PC.
I was wondering if was going to buy the M4 with 32 GB of RAM or the M4 Pro but with less RAM for the same, but with this I think I‘ll go for the Pro (because I‘ll render longer scenes) Great Video btw. 😊👍
Thank you for this video. For some reason this info keeps being hidden. I can't wait to see what the next iteration of the Studio looks like. I think the new m4 pro mini with 24gb memory or more would be a solid little Blender workstation with your major renders taking place in the cloud. So, maybe the next Studio closes the gap on render times. Apple has been investing pretty strongly in Blender too, so software efficiencies working with their silicone should be happening even more too.
I have the m3 pro and sometimes I use it to render my blender scenes instead of my 4080 desktop. Some scenes/scenarios the Mac will render faster than the 4080 due to memory, a couple of 4k textures and 3m triangles the 4080 chugs so bad that the m3 pro renders a minute or 2 faster. In short the m4 max will be the better choice if your rendering large scenes
Contemplating on buying a M4 Max MacBook Pro or waiting for the M4 Max Mac Studio. I’m running Blender, Unreal Engine, DaVinci Resolve and FL Studio and much more.
I’ve been waiting to switch to Apple Silicon since the M1, but the only thing that was stopping me was the waitress and performance as an architectural engineer when I do my work I need tracing and I also need hardware that will support structural analysis and have the power that I would get from a PC this year is looking quite enticing and I might just buy one. Or hold out for an M5.
you are not a 3d artist the ram is loaded mainly in the processor ram and a little of the vram and if you are a real artist you will optimize the scene during modeling by masking the objects no interest if a mac 40 gb of vram with little performance it will only be buggy unusable (bottlneck gpu)
12 днів тому+4
@@TechGameDevIf you are working in a game company optimizing is a later task. You need the VRAM IF you are a '3d artist' and delivering the assets in a shorter time period.
@@TechGameDev Big Scenes even split is something that can happen and need a lot of VRAM youre using Proxies for the scene creation state but you will never render the scene if you have not enough memory. The immense disney island demo is a testament to this. Also a benefit of the Apple Silicon is the unified memory, scene startup is significantly faster, doesnt matter if the rendering on Nvidia Cards is faster if the Building step takes so much longer. We have a small render cluster with 1x4090 and 2x4060ti 16GB sometimes we just skip the render cluster because the M2 Max is faster in giving us a result because of the scene building time. Its actually crazy and never thought about it before until I saw it in action. You simply dont have to move data around anymore both the CPU and the GPU have access to it. If a game would optimise for this it would be a extreme boost in performance
@@TechGameDev All I wanted to know was if it could load up scenes that take around that vram, I use a 3090 for work and personal use and sometimes have to hit close to its 24gb Vram limit lol. Also a lot of the time iterating in the render preview. Optimization is not my concern as I do concept design and deliverables are fast and have to regularly use UDIMs and stuff such that the textures eat up way more vram than any polygons lol.
Short and to the point. @1:44 Me too in the same predicament. Can't wait for the Mac Studio to release and hope they keep the same price. Btw, I see that you've used base versions of M4 Pro and MAX. Can you compare them to the top versions if you have them?
Been using an M3 max for 10 month in C4D & Houdini & Redshift - extremely happy with it Multiplied with portability, display, sound and all other Mac features makes it an absolute champ for me
Curious; I just did the Monster one at 1024 samples on my M2 Max MBP. It did it in 1:15, faster the the M2 Ultra on this chart. Was your rendered as-is from the original .blend?
I also did the Lone Monk test, and it took 06:12 on the same Macbook Pro M2 Max 38 core. But raw GPU performance (which impact games) on M2 Max is great, 25% faster than M4 Pro.
In the Blender relative performance graph starting at 0:39 mm:ss, the relative sizes of the bars seems weird. For instance, the NVIDIA 3080 is almost half the speed of the 4080 and yet it's bar isn't half the size ...
After Effects runs very well on Apple Silicon. I've compared my base M1 Pro against a i7 12700K, RTX 3060, 32 GB Ram build which came to a similar price since I got a great deal on the MacBook Pro. My M1 Pro came out on top by a significant margin almost always!
Since M1(Max) it was always production in Blender on Mac and render on a Win PC. There's still no way around 4090 being an absolute unit for rendering. But Viewport performance and stability of Blender on Mac is unmatched. It is what it is.
Like many i guess, i don't do only 3D but also music, Photo editing, 2D and so on... YES an rtx is way better banks for your bucks for 3D and gaming, but at the end of the day, when you consider screen quality, power consuption, noise, OS and many other factors, people will be ready to pay more for that. it's simply market fit.
Hey, I still own the M1 Max 24C. So even the M4 Pro 20C should be a massive leap. I read about Blender scoring of roughly 700 vs 2500 (with over 5000 for the full M4 Max). It's awesome to see that the M4 Pro is equal with the fatass M2 Ultra. We made huge leaps since the M1, and the M1 era itself was already terrific! What great times to live :D
It's also interesting if we could also know how much time M3 Max needs to take in the same scenario to get to know how much improvement from the ray tracing core.
Yes, I checked it now and thats right! On M2 Max 32GB Mac Studio with checked GPU + CPU in system settings I had 40sec in Cycles. With only GPU checked the result was 32 sec :O. Its huge man, wow... its additional 20% faster with no effort. I mean, I tested my own project ;) Blender should add a note in system settings in Blender
3 questions. 1: Can you list the exact settings in blender for the renders you performed? 2: How are you calculating those graphs, they look way off a standard graph with those number of second values in the standard (lower is better) configuration? 3: Why was it interesting that the 10 gpu core m4, was being outperformed by the 60 gpu core m2 ultra? I would think the opposite would be interesting, this results you showed would be expected?
Thanks. It's impressive, yes. But those differences in render time are humongous. If you render sequences, those 30secs difference end the conversation.
I love Apple haters when they say why buy some expensive thing...they never used one before and they dont realize for the same price you get ALL THAT POWER for a fraction of the electricity and size and on the go on battery, not underpowered, full power even if its 2 hours of rendering...its about 6 hours of 3D work and some renders.. Gorgeous. Same for Video and Photo Editing which is even better because no one needs to buy ProRes or RED render cards. - I just got the M3 Max 48GB 40c 16"...i use it for gaming on whiskey. and alot similar projects.
I still think windows custom PCs are better for rendering. Just compare the cost of a 4080 PC to the cost of a M4 Max Macbook. Also, windows PC brings a much better CPU on the table. Apart from that, windows PCs have an option to swap out older hardware for much newer ones. So, windows PCs are up for at least 3 4 years of upgrade. Whereas you are permanently stuck with whatever hardware you buy at the time of purchase with a macbook. Just in this case, imagine you swap out your older 3080 with a newer 4080 super and you beat the performance of the new macbook.
You cant swap your Nvidia inside your laptop. Also, people dont buy Macs JUST for rendering. I do many other different things with it, Blender is just a part. Happy it got pretty fast over the last 2-3 years on MacOS.
@@realhamza2001 thats not true at all. Its an acceleration structure. OptiX Denoise is something different. CUDA isnt using the RTX cores, OptiX is. The Denoiser is using the Tensor Cores if available
I tried the same test on the M3 Max (40 core GPU), and here are my results: "MONSTER UNDER THE BED” - 00:31.39, and "LONE MONK” - 02:30.92. I expected the differences to be bigger. 🤔
When I rendered the monster scene with nothing changed on my 4080 super it had a time of 15.17 seconds, not 22; are you using OptiX or CUDA under blender preferences - system?
@modusoperandi825 yeah, but I have a CPU and motherboard and ram and every other components, I don't usually upgrade my whole computer... Which is not possible with Macs... It does seem like it's not terrible value, I just don't have the budget, especially since I would have to buy an entirely new system every single time I need an upgrade... 🥲
@JorgeMarquezIO Nowadays your GPU, MOBO, RAM, PSU - aka your PC build, should have the same life span. So you essentially should upgrade your whole PC setup (Besides SSDs) every 4-5 yrs once it's not keeping up. However it always depends on the needs/wants and possibilities... Just like everything else, Macs and overall apple products have their ups and downs, nothing in the world is spotless/universal enough. As you said yourself, the value is there... It's up to everyone if they get one or keep their current working station.
@@Metalud0 Seeing that the 4080 super already beats the M4 chip in this test and knowing building your own PC (or get it build, instead of buying pre-build is always cheaper and better performance wise), then you can build "equivalent" for about the same or less - so $3000... But that's looking at it through a keyhole. Macbook is a powerful PORTABLE station, while you would end up having a PC tower that you won't really move freely.
Did you use OptiX for the Nvidia GPUs? Not using it will significantly hold the Nvidia cards back as the cards won't use their ray tracing hardware to accelerate 3D rendering without it.
finally someone has done a real test, thank you for this vid
no problem. thanks for watching!
Not only that, he got straight to the point... he showed the results in 2.35 minutes! Pretty impressive given that most UA-camrs love to ramble a lot.
Yeah it’s nice to see someone doing a real render test with these m4 chips. I really would like to see animation fps speed in the viewport.
@@RobbieTilton Did these tests use Optix for the Nvidia cards, or just CUDA? What CPU does the PC have, and how much RAM?
@@axi0matic CUDA. Just added PC CPU/Ram to description
I loved how you were straight to the point and delivered good results. You earned a sub.. Keep it up
thx brotha
Agreed and subbed.
The best part of this video. I didn't have to wait for an introduction of blah blah blah for over 5 min.
@@RobbieTilton Great vid showing real tests relative to others. No faff, great vid!
Straight to the point, no unneeded fluff. Subbed!
M4 Max chips are super impressive, replaced my base M1 with the binned M4 Max and it renders on average 17 times faster in Blender. Comparing it to the 4080, the fact that a tiny laptop GPU can reach around 50% of the performance of the strongest desktop GPU while using a fraction of energy is ridiculous.
It all comes down to the fact that the GPU for the mac is on the same chip as the ram, and cpu. The amount of energy and latency that comes about sending signals across centimeters of wires vs nano meters of wires is huge. The M4 series memory bandwidth makes even ddr5 ram seem slow in comparison for this reason and the same goes for cutting down delays of sending data from the cpu to the gpu
@@zoltanf86 I need to bring a Blender project on an portable with Blender portable to Best Buy and run a benchmark on their floor model M4 Max to compare to my M2 Max, haha.
@@markminch1906Apple’s game of power-efficiency is definitely paying off.
The M4 Max isn't tiny, the overall SoC size (including the CPU GPU etc.) is bigger than the 4080 Super and probably close to the 4090's 609mm2. If you're comparing the cooling systems it might be.
@ that’s what I’m comparing, the power draw.
Very impressive results! Thanks for testing this!
no prob. thx for watching
@RobbieTilton fck this rubbish blender for 1diots, what about c4d and redshift?
Not impressive at all, way behind RTX cards in a real test with OptiX not disabled.
awesome thanks for doing this. Waiting for that Studio with Ultra 🙏
I bought an M4 Pro MBP 14” for software development and occasional video editing and other creative work. It’s a beast.
I've got an M1 Max MBP. The M4 is seriously tempting.
@@ronaldbell7429 replaced my M1Max Quran an M4Max. Pretty much twice as fast at everything. Plus many features the Maxlaptop doesn’t have.
This is the review i have been waiting for. Thank you very much
fck this rubbish blender for 1diots, what about c4d and redshift?
Very interesting comparison, crazy to see an SoC keeping up so well. Your charts are a bit wonky though. The Monster Under the Bed one for example the 4080 and the M4 Max look nearly identical because you compare it to the slowest possible, when really the 4080 is 43% faster than the M4 Max finishing in 22 sec vs 34. That's 12 seconds or ⅓ less time. Essentially including the very slow M4 (so few GPU cores) as your baseline makes everything relatively much closer together because the gap between M4 and everything is so huge, it makes all the other gaps seem small.
Without OPTIX in 4080 Super? Extrange comparison.
More reviews should be like this. Straight to the point. Immediately subscribed.
16” MBP M3Pro 18 Core GPU 36GB RAM. Settings GPU only, Kernel = Full, MetalRT = On, Denoise = On, GPU = On. Multiple renders, average = Monster = 1:08. Lone Monk = 5:37. Also waiting for the Mac Studio with 60+ GPU Cores. Rendering Lone Monk with a second monitor (4K at 4K) and laptop screen on, added (avg) 18 seconds to the render. FYI. Thanks for the truly useful video!
Thank you! Would great also to see ram / vram / unified memory usage!
Cool test, thanks for uploading! I just purchased a 16" M4 Max Macbook Pro. Monster under the bed scene, Macbook gets it done in 25 secs, while 4090 is 16 secs. Not bad at all.
Next year they should add 10 more GPU cores to the M5 max since they have to compete with the new 50 series.
I wonder how the M4 ultra will fair.
Which of the 4090? mobile or desktop?
@@wisdomyaw03 Even vs the 4090 mobile this would be impressive, considering the power draw.
@@wisdomyaw03must be mobile, because the 4090 mobile was much faster than the m3 max. It would be stupid to buy a m4 max when you have a 4090 desktop
@@seriessplayer62747 not so stupid considering 128GB of unified memory, 4090 has only 24GB. Right now you can load huge LLMs into a Macbook and run them fast, you can't do the same with 4090.
Great video. I'd love something to show viewport performance while modeling, texturing and lighting.
A $7000 dollar m4 Max computer comes about even to my old i9 rig w/ a 3080?!!
I intended to build a rendering PC with an RTX 4070 and was eying Apple's newest stuff to see if it'd be worth it to just go with that instead. And it 100% is. I've been watching Apple's hardware improvements since they started using their own silicon in their products, and I was waiting for something like this to happen. It's mind-boggling how much they're improved in the past 6 years, going from being a product that you got for just the logo to a legitimate threat to Windows PCs for productivity purposes.
According to most rumors (search for Mark Gurman), the Mac Studio (and Apple Silicon M4 Ultra) ETA is mid 2025, with Mac Pro (tower) shortly after. The M5 chip design is rumored to be complete, so the M5 line up will start rolling late 2025. Ultra is always last to show due to its cumulative complexity. So don’t expect M5 Ultra until late 2026 (or so). The other rumor which has never manifested is the Apple Silicon “Extreme” which is 2xUltra. Perhaps that will become reality (Mac Pro tower) with the M4 round of Apple Silicon (2H 2025)? TY for the graphics comparisons.
Thanks for commenting this so I didn’t have to 😂
@joerama Apple will release the M4 Ultra by mid 2025. But M5 Ultra probably won’t be a thing and they will most likely directly jump to M6 Ultra.
Honestly, that’s the way to go. Very few people actually upgrade these high end desktops frequently
@ nah M3 was only skipped due to the N3E node yield issues. From now on it doesn’t make sense to skip generations
what is this mac 😂wait it will consume 4x the M4 max the worst for 2026 and the price of $10,000 (apple gave us gpu support on the mac pro it's possible) around 400w
@@TechGameDev The Ultra only consumes about a 100w so an Extreme would simply be 200w. Nowhere near 400w
Hell yeah, head to head with details, you rock.
Nice work, my OG M1 iMac with 8GB took quite a bit longer 😝 35 min for the second one. One minor quibble is your chart graphics makes it feel like the bottom one is fastest (without reading labels) because it has the shorter bar....
🙏. Finally the test I needed. Thank so much dude.
Thanks Robbie, this is super helpful!! I’m in a similar situation. I’m most likely going to switch from a PC to a Mac Studio M4 Ultra once it’s released. Since I render most of my longer sequences in the cloud anyway, this might be the right move.
Incredibble video man!
Very informative video, thank you! I think the most impressive thing is not the ultimate performace of the M4 Max (we are also a couple of months away from the 5000 series from Nvidia) but how efficient it is and how little power it uses to achieve such results. In the lifetime of the machine i think the amount of energy you save while working is huge compared to a desktop or even a Windows laptop with similar performace. I'm very tempted to buy a mac mini with the M4 pro for 3D since i was looking for a Windows mini PC but there's none with the same amount of efficiency and performace, unfortunally. Thanks again!
Thank you, I was waiting for this! So basically almost 4080, which is kinda impressive how with each generation of AS they're closing the gap. With M5/M6 they should be on par with the fastest RTX's.
Well the M4 studio will hopefully be out next year and at least be on par with the RTX. They should honestly add 10 more cores to the Max or give the option.
@@GlobalWave1 M4 Studio will be double the Max, so 32c CPU and 80c GPU max variant.
@@noisetinThat would be the Ultra variant which would be a lot more expensive. Also we might get the rumored “Extreme” Chip this time which would be two Ultras fused together
the graphs are not proportional … the m4 is 50 % slower than the 4080 in the monster scene
@@rs-zm3bl Oh indeed, I was tricked! You're right
Love the no-nonsense approach - instant subscribe! Quick request: any chance you could compare Metal vs NVIDIA DXR real-time ray tracing? GravityMark should let you test this - it's a comparison we haven't seen yet!
Literally the exact video I've been waiting for. Thank you for this! I think if they release a M4 Ultra in a Mac Studio I'll be making the switch from PC.
Thanks for this, just the info I needed.
Thank you. Your perspective answered and touched on some unanswered points I had in my head. and by what you briefly described as your background, I assume you know know. Nice video. New sub
Now, we are talking! Hope the M4 Ultra is coming one day..
I think this would be more interesting using laptop dGPUs instead of desktop, but cool to see. Looks like with M4 and beyond Apple has finally caught up to nvidia with a power efficiency advantage. Very exciting
I'm a 2d motion designer and I don't do 3D, but i was hoping the M4 Max would be enough for me to start learning on it, thank you for the video, because it made me confident that it will be plenty :)
This is very interesting. I wonder what the M4 ultra might look like on a blender benchmark. Thanks for sharing.
You earned a sub bro 🎉
Thank you so much for covering this! I have been wondering about MacBook Pro M4 Max chip being the perfect portable machine for 3D rendering/animation, video editing and coding. I love the battery life and the sturdiness of this laptop. I don’t even have a MacBook Pro, just an underpowered intel MacBook Air. If I ever save up enough, one day I’ll get myself the M4 MacBook Pro. ❤
Great video. Thanks! Just a little FYI: current Mac rumors point to a June (Apple Developer Conference) release for the M4 Ultra Mac Studio. They could surprise us though but I wouldn’t count on it.
This is mindblowing! 😮 I am astonished how much every generation of processors still advances so much over the last one! That Macs will ever beat a high end graphics card of the last Generation is groundbreaking
Wait for the Studio M4 Ultra it it'll be spring most likely. It'll be likely what I'll aim for.
They’re definitely impressive! I’ve been using an M2 for a while, but recently switched back to Windows. While the Mac performs great in benchmarks, I found it sometimes lags in real-life scenarios. For example, when I have multiple browsers open or visit pages heavy with banners, it noticeably slows down. I also missed the customization options on Windows. I recently got a 42-inch OLED monitor, and it works seamlessly with Windows. With my Mac, finding a good monitor setup was always a challenge.
I just got a M4 max for personal use. I also have a 4080 (non super) at work. I did a couple scenes back to back and the M4 max was faster on all scenes. I have 64gb ram on windows machine and 48gb on the mac
M4 ULTRA will come soon. Wait for that.
I recently switched to Mac - M3 MAX - after years of Windows use. My last PC had a Threadripper 3960x + RTX 3090 + 128GB RAM.
Mac is so much better. I'm very happy that I switched over. Blender, After Effects and Davinci all run very smoothly.
How big was the performance difference?
so you downgraded? WHY?!
@@BANNANA_DEV I don't believe it, he now uses his tower and (for rendering after finishing)when he's at home and uses his Mac when he's away from his tower, it's really a big downgrade
@@BANNANA_DEV no I now use RENDER NETWORK (Otoy) for rendering. And my Macbook Pro outperforms my PC. So it replaced both my PC and my Windows laptop.
I sold both of those and replaced them with 1 macbook.
It runs extremely smooth, and consumes a fraction of electricity compared to a PC.
@@BANNANA_DEV must be a troll
Simple and direct! Loved it!
I was wondering if was going to buy the M4 with 32 GB of RAM or the M4 Pro but with less RAM for the same, but with this I think I‘ll go for the Pro (because I‘ll render longer scenes) Great Video btw. 😊👍
Thank you!!! I was looking for something like this. Thanks
Thanks for this! Just wondering, was MetalRT enabled?
Thank you for this video. For some reason this info keeps being hidden. I can't wait to see what the next iteration of the Studio looks like. I think the new m4 pro mini with 24gb memory or more would be a solid little Blender workstation with your major renders taking place in the cloud. So, maybe the next Studio closes the gap on render times. Apple has been investing pretty strongly in Blender too, so software efficiencies working with their silicone should be happening even more too.
short simple and to the point. subscribed
Great Video, straight simple and real world test. Love it ❤
Quick & informative. Like deserved!
I have the m3 pro and sometimes I use it to render my blender scenes instead of my 4080 desktop. Some scenes/scenarios the Mac will render faster than the 4080 due to memory, a couple of 4k textures and 3m triangles the 4080 chugs so bad that the m3 pro renders a minute or 2 faster.
In short the m4 max will be the better choice if your rendering large scenes
Contemplating on buying a M4 Max MacBook Pro or waiting for the M4 Max Mac Studio. I’m running Blender, Unreal Engine, DaVinci Resolve and FL Studio and much more.
I’ve been waiting to switch to Apple Silicon since the M1, but the only thing that was stopping me was the waitress and performance as an architectural engineer when I do my work I need tracing and I also need hardware that will support structural analysis and have the power that I would get from a PC this year is looking quite enticing and I might just buy one. Or hold out for an M5.
Great video. Thanks a lot!
How did you get all the details on every model?! Good work!
Would love to see a comparison for a scene where 4080 is nearing its Vram limit
you are not a 3d artist the ram is loaded mainly in the processor ram and a little of the vram and if you are a real artist you will optimize the scene during modeling by masking the objects no interest if a mac 40 gb of vram with little performance it will only be buggy unusable (bottlneck gpu)
@@TechGameDevIf you are working in a game company optimizing is a later task. You need the VRAM IF you are a '3d artist' and delivering the assets in a shorter time period.
@@TechGameDev Big Scenes even split is something that can happen and need a lot of VRAM youre using Proxies for the scene creation state but you will never render the scene if you have not enough memory. The immense disney island demo is a testament to this.
Also a benefit of the Apple Silicon is the unified memory, scene startup is significantly faster, doesnt matter if the rendering on Nvidia Cards is faster if the Building step takes so much longer. We have a small render cluster with 1x4090 and 2x4060ti 16GB sometimes we just skip the render cluster because the M2 Max is faster in giving us a result because of the scene building time. Its actually crazy and never thought about it before until I saw it in action. You simply dont have to move data around anymore both the CPU and the GPU have access to it. If a game would optimise for this it would be a extreme boost in performance
@@TechGameDev All I wanted to know was if it could load up scenes that take around that vram, I use a 3090 for work and personal use and sometimes have to hit close to its 24gb Vram limit lol. Also a lot of the time iterating in the render preview. Optimization is not my concern as I do concept design and deliverables are fast and have to regularly use UDIMs and stuff such that the textures eat up way more vram than any polygons lol.
Short and to the point. @1:44 Me too in the same predicament. Can't wait for the Mac Studio to release and hope they keep the same price. Btw, I see that you've used base versions of M4 Pro and MAX. Can you compare them to the top versions if you have them?
Been using an M3 max for 10 month in C4D & Houdini & Redshift - extremely happy with it
Multiplied with portability, display, sound and all other Mac features makes it an absolute champ for me
Thanks for the video, could you please do a review with unreal engine
Simple video, only facts. Thanks.
Curious; I just did the Monster one at 1024 samples on my M2 Max MBP. It did it in 1:15, faster the the M2 Ultra on this chart. Was your rendered as-is from the original .blend?
I did the same test on my Macbook Pro m2 Max - 38-core, and it took 1:19.
@@nintendoever I just did the other one and it was 5:56, so longer that the Ultra.
I also did the Lone Monk test, and it took 06:12 on the same Macbook Pro M2 Max 38 core. But raw GPU performance (which impact games) on M2 Max is great, 25% faster than M4 Pro.
@@nintendoever It would be great if we could just get an Apple GPU card of some sort to really crank on cores...
@@sloanNYC I agree and I it is perfectly viable. Especially now, with thunderbolt 5.
Thats cool! I would love to see perfomance in UE5
In the Blender relative performance graph starting at 0:39 mm:ss, the relative sizes of the bars seems weird. For instance, the NVIDIA 3080 is almost half the speed of the 4080 and yet it's bar isn't half the size ...
Thanks :D
The rumors are the the M4 max and ultra studios will be out next spring
For the price of a used 3080 its price to performance point of view is really good. I have a 3080 myself.
Can we get a video on after effects comparing m4 variants with desktop cpu & gpu combined for both of system.
sorry brother - i'm not an after effects person.
After Effects runs very well on Apple Silicon. I've compared my base M1 Pro against a i7 12700K, RTX 3060, 32 GB Ram build which came to a similar price since I got a great deal on the MacBook Pro. My M1 Pro came out on top by a significant margin almost always!
Since M1(Max) it was always production in Blender on Mac and render on a Win PC. There's still no way around 4090 being an absolute unit for rendering. But Viewport performance and stability of Blender on Mac is unmatched. It is what it is.
Like many i guess, i don't do only 3D but also music, Photo editing, 2D and so on...
YES an rtx is way better banks for your bucks for 3D and gaming, but at the end of the day, when you consider screen quality, power consuption, noise, OS and many other factors, people will be ready to pay more for that. it's simply market fit.
The new studio with Ultra will be boss. Given the M4 pro numbers there’s no reason add l reason to grab a Studio at all these days
this is exactly what I was waiting to see. I know those rtx 50 series are gonna raise the bar. Im switching back to pc for blender
The M4 ultra is rumored to be one chip and not two stitched together. That should significantly help the M4 studio compete with the 50 series.
@@GlobalWave1 yea I dunno as of right now pc still best for gpu tasks. I never even heard of the m4 ultra ill wait and see.
感谢您的测评,希望有条件的话加入4090作为对比.因为能购买m4max的人也不差预算购买4090.
Hey, I still own the M1 Max 24C. So even the M4 Pro 20C should be a massive leap. I read about Blender scoring of roughly 700 vs 2500 (with over 5000 for the full M4 Max). It's awesome to see that the M4 Pro is equal with the fatass M2 Ultra. We made huge leaps since the M1, and the M1 era itself was already terrific! What great times to live :D
It's also interesting if we could also know how much time M3 Max needs to take in the same scenario to get to know how much improvement from the ray tracing core.
Was Blender configured in System to use Metal (both CPU and GPU) and the Kernel set to Full?
Configured to use metal GPU / kernel set to full. I did not check the second cpu option.
CPU and GPU are (at least in all scenes i have ever tested them) way slower than just the GPU alone (M1 Max, 64GB Ram)
@@mariuswickli3206Yeah I can confirm this on my M1 Pro as well
How do you set kernel to full?
Yes, I checked it now and thats right! On M2 Max 32GB Mac Studio with checked GPU + CPU in system settings I had 40sec in Cycles. With only GPU checked the result was 32 sec :O. Its huge man, wow... its additional 20% faster with no effort. I mean, I tested my own project ;) Blender should add a note in system settings in Blender
Thanks you
Great video! What is the render resolution? I would like to test my own pc with the same scenes. Thanks!
3 questions.
1: Can you list the exact settings in blender for the renders you performed?
2: How are you calculating those graphs, they look way off a standard graph with those number of second values in the standard (lower is better) configuration?
3: Why was it interesting that the 10 gpu core m4, was being outperformed by the 60 gpu core m2 ultra? I would think the opposite would be interesting, this results you showed would be expected?
Damn that max got a great GPU! apple is killing it!
Thanks. It's impressive, yes. But those differences in render time are humongous. If you render sequences, those 30secs difference end the conversation.
Those results look good but... how does it compare when using optix rendering?
I love Apple haters when they say why buy some expensive thing...they never used one before and they dont realize for the same price you get ALL THAT POWER for a fraction of the electricity and size and on the go on battery, not underpowered, full power even if its 2 hours of rendering...its about 6 hours of 3D work and some renders.. Gorgeous. Same for Video and Photo Editing which is even better because no one needs to buy ProRes or RED render cards. - I just got the M3 Max 48GB 40c 16"...i use it for gaming on whiskey. and alot similar projects.
thanks for the real test! can you say something about the noise and/or coil whine?
I don't do 3D render and only 4K video editing using premiere pro. This test makes me want to buy M4 Max although M4 Pro most probably is enough.
I still think windows custom PCs are better for rendering. Just compare the cost of a 4080 PC to the cost of a M4 Max Macbook. Also, windows PC brings a much better CPU on the table.
Apart from that, windows PCs have an option to swap out older hardware for much newer ones. So, windows PCs are up for at least 3 4 years of upgrade. Whereas you are permanently stuck with whatever hardware you buy at the time of purchase with a macbook.
Just in this case, imagine you swap out your older 3080 with a newer 4080 super and you beat the performance of the new macbook.
You cant swap your Nvidia inside your laptop. Also, people dont buy Macs JUST for rendering. I do many other different things with it, Blender is just a part. Happy it got pretty fast over the last 2-3 years on MacOS.
@BlueHawk80 when did I say anything about laptop?? Do u understand what a custom "PC" is??
Was OptiX used?
@@AngryApple CUDA
@RobbieTilton Re Test with OptiX please would be interesting to see. Because why not using OptiX?
optix is nothing but a fast denoiser it doesnt actually matter when it comes to the final render speed
@@realhamza2001 thats not true at all. Its an acceleration structure. OptiX Denoise is something different. CUDA isnt using the RTX cores, OptiX is. The Denoiser is using the Tensor Cores if available
@@AngryApplestop spreading bs
Accept that apple is coming for Nvidia there s nothing u can do about it sheep
I tried the same test on the M3 Max (40 core GPU), and here are my results: "MONSTER UNDER THE BED” - 00:31.39, and "LONE MONK” - 02:30.92. I expected the differences to be bigger. 🤔
When I rendered the monster scene with nothing changed on my 4080 super it had a time of 15.17 seconds, not 22; are you using OptiX or CUDA under blender preferences - system?
CUDA
really thinking about switching to a macbook but it somehow feels like a sin to use blender on a mac 😂
nonsense. I use Blender on my Macbook, now what?
Really good video but, the relative performance graph was awful. I think sticking with time as the X axis is much clearer
very good bro
Damn... If only the M4 Max cheapest laptop wasn't 3,200 dlls I would totally consider it...
Cheapest 4080super is about $1200... and that's just the GPU...
@modusoperandi825 yeah, but I have a CPU and motherboard and ram and every other components, I don't usually upgrade my whole computer... Which is not possible with Macs... It does seem like it's not terrible value, I just don't have the budget, especially since I would have to buy an entirely new system every single time I need an upgrade... 🥲
@JorgeMarquezIO Nowadays your GPU, MOBO, RAM, PSU - aka your PC build, should have the same life span. So you essentially should upgrade your whole PC setup (Besides SSDs) every 4-5 yrs once it's not keeping up.
However it always depends on the needs/wants and possibilities... Just like everything else, Macs and overall apple products have their ups and downs, nothing in the world is spotless/universal enough. As you said yourself, the value is there... It's up to everyone if they get one or keep their current working station.
@@modusoperandi825 consdering all parts, how much would you estimate a pc equivalent
@@Metalud0 Seeing that the 4080 super already beats the M4 chip in this test and knowing building your own PC (or get it build, instead of buying pre-build is always cheaper and better performance wise), then you can build "equivalent" for about the same or less - so $3000... But that's looking at it through a keyhole. Macbook is a powerful PORTABLE station, while you would end up having a PC tower that you won't really move freely.
The M4 Max is super impressive. M4 Ultra still incoming.
Thank you for the test. Can you make one with a 3D animation please? Thanks!
Thank you for your video. I am wondering where on your chart would M1 MAX be.
Hi
thank you for such a informative video
I’d love to see what it would be with eeve rendering
Great video
you should have also added 4070 results
Did you use OptiX for the Nvidia GPUs? Not using it will significantly hold the Nvidia cards back as the cards won't use their ray tracing hardware to accelerate 3D rendering without it.
CUDA
the only thing im curious about when it comes to these new m1, m4 chips.
That is some seriously misleading graphs, plus you're not using Optix on 4080. What's the point ?
1:36 it's 50% faster actually
Yup