MacBook Pro with the M1 processor

iMi said:
Some people in that other place are ridiculous. They are crying foul because these machines are not beating out the latest dedicated GPUs from Nvidia or AMD. That’s like responding to a new line of Volkswagens by complaining they aren’t as fast as Porsche. It has become such a cesspool of over-opinionated morons over there. And everyone of them is an expert, of course.
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Yeah, no matter how fancy or awesome it is, there's no way a laptop can compare with a top end discrete GPU in a desktop with a dedicated thousand watt power supply, and an active cooling system that weighs as much as both your ass cheeks combined. You can do all kinds of crazy things when battery life and heat aren't really much of a concern.

That the new Macbooks have an integrated GPU that can roughly match a Geforce 1050 while sipping power is impressive in and of itself.
 
iMi said:
I’m already coolest ever... but shoot, what do you need?
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Well, now you gotta prove it.

You remember what I asked Ericgtr here a couple pages back? To take Blender through its paces on the new Macs? That's what I want you to do.

...I must know. O_0
 
iMi said:
Some people in that other place are ridiculous. They are crying foul because these machines are not beating out the latest dedicated GPUs from Nvidia or AMD. That’s like responding to a new line of Volkswagens by complaining they aren’t as fast as Porsche. It has become such a cesspool of over-opinionated morons over there. And everyone of them is an expert, of course.
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Right, these are "entry level" machines, but Apple has totally disrupted what that means. These machines are outperforming much higher end gear in a number of ways, and where they're not, it's comparing things like $800 dedicated graphics cards. No shit, that costs as much as the ENTIRE Mac Mini.

1 to 10, where on Intel, the 1 was the previous MBA (or like the i3 based Mini), and the 10 is the highest end 16" MBP or iMac - now these machines are like a 7+ (or match or exceed those highest end machines) and with lower power consumption, much longer battery life (where applicable). Plus, software hasn't even gotten really optimized for using the various dedicated chips (again, where applicable).

To use your car analogy: it's like VW showed up with a new Passat, same price as the old, that gets 100 MPG and it's faster than the Boxster, Cayman, and most of the 911 models. But someone goes, aha! It's not as fast as a 911 GT2 RS (@ $293,000)
 
I was thinking about linking you to an alpha M1 rev of Blender, but with Rosetta apparently being not very noticeably different performancewise from native code, I'd say any Mac rev of Blender would do.

Though if you want to compare and contrast, here's the link to the Blender alpha.

And the most common benchmark used is the car demo, which you can find on the lower half of this page.

Course I'll also ask you to do a bunch of weird random crap, just to see how well it works. Like subdivide a cube a bunch of times, and all that good stuff.

And yeah, I know I could just wait a week or two for official reports, but...

A. I'm impatient.

and...

B. I like bugging people.
 
DT said:
I just did a trade-in check on the wife's machine, that was a hand-me-down from me when I got my Mini last year. It's a decently stout machine, a mid-2015 15" MBP, i7 2.5GHz, and it has the 390X dGPU option ... but it's also one of the recall machines (for the battery, never done ...), it's a bit heavy, and it's constantly going into 747 take off mode because I think the GPU gets a little excited (running an external display, so it has to fire up the GPU).

$520, not bad, makes a new M1 MBA 8/8-core, 512GB, 16GB RAM around $900. The MBP is mint condition, original box, etc., so it might be worth a bit more on the open market, but that's also a PITA.
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I sold my 2015 15" MBP to a friend at the time I bought this 2018 15" MBP in late 2018.....can't recall now what he gave me for it, but I would say that your getting $520.00 now is a pretty good price in 2020! Enoy your new M1 MBA!!!
 
Renzatic said:
I was thinking about linking you to an alpha M1 rev of Blender, but with Rosetta apparently being not very noticeably different performancewise from native code, I'd say any Mac rev of Blender would do.

Though if you want to compare and contrast, here's the link to the Blender alpha.

And the most common benchmark used is the car demo, which you can find on the lower half of this page.

Course I'll also ask you to do a bunch of weird random crap, just to see how well it works. Like subdivide a cube a bunch of times, and all that good stuff.

And yeah, I know I could just wait a week or two for official reports, but...

A. I'm impatient.

and...

B. I like bugging people.
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I tried running it but I get an error message saying "Did not receive Benchmark JSON Data."
 
So, running what I basically run on the daily basis, I am pretty impressed overall. Rendering a 3D scene showed the biggest discrepancy. The iMac (i9/5700XT) rendered in 30 min. The mini reported estimated completion time as 1 hour and 20 minutes. Exporting 80+ pages out of Publisher into PDF looked to be neck-to-neck until the application crashed near completion. Like several times in a row. Exporting to other formats looked to be very close. So, there is a bug to be worked out on PDF export. Compressing a large folder was about the same time. Making adjustments in Photoshop, importing, rasterizing, etc. is all smooth on both machines. No noticeable difference really. Didn’t try any video workflows yet. ML operations in Pixelmator Pro are faster on the mini. Photos app seems smoother on the mini as well.

It’s worth noting this is the base mini. I’m still waiting for the 16GB/1TB option to arrive from Apple.
 
BTW, I talked to an Apple sales specialist yesterday, nice Guy named Don, he said with a trade-in you have 14 days after you receive your new product.

I was a little concerned because it said 14 days on a trade however the replacement machine won’t be here for almost 30. We couldn’t be without that extra machine for two weeks, plus I need them both here to transfer data.
 
Renzatic said:
What all did you try to do? Did it refuse to render at all?
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Yeah, but once everything indexed, it now seems to work. I'll run the benchmark after work and let you know what it says. I think spotlight was hard at work in the background. Everything feels waaaaaay snappier this morning. I'm using it for work and finding fewer and fewer reasons to keep the iMac. It will almost certainly go back on Monday.
 
I have a 2016 ($2000 at the time) MBP, one step down from dedicated graphics. I use it mostly for file management, bill paying, genealogy research, other minor tasks, infrequently basic photo manipulation. When the time comes, if the new models are fast and have big enough hard drives (although I keep most data on, and backed up on external drives) I would still need adequate USB connections, then I would consider downgrading to a MBAir. I easily spend most of my browsing time on my iPad.
 
Renzatic said:
What all did you try to do? Did it refuse to render at all?
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Here's the Blender benchmark result for the BWM scene.

Blender_Benchmark_Launcher_and_MacRumors__Apple_Mac_iPhone_Rumors_and_News.png
 
iMi said:
Here's the Blender benchmark result for the BWM scene.
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Wow, that's almost twice as fast as what I get out of my (admittedly older) desktop machine when rendering on the CPU. Not too shabby.
 
Renzatic said:
Wow, that's almost twice as fast as what I get out of my (admittedly older) desktop machine when rendering on the CPU. Not too shabby.
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Yeah the reviews on this thing are out of the park, could be the biggest game changer for Apple since the iPhone.
 
Renzatic said:
Wow, that's almost twice as fast as what I get out of my (admittedly older) desktop machine when rendering on the CPU. Not too shabby.
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I don't have a point of reference, but I will only say that I was also running a whole bunch of apps during the test and had to check to make sure it was running because there was no sound. None. The mini was completely silent and cold to the touch. What is amazing is that the first day it was actually slow and kind of weirdly buggy. I think Spotlight indexing must have been playing a role or something. Now it runs smoothly and is surprisingly capable in everything I do. The iMac that costs over 2.5x as much is now boxed up and ready to head back to Apple.
 
iMi said:
I don't have a point of reference, but I will only say that I was also running a whole bunch of apps during the test and had to check to make sure it was running because there was no sound. None. The mini was completely silent and cold to the touch. What is amazing is that the first day it was actually slow and kind of weirdly buggy. I think Spotlight indexing must have been playing a role or something. Now it runs smoothly and is surprisingly capable in everything I do. The iMac that costs over 2.5x as much is now boxed up and ready to head back to Apple.
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I know that my Windows PC can get pretty loud, especially while I'm doing GPU rendering. Doing the BMW scene in a little over 6 minutes through rosetta with other apps running in the background is pretty damn incredible. Most higher end consumer machines do it in around 5:30 on native code.

If you really want to see how good it can do, grab the latest version of Blender (2.90), download the car scene, then when it opens up, hit F12 (or go to the Render dropdown, and select Render Image at the top of the menu), then let it roll, nothing else running in the background. It'll tell you the final render time at the top of the popup window when it's done rendering. That's about the best way to find out exactly how fast it is.
 
ericgtr12 said:
Yeah the reviews on this thing are out of the park, could be the biggest game changer for Apple since the iPhone.
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It's done enough to impress me. When the mid-tier machines start showing up, I'll be first in line.

Though are there laptop docks for the Macbooks? Something compact and convenient to plug a laptop into so I can use it on a monitor with my nice S/PDIF speakers with it?
 
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