WWDC 2023 Thread

[Colstan]

If you face VRAM limitation at 16GB for 4K Ultra gaming, the RTX 4090 looks VERY cheap for the incredible performance it offers and it does so silently/efficiently to fix that problem.

The 4090 is only an option for those who are willing to purchase a PC. I ruled that out after WWDC, and have decided that I have zero interest in abusing myself in such a manner. Today, I care about Mac reviews so that I can decide which desktop Mac to purchase in the future, likely M3 generation. Other than that, I no longer care what the PC companies offer, they are irrelevant in my equation.

AMD GPUs are no good and drivers are mid.

Windows PCs, in totality, are the embodiment of mid.

 

[Citysnaps]

Today, I care about Mac reviews so that I can decide which desktop Mac to purchase in the future, likely M3 generation. Other than that, I no longer care what the PC companies offer, they are irrelevant in my equation.

Same here...there's no way I could ever go back. Life is too short.

 

[exoticspice1]

Windows PCs, in totality, are the embodiment of mid.

100%. I am Mac and Linux user. I am so thankful to Linus and the open source community because of them I can use PC hardware in a different OS other than Microsofts Ad infested Windows.

 

[leman]

For higher complexity scenes gaming GPUs will quickly suffocate because of the limited PCI-e bandwidth. For now, this is a decisive advantage of the M2 Ultra and other workstation GPUs. But a professional GPU with 48GB RAM is almost more expensive than an entire Studio.

 

[Jimmyjames]

For higher complexity scenes gaming GPUs will quickly suffocate because of the limited PCI-e bandwidth. For now, this is a decisive advantage of the M2 Ultra and other workstation GPUs. But a professional GPU with 48GB RAM is almost more expensive than an entire Studio.

Absolutely. Any advantages will be hand waived away as irrelevant though.

The only markets most reviewers recognize are gaming for the lowest price/highest power usage, and professional cinebench users!

 

[Joelist]

I'll just point out that no one actually has an M2 Ultra yet. This is all speculation over "scores" that may or may not be real.

 

[Jimmyjames]

I'll just point out that no one actually has an M2 Ultra yet. This is all speculation over "scores" that may or may not be real.

Ummm reviews are out with videos of people using them.

 

[exoticspice1]

For higher complexity scenes gaming GPUs will quickly suffocate because of the limited PCI-e bandwidth. For now, this is a decisive advantage of the M2 Ultra and other workstation GPUs. But a professional GPU with 48GB RAM is almost more expensive than an entire Studio.

Right but most don't do that highly complex scenes that require 48GB+. For high ending gaming an RTX 4080/90 will be enough. Apple wants to get into PC AAA gaming market and you cannot do that with middling GPU performance even though you got access lots of VRAM.

If your talking production and AI no one is leaving Nvidia any time soon. You look at the doom and gloom of PC YouTubers but they are as bad as Apple YouTubers. Yes, even Tech Jesus.

 

[Nycturne]

Right but most don't do that highly complex scenes that require 48GB+. For high ending gaming an RTX 4080/90 will be enough. Apple wants to get into PC AAA gaming market and you cannot do that with middling GPU performance even though you got access lots of VRAM.

Most gamers playing those AAA games aren't doing it on a 4080/90 either, let alone a 3080/90. They are on the 60/70 cards. There's a difference between addressing the entire market, and addressing enough of the market to make investment viable. Consoles are very much the latter, and quite popular.

My gaming rig has a 4080 in it but I have no illusions that it is representative of the PC gaming space.

 

[Jimmyjames]

Right but most don't do that highly complex scenes that require 48GB+. For high ending gaming an RTX 4080/90 will be enough. Apple wants to get into PC AAA gaming market and you cannot do that with middling GPU performance even though you got access lots of VRAM.

If your talking production and AI no one is leaving Nvidia any time soon. You look at the doom and gloom of PC YouTubers but they are as bad as Apple YouTubers. Yes, even Tech Jesus.

What do you mean “middling gpu performance”? the ultra is around a 4070/4080 for raster perf and has huge amounts of ram for more professional needs. You can’t just hand wave away stuff by saying “most don’t do that“. They couldn’t if they wanted to.

 

[Joelist]

Ummm reviews are out with videos of people using them.

Those kind of "first out of the gate" reviews are not always trustworthy. Let's hold our powder until it has been out in the wild long enough for real users to evaluate it.

 

[exoticspice1]

What do you mean “middling gpu performance”? the ultra is around a 4070/4080 for raster perf and has huge amounts of ram for more professional needs. You can’t just hadn’t wave away stuff by saying “most don’t do that“. They couldn’t if they wanted to.

I can get a 4070/4080 PC for $1500 to $2500.
An M2 ULTRA with full upgraded GPU(remember the full 76 core is equal to a 4080 in raster) is $5000 with 64GB VRAM. That's not even mentioning the 4090 which can found for $3500 in a PC.

Apple ain't winning in raster performance nor performance per dollar. Look I want Apple to succeed but that ain't happening with the horrible pricing. $1000 to get 16 more GPU cores is insulting and that to not not even come close to a 4090 in performance is showing.

In the keynote Apple mentioned Intel (as a dig) a lot because they are rightfully better than them but have you noticed unlike the previous keynote where the M1 Ultra was announced Nvidia was mentioned but now Nvidia is not mentioned anywhere because Apple is no where near them yet.

 

[Jimmyjames]

I can get a 4070/4080 PC for $1500 to $2500.

This is just moving the goalposts. You said they had middling performance. I showed you it was very good performance, now you have changed the metric to performance per dollar.

An M2 ULTRA with full upgraded GPU(remember the full 76 core is equal to a 4080 in raster) is $5000 with 64GB VRAM. That's not even mentioning the 4090 which can found for $3500 in a PC.

Yes but that 4090 doesnt have as much ram as the Ultra. It isn't in the same class. The Ultra has to cover a wide variety of uses, including high memory use cases that would be served by the W series on AMD or Quadro on Nvidia's side. Please don't do the usual and say "...bbbut no one needs that much vram". Many pros do, and Apple is serving that market. Denying that is just choosing the basis on which to compare in order to rig the comparison in favour of Nvidia.

Apple ain't winning in raster performance nor performance per dollar. Look I want Apple to succeed but that ain't happening with the horrible pricing. $1000 to get 16 more GPU cores is insulting and that to not not even come close to a 4090 in performance is showing.

Again, your just changing the argument after being shown your statement was incorrect.

In the keynote Apple mentioned Intel (as a dig) a lot because they are rightfully better than them but have you noticed unlike the previous keynote where the M1 Ultra was announced Nvidia was mentioned but now Nvidia is not mentioned anywhere because Apple is no where near them yet.

I just showed you they are at 4070/4080 level for certain things.

Let's be honest, as always this comes down to "Apple won't make a modular gaming desktop PC" That's it. Certain groups want that and refuse to believe anything else is legitimate. They aren't pros usually, they are people who spend time boasting about benchmarks and trolling on r/pcmr.

The fact that Apple won't make one kind of computer doesn't mean they aren't competing in the gpu space.

 

[exoticspice1]

Most gamers playing those AAA games aren't doing it on a 4080/90 either, let alone a 3080/90. They are on the 60/70 cards. There's a difference between addressing the entire market, and addressing enough of the market to make investment viable. Consoles are very much the latter, and quite popular.

My gaming rig has a 4080 in it but I have no illusions that it is representative of the PC gaming space.

A PS5 or Xbox is what most people on yes. For the price you pay it's wonderful

 

[theorist9]

For higher complexity scenes gaming GPUs will quickly suffocate because of the limited PCI-e bandwidth. For now, this is a decisive advantage of the M2 Ultra and other workstation GPUs. But a professional GPU with 48GB RAM is almost more expensive than an entire Studio.

I've been curious about this myself. As you know, this is something that was mentioned as a theoretical advantage since the inception of AS—that it afforded substantially more effective VRAM. Since then, there's been ample time to test this and determine how often this theoretical benefit translates into real-world practice, but I've not seen any published reports.

Are they any classes of GPU-limited tasks that have been demonstrated to run faster on an M1 Max (64 GB RAM) than whatever the cost-equivalent RTX is (say a 3080 Ti, 12 GB VRAM), or on an M1 Ultra (128 GB RAM) than, say, an 3090 Ti (24 GB VRAM). And if so, how common are they? I.e., are they more than just corner cases?

Yes, we know there are professional use cases that benefit from higher VRAM—if there weren't, NVIDIA wouldn't offer 48 GB in its RTX6000. So we really have two questions: (1) How common are these cases in professional use? And, much more interestingly: (2) From the subset of cases that benefit from >24 GB VRAM, how often does the M1 Ultra's higher effective VRAM outweigh the 3090 Ti's higher processing power?

I would bet there will be at least a couple of areas that the Ultra's huge memory pool helps it in beating high end Nvidia gpus. If that happens, reviewers will be lining up their excuses. "That's true but..." will be the order of the day.

As I mentioned above, if this is the case, it would already be known based on testing and use of the M1 Max and Ultra Studio (which were released March 2022). So I am curious if this has been demonstrated.

 

[exoticspice1]

This is just moving the goalposts. You said they had middling performance. I showed you it was very good performance, now you have changed the metric to performance per dollar

I am not. If you look at my posts earlier I do talk about perf/$.

Yes but that 4090 doesnt have as much ram as the Ultra. It isn't in the same class. The Ultra has to cover a wide variety of uses, including high memory use cases that would be served by the W series on AMD or Quadro on Nvidia's side. Please don't do the usual and say "...bbbut no one needs that much vram". Many pros do, and Apple is serving that market. Denying that is just choosing the basis on which to compare in order to rig the comparison in favour of Nvidia.

What if I don't need the massive amount of VRAM.but need the raster performance? Kind of waste don't you think?
Workstation cards are expensive but individual gamers do not buy those professionals buy those that cost 6K for a GPU. Everything has a place but Apples upgrade pricing simply put not for sanely prices and so are those workstation cards but that is reality.

I just showed you they are at 4070/4080 level for certain things.

Let's be honest, as always this comes down to "Apple won't make a modular gaming desktop PC" That's it. Certain groups want that and refuse to believe anything else is legitimate. They aren't pros usually, they are people who spend time boasting about benchmarks and trolling on r/pcmr.

The fact that Apple won't make one kind of computer doesn't mean they aren't competing in the gpu space.

So I need to spend $5000 in the Mac space as a gamer to get 4080 performance and before you say "it comes with lots of RAM". I don't need that much but do need the GPU power so for people like me, Apple offers nothing.

I love macOS but not $5000 amount of love.

 

[Aaronage]

Not feeling the doom and gloom about graphics performance. It’s still early days

This is essentially a gen 1.5 product, and Apple still has a lot of work to do with 3rd party developers to get Metal support to a high standard. Raytracing, better Blender performance etc. will come in time.

M2 Ultra is still a kick-ass chip regardless. ~4080 performance in ~105W is sweet.

On the topic of price/performance comparisons with PCs, it’s a bugbear of mine. No one should buy a computer solely on the basis of performance.
This Mac Studio vs. custom tower comparison is no different to someone saying “MacBook’s are overpriced!” and pointing to some landfill-grade PC with a terrible display, trackpad, build quality/materials, battery life, loud fan, little to no after sales support etc. as evidence. A PC is not remotely comparable to Mac Studio in terms of form factor, efficiency, ecosystem integration, quality of life features, after sales support etc.

 

[Jimmyjames]

I am not. If you look at my posts earlier I do talk about perf/$.

What if I don't need the massive amount of VRAM.but need the raster performance? Kind of waste don't you think?

No, it just means they don’t make the computer you wish they did.

Workstation cards are expensive but individual gamers do not buy those professionals buy those that cost 6K for a GPU.

Apple cares more about those professionals than individual gamers. How is this new information?

Everything has a place but Apples upgrade pricing simply put not for sanely prices and so are those workstation cards but that is reality.

Their prices are high, and in line with other professional gpu/cpu prices. Aka Xeon, Quadros.

So I need to spend $5000 in the Mac space as a gamer to get 4080 performance and before you say "it comes with lots of RAM".

I don’t know what to say to you at this point.

I don't need that much but do need the GPU power so for people like me, Apple offers nothing.

Correct, they don’t make a gaming desktop with modular, cheap components for gaming.

I love macOS but not $5000 amount of love.

You seem to love gaming desktops more.

Yes, YOU don’t need lots of vram, but others may do and that doesn’t mean it’s bad, and that Apple shouldn’t serve it.

I will say once again, that Apple isn’t making a gaming desktop. That fact doesn’t mean they’re aren’t competing on gpu performance.

They want games on the Mac, they don’t want a gaming Mac.

 

[exoticspice1]

They want games on the Mac, they don’t want a gaming Mac.

This going to be hard if Apple don't create a proper gaming division that focuses on game developer needs and requests. Unlike others(ie Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft), Apple doesn't have the goodwill and mass market games like COD/Diablo are missing in macOS. I don't see this happening till then. Wake me up when Apple does a gaming showcase the likes of Sony and Microsoft

You seem to love gaming desktops more.

I game on a PS5, the PC market is nuts rights now. Overpriced GPUs, buggy/poor ports and so I quit PC gaming and moved to console. I don't have to deal with Windows/Microsoft on a PS5, its a optimised for gaming and also a TV box/bluray. My Macbook serves my computing needs well.

 

[Jimmyjames]

This going to be hard if Apple don't create a proper gaming division that focuses on game developer needs and requests. Unlike others(ie Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft), Apple doesn't have the goodwill and mass market games like COD/Diablo are missing in macOS. I don't see this happening till then. Wake me up when Apple does a gaming showcase the likes of Sony and Microsoft

I game on a PS5, the PC market is nuts rights now. Overpriced GPUs, buggy/poor ports and so I quit PC gaming and moved to console. I don't have to deal with Windows/Microsoft on a PS5, its a optimised for gaming and also a TV box/bluray. My Macbook serves my computing needs well.

These two paragraphs seem contradictory. You find the pc market a mess and list all its issues, which I agree with you on. You also imply that in order to succeed, Apple needs a gaming division and that gaming division needs to concentrate on cheap powerful gpus, aka the same market that’s “nuts”. I don’t think those two line up.