We all know
that one of the biggest problems with Apple silicon Macs
is software compatibility,
especially with 3D modeling software such as Blender.
But this is rapidly changing.
And recently Blender announced version 3.1,
which introduces native metal support
to all Apple silicon Macs.
In this video, I'm going to be doing a deep dive
into just how much Blender performance has improved,
including some benchmarks, real-life workflow rendering,
and also comparing a base model, 14 inch M1 Pro MacBook
against a Windows laptop with an RTX 30 series GPU
to see which is more powerful.
Okay, so the main theme of this video is going to be
comparing the previous version of Blender, which was 2.93,
against the new 3.1 Alpha.
I'm going to be focusing on Cycles,
which has now been upgraded to Cycles X
in the 3.0 version of Blender.
It's also important
to take the results in this video with a grain of salt
as this is an alpha version after all,
so what that means
is there's probably going to be quite a few updates
and some more changes that gets made
over the next few weeks and months
before we can see the true potential
of what 3.1 can provide.
Okay, let's just get straight into the results.
Now I'm using a base model, 14 inch M1 Pro MacBook
on the latest version of Mac OS.
Let's begin with some cycles of rendering.
Starting with the BMW project,
there was a massive improvement with render times
going from five minutes and 23 seconds on Blender 2.93
to just one minute and 14 seconds on Blender 3.1
using the Cycles X render engine.
That is four times faster.
Now, rendering out a single frame
from the Splash Fox demo scene, again, using Cycles,
there was an improvement from five minutes and 24 seconds
to two minutes and nine seconds,
or two and a half times faster.
Now, in the tree, leaves, and grass Geometry Nodes Scene,
single frame render times improved
from 17 minutes and 42 seconds
to just four minutes and 17 seconds, or four times faster.
And, finally, on the Lone Monk demo scene,
which is a pretty demanding scene to render,
times improved from two hours and two minutes
to just 24 minutes and 46 seconds.
So, across the board,
it seems like Cycles rendering has improved
anywhere from twice as fast to four times as fast,
depending, of course, on the scene and its complexity.
Now, speaking of using the GPU or CPU to render in Cycles,
you can actually choose one of three different options.
So, if you go Edit, Preferences,
and then Cycles Render Devices on your Mac,
you can select either the GPU,
or the other option which is the CPU, or both.
You have to be obviously on Blender 3.1 for this.
And depending on which option that you choose,
the render times can vary quite a bit.
For example, on the BMW scene,
you can see that selecting both the CPU and GPU
results in the best time,
while selecting only the GPU is a close second,
followed by only the CPU, which is obviously the worst.
Now, rendering a single frame using Cycles in Splash Fox
there is also a difference,
and likewise in the Lone Monk demo scene.
When using both the CPU and GPU,
render times improved by about five minutes.
So, which option is the best?
Well, I've found that when selecting both a CPU and GPU
during a metal render,
the CPU cores went straight to 95 degrees Celsius,
and sometimes even higher.
And the high performance CPU cores gets slammed
as you can see here while rendering the BMW scene.
And this is only for a relatively small performance gain.
Now, this inevitably means increased internal temperatures,
which also means the fan noise will be louder.
So, if you're after pure performance,
it seems like it using the CPU and GPU
during Cycles renders is the way to go.
But if you're okay with the roughly 15% performance hit,
or even less in some examples,
to get a quieter, cooler laptop, just select GPU only.
Alright, so let's get into the exciting stuff. Shall we?
This is an RTX 3060 Razer Blade 14.
It's not the most powerful RTX laptop out there,
but it's also not the weakest.
And I selected it because it's very close in price
to the base model, 14 inch M1 Pro MacBook.
Now you probably already know
about NVIDIA's Cuda technology,
but this doesn't actually utilize the ray tracing cores
of the RTX 30 series GPUs.
For that we need OPDX, or OP DX.
whichever way you pronounce it,
which is now fully supported in Blender
and is also much faster and more efficient than Cuda
as you can see in this example.
Now, like the Apple silicon MacBooks,
if you jump into Edit, Preferences, System
on your Windows computer
you can see all the options you have available.
Now that we've unlocked those juicy ray tracing cores
alongside the tenser cores of the RTX GPU,
let's render some scenes and compare it with the MacBook.
Spoiler alert, the MacBook gets destroyed.
I'm sorry, Tim cook, but it's just the truth.
Now, starting with the BMW scene,
when using both the CPU and GPU to render on the MacBook
versus just the GPU with OPDX enabled on the Razer,
the Razer was three times faster.
Quick side note, I did some variances with the Razer
when selecting either GPU only, CPU only,
or both GPU and CPU,
just like we saw with the MacBook,
although it was slightly less pronounced on the Razer,
possibly due to the Windows version of Blender
being slightly more optimized
than the Apple silicon version.
Anyway, moving on to a Splash Fox
single frame Cycles render,
once again the Razer destroyed the MacBook,
finishing almost four times faster.
On the tree leaves and grass Geometry Nodes scene,
the MacBook finished in four minutes and 17 seconds
versus just 37 seconds on the Razer.
For the Lone Monk scene,
once again, the gap was extremely pronounced,
even more so because this is a difficult scene to render
and usually takes a fair amount of time.
One thing to note here
is that on scenes such as Nishita Sky demo,
or the classroom demo,
when both devices were limited to CPU only
the difference was much more minimal.
Now, this is impressive
because this is a base model M1 Pro chip
with six high performance cores,
and obviously the two high efficiency cores
making it eight cores in total,
versus a Ryzen 5900 HX CPU.
And there's really not that much difference.
About the same as their Cinebench results actually,
which was pretty cool to see replicated in Blender.
And, yes, before you ask, even while doing EEVEE renders,
there is still a noticeable gap between the two.
Now, even though performance wise
the Razer was beating the MacBook,
you have to consider other factors as well.
For example, typically poor battery life
on performance Windows laptops,
obviously get increased fan noise,
and it also needs to be attached to the charger
to get maximum performance out of the device.
To put it into perspective,
check out how many watts
each laptop was pulling from the wall
while rendering the Lone Monk scene
using both CPU and GPU.
Now that is a massive difference,
even more so when you consider
the MacBook can render at full performance while on battery.
And remember this is an RTX 3060, not even an RTX 3080.
So, the wattage actually isn't even that bad here,
and also Razer sort of under clocks
this particular GPU slightly as well.
So there are GPUs out there on the market,
they're going to suck up a lot more wattage
than what this device can.
Okay, so what have we learned
from this most recent 3.1 update?
Well, I think it's a massive and much needed update
for Apple silicon Mac.
Cycles renders are between two and four times faster.
And this is only the beginning.
Again, guys, remember this is an alpha version of Blender
and it's the first time metal support
has been included for Apple silicon Macs.
So these results may change with additional updates.
Who knows what it's going to be like
in the next one to two years
as more support and more updates are released.
But, like you saw in the video,
currently even an entry-level RTX 30 series gaming laptop,
which was $200 cheaper, by the way, don't forget that,
destroyed the MacBook in almost every way performance wise.
And I think we'll continue to do so for the near future
until we start seeing a lot more effort
and a lot more development
into things like supporting metal on the Mac.
And also Apple just potentially coming out
with some more beefy GPU's in the future.
Anyway, guys, hopefully you enjoyed this one
and I'll catch you in the next one.