Paul HudsonNov 13, 2024
I just watched a comparison of M4 chips against dedicated NVIDIA GPUs, and it's just astonishing – M4 Max on MBP came in second to a 4080 Super on a desktop PC. If you're not sure why that's incredible, you should see the size and weight of a 4080 😂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bZO1gbAc6Y
How good are the Apple M4 chips when rendering in Blender?

YouTube
Show threadRobert AtkinsNov 13, 2024
@twostraws Huge difference between the M4 mini and the M4 Max.
Show threadFrancesco MariniNov 13, 2024
@ratkins @twostraws M4 Max has up to 40 GPU cores, the base M4 only 8–10, and it might as well be that the clocks are (slightly) different, too. So not unexpected ☺️
Show threadRobert AtkinsNov 13, 2024
@fmarini @twostraws Must be a meaningful clock difference, the M4 Max is way more than 4× the M4 mini on that graph—and you expect basically a linear speedup per core for “embarrassingly parallel” problems like graphics right? Remarkable in any case.
Show threadFrancesco MariniNov 13, 2024

@ratkins @twostraws M4 Max is 2:27 mins, so 207 seconds. M4 9:13, 553 seconds. So the speed up is 2.67.
If the M4 is the 8 GPU cores version, and the Max the 40, theoretical scaling should be a perfect 5. If the M4 is the 10 cores, and the Max the 32, scaling should be 3.2.

Don’t be fooled by the flashy but imprecise graph 😉 Would’ve been better if they graphed speed up vs base M4, but 🤷🏼‍♂️

Show threadAlejandro Lanza
@fmarini @ratkins @twostraws 2:27 is 147 secs. Specs are in the video, 10 vs 32 cores. So a 3.76 increase in performance for 3.2 times the cores
Nov 13, 2024 at 2:09pmWeb
Show threadFrancesco MariniNov 13, 2024

@alejandrolanza @ratkins @twostraws yes, my fault 🤦🏻‍♂️😅

Didn’t watch the video, tbh.

So, if it’s 32 vs 10 cores, and 3.76 speed up, it suggests the clocks are different, at the very least +17.5% for the Max, but I would guess a bit more than that, since perfectly linear speed up is almost never achieved.

That said, those numbers are really, really good. And comparing perf/watts would make them even (much) better 👍🏻

Show threadAlejandro LanzaNov 13, 2024
@fmarini @ratkins @twostraws I haven't seen anything about different core clock speeds, but Apple did make a big deal about increased mem bandwidth from vanilla to pro to max, so that might be at play here