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Are they any Radeon Pro 460 benchmarks out yet?
- Thread starter drvelocity
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I just want to note here, for the record, that Whiner Talking Points have evolved from:
"It can't edit 4K"
to
"It's not impressive that it can edit 6K"
Ok, so I'm really confused on what is considered a good GPU for a laptop these days. I thought that something that is in range of GeForce 965M is decent. I mean, for Apple, this is quite a good GPU, right? Microsoft is using the 965M in their latest Surface Book, if I'm not mistaken. And the respected XPS 15" has a 960. But these are old GPUs and if I understand it correctly - the 1060 (mobile version) is much better.
So an honest question for people who are NOT satisfied with MBPs GPU performance. What GPU would you like to see? The 1060? Is that the issue?
And I know there isn't much people can do in such short time but post Valley benchmarks and similar, but I am interested how well these GPUs work in Adobe apps, in CG apps, etc. Is it still the rule to look for the best gaming card to do your "pro" (whatever that means) stuff? I've been a PS4 gamer for a while and to be honest, I stopped looking at "how many fps does GPU X give at game X" for a while now.
So, how good are these new Nvidia GPUs for pro apps? All I can see are gaming benchmarks. In fact, when I google anything from the 10xx series, it's all about gaming performance. Even the GeForce software, it screams "15-y old gamer" to me. Of course that is less important, but I'm glad these new AMD Pros are at least not marketed with some "Xtreme Powerz Maxx" message. Still, it's performance that matters, so if anyone can clarify things a bit - I'd like to know, what passes as a good mobile GPU for graphically intensive apps these days?
In other words - what's the consensus? Are the new Polaris cards in MBPs good for work? (I know they are good for what I'll be using them, but I'd like to know anyway).
I promise not to argue with anyone
I really want to know. Thanks!
EDIT: One more question - if it is true that the Radeon Pro 460 is not good enough for 4K stuff as some people are saying - and since it's close to a GeForce 965 - does that mean there were no good laptops for 4K video in existence until late 2016?
So an honest question for people who are NOT satisfied with MBPs GPU performance. What GPU would you like to see? The 1060? Is that the issue?
And I know there isn't much people can do in such short time but post Valley benchmarks and similar, but I am interested how well these GPUs work in Adobe apps, in CG apps, etc. Is it still the rule to look for the best gaming card to do your "pro" (whatever that means) stuff? I've been a PS4 gamer for a while and to be honest, I stopped looking at "how many fps does GPU X give at game X" for a while now.
So, how good are these new Nvidia GPUs for pro apps? All I can see are gaming benchmarks. In fact, when I google anything from the 10xx series, it's all about gaming performance. Even the GeForce software, it screams "15-y old gamer" to me. Of course that is less important, but I'm glad these new AMD Pros are at least not marketed with some "Xtreme Powerz Maxx" message. Still, it's performance that matters, so if anyone can clarify things a bit - I'd like to know, what passes as a good mobile GPU for graphically intensive apps these days?
In other words - what's the consensus? Are the new Polaris cards in MBPs good for work? (I know they are good for what I'll be using them, but I'd like to know anyway).
I promise not to argue with anyone
I really want to know. Thanks!EDIT: One more question - if it is true that the Radeon Pro 460 is not good enough for 4K stuff as some people are saying - and since it's close to a GeForce 965 - does that mean there were no good laptops for 4K video in existence until late 2016?
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The first is ignorant. The second is true. We edit 6K and now 8K on three year old Mac Pros (which were not well specced even then).
Our latest production has 10 million views on YouTube in the last three weeks and was edited in Premiere, which performs half as well on macOS as it does on Windows. In other words, there has been plenty of computing power for editing Red footage for a few years now. Even a dinky MacBook can do it.
Here's the facts.
1 Go to RED's site and look at the bit rate for RED RAW codecs, even at 8K.
2 Look at the specs for the mag...SATA 2 interface
3 All NLE applications render a lower bit rate cache in the background. No app needs to force users to scrub through RAW and it would be pointless because the application of filters is rendered into the cache files.
Anyone who doesn't know these three points has no business talking about video editing like an 'expert'. End of this talk. Enjoy the weekend.
I asked this in a previous post, but I would like to ask you personally. So, since the 460 is "not good enough for 4K" (or whatever it you said, I'm not trivializing it but it's beyond my knowledge) and 460 is roughly like the GeForce 965M - does that mean there were no good laptops for 4K video before late 2016? No one was doing 4K on a laptop before today? Since you said "new MacBook Pro's can't do 4K" - that's literally what you wrote - that means we couldn't do 4K on laptops in 2015/early 2016? I'm seriously asking, because it seems a bit weird to me, and it looks like that's what you're saying.
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I don't know any of these points and I don't know **** about video editing
But you usually give me good answers (even if you seem to be 'on the other side' of the debate a bit so - are these new MBPs ok for people doing video or not? And if they are not, which laptop is? Really - I'm asking, it's not a rhetoric question
I don't know any of these points and I don't know **** about video editing
Obviously the 460 is rather low end, but to make the most out of editing 4K and above these laptops should ideally be used in clamshell mode to avoid throttling. The issue is not the components, there is more than enough power and speed and bandwidth there. The issue is heat building up. That's what makes Apple's laptop designs struggle if you put them under load for a while. When I want to use an MBP for something heavier than normal I put it in a BookArc to allow heat to freely dissipate in all directions. BTW I don't work for BookArc
Obviously the 460 is rather low end, but to make the most out of editing 4K and above these laptops should ideally be used in clamshell mode to avoid throttling. The issue is not the components, there is more than enough power and speed and bandwidth there. The issue is heat building up. That's what makes Apple's laptop designs struggle if you put them under load for a while. When I want to use an MBP for something heavier than normal I put it in a BookArc to allow heat to freely dissipate in all directions. BTW I don't work for BookArc
Ok, so what laptop would you recommend for video editing? I would like to have something to compare things to. It matters little to me, but I'd like to know.
You don't need another laptop. Just installing Boot Camp and using Premiere or After Effects there will feel like an upgrade. Windows 10 OEM can be picked up cheap, and Creative Cloud is cross platform so this is the cheapest way to boost performance for any Mac user who relies on Adobe apps.
Oh, so you're criticizing the OS, not the hardware. Didn't get that. Well, I don't use video stuff, but I do use Photoshop, which is an Adobe app. Still, there is no way in hell I'll use Windows over macOS, because of .... it's a disscussion for a completely different topic
And you'd disagree anyway. But thanks for the reply, it is interesting you think Windows is so much better performance-wise. Definitely something I'll pay attention to, in the future. Thanks.
Oh, so you're criticizing the OS, not the hardware. Didn't get that. Well, I don't use video stuff, but I do use Photoshop, which is an Adobe app. Still, there is no way in hell I'll use Windows over macOS, because of .... it's a disscussion for a completely different topic
Ignoring 'FCP' and just looking at cross platform applications.
Not necessarily the "OS" but rather Apple's inability to keep APIs up to date and provide regular optimised graphics drivers that are on par with Windows. This hasn't changed in years and is unlikely to.
It's not just graphics either, Intel CPU features such as QuickSync are often not as well supported on macOS. We did benchmarks on the Mac Pro forum a year ago. Same machine, same 4K footage, same apps, same project files, same export settings. In Windows 10 Adobe Media Encoder rendered the project exactly four times faster than it did on El Capitan. On the CPU rendering only!
Thats why Apple has designed Metal. OpenGL is a mess to support. BTW, the main reasons why Windows drivers are better is because GPU makers generate revenues from gaming industry. Thats why modern Windows drivers contain tons of code that targets specific popular games in order to improve their performance. Like rewriting shaders on the fly and optimising memory allocations for particular usage patterns. There is a lot of crazy stuff going on. Of course no-one would bother to do it for OS X, because there is no profit in it.
With APIs like Metal and Vulkan, the behaviour of the driver becomes much more predictable and therefore, the value of game-specific optimisations is diminished. Not to mention that the driver itself is much easier to write and maintain.
QuickSync support is hidden behind certain OS X APIs. I do agree that sometimes its not sufficient for what you want to do.
Nice in theory but Metal is still nowhere right now. There is Metal support in the latest Premiere and After Effects but it's slower than OpenGL and OpenCL...both of which Apple hasn't even kept up to date. nobody even knows if Vulkan will ever be ported. In terms of APIs, macOS is behind Linux even.
Most people complaining are not professional users, but gamer or complainer. I am a software engineer and even the 2013 MBP is very well up to the task for compiling software or working in Photoshop or Indesign.
That's the use cases these machines were built for and not for gaming. You'll probably not find any other laptop that has a GPU that does 1.86 Teraflops while consuming only 35 watt. The 460 is a high end graphics card, just not in the speed, but in the balance between performance and battery usage. And that is what Apple stood for in the last one and a half decade.
Of course there are professional user who will not like the new MacBook Pro, but as I see it in my surroundings, this is by far the minority. The movie editors I know do the heavy lifting anyway on a desktop and not on a laptop.
Latest Photoshop uses Metal for several effects. They work quite nice, Oil Paint effect, for example, works faster on GeForce 750 than on most desktop PCs in the office. Though, I agree it is a very specific case. I hope the support only grows. Especially with the promised Touch Bar update by the end of the year.
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Oh, I agree. But I don't do video, so I wanted to see what those "video pros" say and why they are not happy. I heard everything - from 16Gb is not enough, to GPU is not fast enough - and now, macOS isn't good enough. I'm not even sure most of them know what bothers them, tbh. But I do believe some of the people here (like @SoyCapitanSoyCapitan) when they say, that for their workflows, Windows is better. For workflows that use FCP, it seems that Macs are much better. This is why choice is important. Still, I don't quite see the reason for all this drama. It turns out these new Macs are amazing pro computers for some, not good for others. But isn't that the case with every hardware? And with Adobe licences being cross-platform, most of these users can easily switch. For some reason - this still causes anger and name-calling.
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Metal in Photoshop??? I did not read this in any of the update documents. Photoshop uses the Mercury Engine which makes OpenGL and OpenCL calls only.
Edit : Yes, it has Metal support for the Oil Paint filter only.
If you want to read up on Metal performance, in its current state, then Adobe's forums are the place to go. Example:
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2170657
I agree it's not a big deal, but it could signify more support is coming.
From https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/whats-new.html
Oh, sorry, just saw you edited the post. Anyway, yes, ok, it seems to be just for the Oil Paint filter. But it's a start
And it seems to work quite well, as I said.
I agree it's not a big deal, but it could signify more support is coming.
From https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/whats-new.html
Thanks I found it. But yes, it's a mostly useless filter for pseudo-artists.
Hah, no, you can actually use it to clean up some things with good settings (turning off lighting, for example). But I agree, it's almost insignificant. But, it does seem that Adobe is slowly looking at Metal, and if Apple keeps improving it - who knows.
Either way, I don't care much, really. In every measurable aspect for me, Photoshop works just as fast under macOS and still has some advantages over the Windows version. For example - the ability to scale the interface with OS scaling (as opposed to just two settings 100% and 200% on Windows - that, by the way, is not monitor independent so good luck if you have one hidpi and one non-hidpi screen), the ability to turn off application frame (really great for using reference images) and, of course, now the Touch Bar support which looks like a real boost to productivity (the brush size slider will be worth it alone). Also, I tried the great new Find option from 2017 and on Mac it works just like Spotlight, instantly finding all PSD files you search, while on the PC, it seems to work with just certain indexed locations and (in my limited testing) is far less usable.
As I said, for my workflow, macOS is still the better option, even just looking at Photoshop. Taking everything else into account (the fact I got used to using tags for my files, the whole 'feel' of the system, etc.) - using Windows isn't an option for me, at the moment. I totally understand it's not the case for you, and that's fine
GTA V already runs on the 2015 version (under Windows of course)
Metal performance (in itself) is fine. The drivers are just somehow immature, so people sometimes hit bugs and edge cases. And the performance issue in the thread you linked two can be programmer error just as much as driver issue.
That said, the biggest advantage of Metal is probably how easy its to work with. The API is very elegant and simple, especially if you compare it to Vulkan.
You're completely wrong on both accounts.
On Windows 10, if you go to Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Display, there's a link for scaling. You can choose a lot of values (100% - 125% - 150% etc) or type in your own, e.g. 123%.
Scaling is also per-monitor. I use simultaneously a 27" 5k display, with 175% scaling and my older 1920x1200 24" display, with 100% scaling. Except for when a window is in between them, scaling works fine in either and you can drag a window from one to the other, and when it settles it's scaled correctly.
Even more, I remote desktop into another Windows 10 machine, and I use both monitors, and scaling/dragging through RDP works exactly the same.
Well that's just as speculative. The link is people with Mac Pros complaining. You're basically saying Apple, AMD and Adobe couldn't get this right after 18 months of working with Metal...yet you're saying this API is easier to work with than Vulkan. I hope you don't mind me being cynical.
FCPX's Metal support is at what stage now?