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Blender Begins Testing Metal GPU Rendering on M1 Macs

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The free and open source 3D creation tool Blender this week began testing Metal GPU rendering for its Cycles renderer on M1 Macs running macOS Monterey. Blender said Metal support for Macs with Intel and AMD GPUs is under development.

blender-metal-rendering.jpeg
Image Credit: @Jonatan on Twitter​

Metal GPU rendering for Cycles can be tested in the Blender 3.1 Alpha and was made possible by a contribution from Apple, which recently joined the Blender Development Fund to support continued development of the 3D creation tool.

Blender said Metal GPU rendering in the Alpha build "is in an early state" and no timeframe was provided for the final release of Blender 3.1.

Apple's support for Blender has been praised by users of the 3D creation tool, as it marks the return of macOS as a completely supported Blender platform. Blender had not supported GPU rendering on Macs since Apple implemented its Metal framework.

Article Link: Blender Begins Testing Metal GPU Rendering on M1 Macs
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/12/15/blender-metal-gpu-rendering-m1-macs/
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I’m so happy to read this, not only because it’s another big software on it’s way to run natively on the Apple Silicon macs, but also because Blender is becoming a big actor on the animation scene (I could say one of the most important softwares in 3D)... and it is open source!!! And I love open source software.

PS: This means support for Intel macs as well, because we’re talking about the graphics API, which is shared among all macs
 
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This is actually an area where Apples unified memory can show major advantages over a traditional GPU. GPU rendering often requires a high amount of VRAM and nowadays 4K textures and digital scans are becoming more of a norm especially when rendering for photorealistic projects like architecture.

There’s also the benefit of thermals. On a regular PC and especially in the laptop space, powerful GPUs generate a lot of heat which then causes major throttling. The M1 chips stay cool which allows for peak performance for much longer.
 
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This is one reason I still need Windows. GPU rendering in Windows smokes CPU rendering in macOS on the same machine while also remaining cooler during the rendering process.

Edit: To comment on the post above mine; the 5700XT GPU in my 2020 iMac puts out way less heat and causes less fan usage while fully in use rendering in Windows when compared to the 8 core intel CPU, which ramps fans to full speed when rendering in macOS. It’s quite the difference in fan loudness.
 
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terminator-jq said:
This is actually an area where Apples unified memory can show major advantages over a traditional GPU. GPU rendering often requires a high amount of VRAM and nowadays 4K textures and digital scans are becoming more of a norm especially when rendering for photorealistic projects like architecture.

There’s also the benefit of thermals. On a regular PC and especially in the laptop space, powerful GPUs generate a lot of heat which then causes major throttling. The M1 chips stay cool which allows for peak performance for much longer.
Click to expand...
But can it compete with Nvidia optix? Nope.

Having unified ram and a ‘cooler’ machine doesn’t produce faster renders
 
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terminator-jq said:
This is actually an area where Apples unified memory can show major advantages over a traditional GPU. GPU rendering often requires a high amount of VRAM and nowadays 4K textures and digital scans are becoming more of a norm especially when rendering for photorealistic projects like architecture.

There’s also the benefit of thermals. On a regular PC and especially in the laptop space, powerful GPUs generate a lot of heat which then causes major throttling. The M1 chips stay cool which allows for peak performance for much longer.
Click to expand...
M1 Max certainly aren’t cool when they are at peak performance. My 16 can get pretty hot if I work it hard.
 
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Anyone has some numbers/benchmarks to see the benefits (for now)? I use Maya at work all the time but was wondering about Blender for some time. This could be very interesting in the future if Apple keeps helping with development
 
Amacfa said:
But can it compete with Nvidia optix? Nope.

Having unified ram and a ‘cooler’ machine doesn’t produce faster renders
Click to expand...

$1200 Lenovo Legion Slim 7 with 3060 at 70W is 2.6x faster on BMW render than $3K+ MBP M1 Max. Desktop RTX is even faster at <10s.

16.39s - 3060 70W mobile (OptiX Blender 3.0)
20.57s - reference 6900xt (HIP Blender 3.0)
29s - 2070 Super (OptiX)
42.79s - M1 Max 32GPU (Metal supported Blender 3.1 alpha)
48s - M1 Max 24GPU (Metal Blender 3.1 alpha + patch)
51s - 2070 Super (CUDA)
1:18.34m - M1 Pro 16GPU (Metal Blender 3.1 alpha + patch)
2.04m - Mac Mini M1 (Metal Blender 3.1 alpha + patch)
2:48.03m - MBA M1 7GPU (Metal supported Blender 3.1 alpha)
3:55.81m - AMD 5800H base clock no-boost and no-PBO overclock (CPU Blender 3.0)
5:51.06m - MBA M1 (CPU Blender 3.0)
 
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Wait till the final version is released and I am sure the tech reviewer Linus Tech Tips will review it and compare it against some of their intel machines because they use blender on a regular basis as part of their benchmarking suite of tools. Then we will see just how good it is on Apple AS
 
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mi7chy said:
$1200 Lenovo Legion Slim 7 with 3060 at 70W is 2.6x faster on BMW render than $3K+ MBP M1 Max. Desktop RTX is even faster at <10s.

16.39s - 3060 70W mobile (OptiX Blender 3.0)
20.57s - reference 6900xt (HIP Blender 3.0)
29s - 2070 Super (OptiX)
31s - 3060 70W mobile (OptiX Blender 2.93)
42.79s - M1 Max 32GPU (Metal supported Blender 3.1 alpha)
48s - M1 Max 24GPU (Metal Blender 3.1 alpha + patch)
51s - 2070 Super (CUDA)
1:18.34m - M1 Pro 16GPU (Metal Blender 3.1 alpha + patch)
2.04m - Mac Mini M1 (Metal Blender 3.1 alpha + patch)
2:48.03m - MBA M1 (Metal supported Blender 3.1 alpha)
3:55.81m - AMD 5800H base clock no-boost and no-PBO overclock (CPU Blender 3.0)
5:51.06m - MBA M1 (CPU Blender 3.0)
Click to expand...
all fine and good of course, but isn't this why they are developing native software? So you were not expecting these results?
 
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laptech said:
Wait till the final version is released and I am sure the tech reviewer Linus Tech Tips will review it and compare it against some of their intel machines because they use blender on a regular basis as part of their benchmarking suite of tools. Then we will see just how good it is on Apple AS
Click to expand...
and Linus tech is so very unbiased and completely honest, we could always trust nothing from them, right?
 
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Blender 3.0 CPU :
84secs

Blender 3.1 Metal GPU only :
50secs

Blender 3.1 Metal GPU+CPU :
36secs

devtalk.blender.org

Cycles Apple Metal device feedback

Hi! Thank you so much for supporting metal with blender. The first tests are really impressive. On my M1 MacBook air here are some results for a scene : Blender 3.0 CPU : 84secs Blender 3.1 Metal GPU only : 50secs Blender 3.1 Metal GPU+CPU : 36secs That 233% faster. Many thanks!
devtalk.blender.org devtalk.blender.org
Click to expand...
 
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MauiPa said:
and Linus tech is so very unbiased and completely honest, we could always trust nothing from them, right?
Click to expand...
oh and Apple reviewers are so very unbiased and completely honest, we could always trust nothing from them, right?

it works both ways.
 
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