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M1 Max vs Intel 16" + eGPU

not unexpected. i have a 6900xt.

they’re a 250-300 watt card and cost about the same as a base macbook pro 14…

m1 max is good, but you simply aren’t going to come close to a 300 watt, current desktop gpu inside of 100 watts for the gpu plus cpu in a laptop.
 
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Nice! this encourages me to hold on to my Intel 16" 2019 i9 MacBook Pro.

I have Egpu breakout boxes but none have that awesome 6900xt card.

to think we are stuck with the M1 Max in every computer APPLE makes for the next 18 months until something better. M2 whatever?

By then both Intel and AMD will have smaller more powerful chips. Same with graphic cards.
 
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Basically the M1 Pro is as fast or faster than the 5600M with 8GB of memory. Pretty impressive. For anyone who has a fully spec’d out 2020 mod el it’s probably good to hold off until next year.
 
There's no point putting a 6900 XT in an egpu unless you have money to burn.

In previously generations the 5700 XT series in an egpu was about 15% slower than installed inside a desktop. The 6900 XT loses a lot more than that over Thunderbolt so you're paying already overinflated prices and not getting anywhere near its maximum performance.
 
metapunk2077fail said:
There's no point putting a 6900 XT in an egpu unless you have money to burn.

In previously generations the 5700 XT series in an egpu was about 15% slower than installed inside a desktop. The 6900 XT loses a lot more than that over Thunderbolt so you're paying already overinflated prices and not getting anywhere near its maximum performance.
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I don’t think that’s actually true. Barefeats have done a lot of eGPU benchmarking, and the numbers from the 6900xt stomp over the 5700xt by the kinds of margins you’d expect it to ?‍♂️
 
Not surprising at all. The 6xxx Radeon GPUs have been a huge performance bump. Still, particularly the M1 Max does hold up extremely well, especially when considering the power draw. The 32C GPU is roughly comparable to a Radeon VII from my experience (I used to run a Hackintosh with an overclocked VII before). Sometimes a tad slower, sometimes a bit faster. And that with a fraction of the power consumption.
 
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Grumply said:
I don’t think that’s actually true. Barefeats have done a lot of eGPU benchmarking, and the numbers from the 6900xt stomp over the 5700xt by the kinds of margins you’d expect it to ?‍♂️
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he was saying that thunderbolt cut around 20%-30% of the graphic card
next thunderbolt with 80gbs will use 100%
 
throAU said:
not unexpected. i have a 6900xt.

they’re a 250-300 watt card and cost about the same as a base macbook pro 14…

m1 max is good, but you simply aren’t going to come close to a 300 watt, current desktop gpu inside of 100 watts for the gpu plus cpu in a laptop.
Click to expand...

Actually, I think if you were to ask a lot of people, it would be unexpected. There's been so many M1 Max benchmarks flying around declaring all previous Macs dead and useless by comparison. I think honest assessments of the (admittedly, few) weaknesses have been a little swept away by things like the super fast export times they have, which appear to be more thanks to the M1's hardware encoders than it's actual raw processing power.

So I think it's good to spread this sort of info around.
 
Grumply said:
There's been so many M1 Max benchmarks flying around declaring all previous Macs dead and useless by comparison. I think honest assessments of the (admittedly, few) weaknesses have been a little swept away by things like the super fast export times they have, which appear to be more thanks to the M1's hardware encoders than it's actual raw processing power.
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The M1-Pro/Max isn't just fast due to the hardware video transcoding. The GPU in it is extremely efficient for the power consumption it has.

Again, you're comparing 400-450 watts of hardware (intel + eGPU with 6900XT) to 100 watts. And the GPU without the breakout box is the price of an entry level M1-Pro. The new chips are good, but expecting 100 watts to compete with current generation hardware running in 4-5x that is just not realistic.

The M1-max will do that performance on battery. The use case for a notebook with eGPU is extremely niche.

If you want power on a desktop based system (which is what an eGPU intel Mac is), just wait for the bigger M1 variants running in 300-600 watts.
 
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Promising, some of the tests conducted on the M1M appear to be with software not currently native to Apple Silicone, which implies, Rosetta may be a bottleneck to the comparisons, particularly the games. MaxTech on Youtube continues to reference some kind of issue with Geekbench and the M1P/M's not scoring well on the metal test, don't really know or understand the specifics, haven't looked into it much.

Either way, I'm impressed the M1M comes as close as it does to the eGPU and 5600m and further justifies why I sold my 16" 5600m and eGPU setup.
 
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Basemark is native, Geekbench is native, GFXBench is native, Davinci Resolve is native. The games Barefeet did run are not.

Regarding games, I'd love to see some more comparisons in this department. The two games they chose don't perform very well with Apple Silicon from my experience.
There are some titles that run better like Dirt 4, Tropico 6 and Dying Light. In all of them, my 16" M1 Max massively(!) outperforms my previous Radeon VII hackintosh in 1440p resolution despite Rosetta.

Also, some comparisons with M1 native games like Myst and Baldurs Gate 3 would be quite interesting.
 
Grumply said:
I don’t think that’s actually true. Barefeats have done a lot of eGPU benchmarking, and the numbers from the 6900xt stomp over the 5700xt by the kinds of margins you’d expect it to ?‍♂️
Click to expand...

That's not what I said. I said the 6900XT consumes so much bandwidth that overall it loses a lot of performance over Thunderbolt. Previous gen cards also lost some but not as bad because they were weaker cards.

That's what I am saying. So to pay the extremely inflated prices for GPUs and not see their full performance is not a good deal.
 
Also keep in mind a lot of vfx software is still cpu bound. So until the 4 core m1max the 16max is still best choice for vfx work in a lot of cases.
 
This seems to be the one blindspot with Apple Silicon at the moment. No GPU outside of the (admittedly more than capable enough for most) SOOC. If and how Apple resolve this are both interesting questions. I think we’ll know more when Mac Pro (presumably with new and improved wheels) arrives.
 
CMMChris said:
Basemark is native, Geekbench is native, GFXBench is native, Davinci Resolve is native. The games Barefeet did run are not.

Regarding games, I'd love to see some more comparisons in this department. The two games they chose don't perform very well with Apple Silicon from my experience.
There are some titles that run better like Dirt 4, Tropico 6 and Dying Light. In all of them, my 16" M1 Max massively(!) outperforms my previous Radeon VII hackintosh in 1440p resolution despite Rosetta.

Also, some comparisons with M1 native games like Myst and Baldurs Gate 3 would be quite interesting.
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This. I had been looking into building a 5700XT EGPU for my intel 16" until I saw that it couldn't even outperform the 5600M. Getting a 6000 series GPU is nearly impossible and stupid expensive. This gives me more performance, even in Rosetta, with great battery life and a fully portable form factor. Win-Win.
 
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Grumply said:
I don’t think that’s actually true. Barefeats have done a lot of eGPU benchmarking, and the numbers from the 6900xt stomp over the 5700xt by the kinds of margins you’d expect it to ?‍♂️
Click to expand...
Depends on the egpu. My mantiz Saturn pro 2 with the 5700XT worked well once I figured out how to force certain apps to use it by default. Even considered buying a micro center desktop with a 6700XT and sell it with the 5700. Ended up getting an M1 from my son so for Final Cut and QuickTime it’s worlds faster.

you can buy it here wo the video card. Sold that separately for $800

Thread 'Mantiz Saturn Pro 2 $250 obo'
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mantiz-saturn-pro-2-250-obo.2325230/
 
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