Redshift (CUDA GPU render) devs - we are not leaving the Mac

[vel0city]

Oh nice! Um, I'm seriously thinking about it. Think I need to wait until pricing of the Radeon Pro Vega II Duo MPX Module Kit and see how render speeds compares with a nvidia 2080ti in redshift.

At the moment I'm wondering if a iMac w/i9 8core would be a less crazy idea. Then I'd get a nice screen and a fast computer for after effects. after effects loves that single core performance sadly. I built a PC which I hate using, but maybe I can live with it for only C4D stuff. Nah! I really want a modular Mac Pro, just need to justify it somehow.

How are the fans on the i9 iMac at full CPU? I had one of the original 5k iMacs completely maxed out, first time I rendered anything in Arnold (CPU renderer) the fans came on full blast and sounded like a hair dryer, then the throttling kicked in. Even sculpting in Zbrush would cause the fans to kick in straight away. Great computer for Photoshop though. I returned it.

The Mac Pro just seems like a more long term stable workstation to me. Having that thing under your desk with the GPU maxed out would be like owning a mini render farm. The iMac doesn't feel robust enough for a serious 3D workflow, it would always feel like you were being held back in some way. With the Pro you can let your imagination run wild and it's never going to get in the way of your creativity, and you can burn through your renders overnight without having to farm them. It's everything a Pro machine should be.

This is such an amazing and unexpected turnaround for Apple and 3D on the Mac.

 

[vel0city]

Forward to 1:49:49 for a demo of Metal on the Mac Pro. Looks insane.

 

[startergo]

Forward to 1:49:49 for a demo of Metal on the Mac Pro. Looks insane.

forward what?

 

[vel0city]

forward what?

oops https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/103/

 

[shuto]

Thanks for the link - Can't wait to see Redshift and Octane working on Modular Mac Pro. Wonder how long we will have too wait.


Yeah good point about iMac fan noise / thermal throttling. PC biased Linus Tech Tips gives a favourable review of the i9 iMac tho...

I guess that iMac will still have the best single core performance which is good for After Effects & Working in C4D.
https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks
And I guess new Mac Pro will have similar single core performance to iMac Pro 10-core according to that benchmark (4.4GHz turbo / 4.5GHz turbo)


But yeah Mac Pro looks amazing - Exciting thought that even a maxed out two x AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo could be further expanded with eGPU for more GPU rendering power.

 

[vel0city]

It will definitely be interesting to see the single core performance compared to the i9. I actually hop onto my i7 iMac instead of using my Mac pro when I'm doing anything demanding in the C4D viewport with particles, simulations etc.

From this page: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019...w-mac-pro-and-groundbreaking-pro-display-xdr/

• Maxon’s Cinema 4D is seeing 20 percent faster GPU render performance when compared to a Windows workstation maxed out with three NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000 graphics cards.

I wonder what GPU renderer they're talking about here, ProRender or Redshift?

 

[shuto]

My guess would be thats ProRender speed comparisons, but yeah it doesn't say.

wow those quadro rtx 8000 cards are expensive at £6700 each. I have a feeling a AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo ain't gonna be cheap!

I'm sure you could build a system with 4 x quadro rtx 8000 cards which would therefore beat the 4 x Radeon Pro Vega II, so thats a bit of a cheeky comparison.

Just read this article which has good info about the Mac Pro CPU options...
https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/intel-cascade-lake-3000-series-xeon-w-cpus,news-60870.html

How are the fans on your i7 iMac under full CPU load?

 

[vel0city]

Thanks for the link to the CPU info, reading now.

The cards will not be cheap, but I fully expect any AMD gaming cards to be compatible, so we won't be limited to the top end option for GPU rendering.

The iMac is too noisy under load and I usually wear noise cancelling headphones and play some music when I know I'll be pushing it. It's like a hairdryer. But, the C4D viewport performance destroys my Mac Pro so it's worth using from time to time. The iMac is 3.5ghz i7, 32GB (late 20013) and my Mac Pro is 2 x 3.46 GHz 6-Core, 64GB. Anything with X-Particles, Mograph, simulations, Realflow, etc, runs much more smoothly on the iMac.

 

[richinaus]

Thanks for the link to the CPU info, reading now.

The cards will not be cheap, but I fully expect any AMD gaming cards to be compatible, so we won't be limited to the top end option for GPU rendering.

The iMac is too noisy under load and I usually wear noise cancelling headphones and play some music when I know I'll be pushing it. It's like a hairdryer. But, the C4D viewport performance destroys my Mac Pro so it's worth using from time to time. The iMac is 3.5ghz i7, 32GB (late 20013) and my Mac Pro is 2 x 3.46 GHz 6-Core, 64GB. Anything with X-Particles, Mograph, simulations, Realflow, etc, runs much more smoothly on the iMac.

The fan noise on an iMac vs iMac pro is like night and day. My maxed out iMac drove me crazy with the fans and was glad to see the back of it. Nothing beats doing some rendering without it sounding like a international flight gettting ready on the runway.

 

[bsbeamer]

https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...fer-mac-pro-up-to-28tflops-of-gpu-performance

Looks promising and with Metal finally/actually being embraced by pro workflows, the more high end options available the better. Let's wait for pricing.

 

[shuto]

apparently the iMac 2019 i9 is very quiet...

But in CPU render speed tests the iMac i9-9900 cpu only manages to get to 3.8Ghz. My PC I built has a i9-9900 in it and stays at 4.7GHz when CPU rendering. So the iMac is not able to turbo boost enough due to the thermals of the iMac.

Which is another reason to get a Modular Mac Pro vs iMac, as I guess it will be able to sustain a turbo boost of 4.4Ghz.

(sorry for derailing this thread with not redshift / octane thoughts - I'll shut up with my iMac thoughts now!)

 

[vel0city]

No, it's all good @shuto, very interested to hear thoughts about the iMac vs Mac Pro for rendering and driving C4D/Adobe CC in general. I think our usage for some tasks sits somewhere between the Pro and the iMac, it's a bit of a grey area and difficult to decide sometimes.

We just have to hope for great single core performance from the new Mac Pro. Or hope that After Effects, Photoshop and C4D become fully multi-threaded. Or both.

@richinaus - are you using the iMac Pro for C4D? How is the viewport performance in C4D for simulations, mograph, X-Particles, etc?

 

[Jack Burton]

Both Redshift (end of the year) and Octane (later this year) say they are coming. That's great news for me, but let's see how non-RTX performance is.

I've been learning more about ProRender lately and I like it - it just needs to be updated more than once a year. That's already ported to metal. Perhaps Metal 3 support will help speed or features?

 

[hifimac]

Will Maxon just abandon ProRender now that they own Redshift? Or will they wrap some of Redshift's tech into it?

 

[shuto]

I've been learning more about ProRender lately and I like it

If you like ProRender you are going to be in love with Redshift & Octane.

Will Maxon just abandon ProRender now that they own Redshift? Or will they wrap some of Redshift's tech into it?

My guess would be they will leave as is ProRender for backwards compatibility but not update it.

Redshift is the future and I can't wait to find out if AMD cards are speedy or not.

 

[vel0city]

I'd say ProRender is dead as well. If they build Redshift RTX into the viewport so what you're seeing is like Unreal Engine, it will definitely be game over and goodnight for ProRender.

What an amazing and unexpected turn of events that we're even discussing this, whatever happens, though. Just the thought of the new Mac Pro and its GPU abilities have got me dreaming about the possibilities that I'll be able to achieve creatively and offer my clients. I've held back on so many ideas just because of render times and tying my Mac up for too long. I didn't anywhere near expect a full-fat Mac Pro cheesegrater 2.0 this week, nevermind a clear statement of intent that Apple are dead serious about 3D. All the news about Metal, Redshift and teaming up with Maxon has been the best news from Apple since the Jobs glory days for me.

 

[shuto]

Very much waiting for Octane or Redshift benchmarks, and currently dreaming of the Mac Pro 2019 as a GPU render beast...

With the two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo (4GPU) + four external Vega 64 in thunderbolt 3 enclosures (4GPU).

I wonder if the Mac Pro 2019 will support those 8 GPUs?



In sort of related Redshift news, I agree with Nick @ Greyscalegorilla saying this about the Mac Pro...

"For those wondering, I am definitely interested in seeing what this new Mac Pro can do. If it is even close to the performance of my PC, I will get one. I love the power of my PC, but windows and driver issues drag me down weekly."

He uses a PC with two Nvidia 2080ti in it. Surely two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo would beat that, and cost a lot more.

 

[deconstruct60]

Very much waiting for Octane or Redshift benchmarks, and currently dreaming of the Mac Pro 2019 as a GPU render beast...

With the two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo (4GPU) + four external Vega 64 in thunderbolt 3 enclosures (4GPU).

I wonder if the Mac Pro 2019 will support those 8 GPUs?

The MP 2019 and macOS 10.15+ ? Sure. The specific application running on top? Maybe , maybe not. Depends upon how it goes about chopping up the work into 'pieces' and delegating to the GPUs. If just as series of 'batch jobs" ( e.g., do frame 1 , frame 2 , ... , frame n) then can get some linear like speed increases ( the Duos would probably get more than 'half' the work done so won't be slope 1 versus number of GPUs. ). If the work has to be synchronized between GPUs then perhaps not so much. Code could be biased to only working with the Duos and their Infinity fabric connection(s). It would depend upon the implementation in the app.

 

[AndreeOnline]

Depends upon how it goes about chopping up the work into 'pieces' and delegating to the GPUs.

There are several videos on Apple's WWDC area of their site looking at how to optimise hardware and software.

There are a few different methods how to split up the workload between GPUs. Check out 'Metal for Pro Apps', for instance.

 

[deconstruct60]

.

There are a few different methods how to split up the workload between GPUs. Check out 'Metal for Pro Apps', for instance.

All apps aren't going to implement all of those. Those focused on the new Infinity Fabric optimization may ignore other GPUs that don't have it and simply just carve up the work that way. Others will explicitly avoid that because it only works on one kind of GPU and will only implement more portable solutions. Other apps may have everything and the kitchen sink build into the application.

if there are 15 ways to skin a cat what is most likely is that most applications won't do all of them. Abilities will vary between applications. The more options then the more variability. it isn't about macOS or hardware (which enable the options) supporting it. ( the only corner case is when using optimized Apple Libraries. They may go through and optimize most of the BTO options, but they also probably will not do everything with anything remotely possible. )

 

[shuto]

I have a feeling that Apple have paid Redshift and Octane to port it work on Metal. Octane have said they will give away Octane X for free with purchase of a Mac Pro, why would they do this if they haven't had financial backing from Apple. Maybe because they really want to get Octane working on iPad as a games render engine and this gives them access to Apples metal engineers to help on it. Guido@ALG in Redshift's forums makes a good point...
"I’ve found it interesting that Redshift and OTOY are making the announcement of proposed support of Metal compute in coincidence with this Mac Pro announcement. I suspect Apple are throwing around some considerable coin and promise of support to cajole developers to code for Metal compute."


The thing I find quiet interesting is apples decision to pay developers to make software work for AMD cards rather than support nvidia cards. I guess they are thinking of the long term with Metal.

It all means nothing until redshift and octane benchmarks


Guido@ALG also makes this good point about Metal speeds...
This gem though, “As an Apple development partner, Maxon performance gains were cited as having “… seen 20% faster GPU render performance in Cinema 4D than on a Windows workstation maxed out with three of the latest Nvidia Quadro cards.”
They’re not talking about Redshift because that clearly does not exist on AMD yet so one can only image they sleight of hand being played here is the god awful ProRender. Maxon have it running on Metal in MacOS but in Windows it runs on OpenCL 1.2 which barely turns the fans on my system with appallingly low GPU loading. In comparison Redshift CUDA has both GPUs pegged at near 100% while rendering. So a fully loaded MacPro (it’s bound to be the top spec) barely beats a windows PC with just 3 GPUs, that’s not great news.

 

[th0masp]

So a fully loaded MacPro (it’s bound to be the top spec) barely beats a windows PC with just 3 GPUs, that’s not great news.

Now that's inevitable. Hardware on the PC side is bound to leapfrog the MP within a year or two for one but in the short term software is the key and most relevant programs are written with Windows and Nvidia in mind.

The way I know it you have the dev team working on and optimizing for the main platform. And then you have a few people working on ports. If Apple insists on going their own way with hardware acceleration then it's going to be the implementation that gets the minimum amount of attention.

Basically you buy this thing if you want to stay with the Mac first and foremost. You don't get it for superior performance.

 

[Macintosh IIcx]

The thing I find quiet interesting is apples decision to pay developers to make software work for AMD cards rather than support nvidia cards. I guess they are thinking of the long term with Metal.

This is all about Metal support, don't forget the massive amounts of iOS devices that will only get more powerful as time goes on. The Metal connection between iOS and MacOS is what is gonna to save the Mac as Pro solution. Apple is mainly thinking about AR and porting iOS games to the MacOS when it comes to 3D I think, but we will see.

 

[shuto]

I listened to this interview with Jules Urbach from Otoy (Octane Render)...

He said the preview of Octane X for Mac Pro should be ready or the end of the year, so still a while until Octane is on modern Macs.

He said it is too early to tell for sure about metal render speeds as they are still building the code, but for the scenes that do benchmark it is looking like a AMD Radeon VII (metal) is equivalent to a Nvidia RTX 2080 (CUDA).

Does anyone know how the processing power of a Radeon VII compares to a Radeon Pro Vega II or Radeon Pro Vega II Duo?

In this other Mac Pro video...

He says
2 x Radeon Pro Vega II Duo = 57 teraflops
2 x Nvidia RTX 2080 ti = 27 teraflops

So maybe a Radeon Pro Vega II is equivalent to a Nvidia RTX 2080 ti, so I'm wishfully thinking they will render in Redshift & Octane in similar speeds. If thats true hoping they will be similarly priced also. So maybe a Radeon Pro Vega II MPX would be $1200, Radeon Pro Vega II Duo MPX would be $2400, and two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo MPX would be $4800.

 

[richinaus]

No, it's all good @shuto, very interested to hear thoughts about the iMac vs Mac Pro for rendering and driving C4D/Adobe CC in general. I think our usage for some tasks sits somewhere between the Pro and the iMac, it's a bit of a grey area and difficult to decide sometimes.

We just have to hope for great single core performance from the new Mac Pro. Or hope that After Effects, Photoshop and C4D become fully multi-threaded. Or both.

@richinaus - are you using the iMac Pro for C4D? How is the viewport performance in C4D for simulations, mograph, X-Particles, etc?

I am not a C4D user but use Rhino / Fusion 360 / twinmotion / autocad, and all are great. I have no complaints about the imac pro.