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[BK]

But why is there a specific Intel version included in the file then?

This doesn't make any sense. Also PR14 doesn't even work with Houdini 19.5.

Hi Midphase,

Thanks for the post.
The Intel version still works on Silicon chips.

Yeah, the last version we supported with PR14 is for Houdini_19.0.531.



cheers

[northalex78]

@studiofy

"So, the Mac was 2:17min, which is not too bad in my opinion.
PC with 3090 is 47s
PC with 4090 is 25s
PC with both 3090 and 4090 is 20s
PC with both cards + 4090 on the network is 17s

Just a simple unscientific test, but frankly I've started this scene with the Mac,
until I really wanted to switch to the PC to precisely work on the material, I could almost instantly see what I was doing.

Potentially with a Mac Studio M2 Ultra maxed up we'd almost have a decent CGI machine... but at what price ?"

Thanks for this. Doing what Otoy will not!
We need more of these comparisons.

It does sound like we'd need a Mac Studio Ultra - or better - to be able to work effectively on Mac. And this is what we've been asking Otoy about for months, to which they keep saying "why do you want to compare render speed". Ugh, so frustrating.

What I am interested in, is the look dev experience. Setting up textures, lighting, getting a clean image preview from the live viewer.
Can we work effectively on a Mac, to develop scenes, before sending over to the PC to render?
And Otoy just say "Macs are fast to work with, why do you care about render speed? This is not what should be compared". Seriously said to me in PM.
Uh, maybe because our job is to make nice images, and we need to SEE the image, and WAIT for that image to resolve in the LV?

So we just want to be able to benchmark different Macs.
If 2022.1 is functionally identical on Mac and PC, ie, you can open the same scene on either and render... why can't we have an updated Octane Bench, one for PCs and one for Macs?
As we want to know
- which Mac is better?
- M1? M1 Max? M1 Ultra in the Mac Studio? Vs M2? M2 Pro?
Who knows how they all stack up? Which one should we buy? Any? None?
- how much of an improvement (if any) could we see, moving from, I don't know, a PC with 4x2080s? Probably none. Or a Mac with 2x1080Tis? Should we just keep using that Mac? Should we just say f**k mac, go to PC? AGAIN WHO KNOWS

Because for some reason Otoy won't publish any kind of bench. Otoy, do you have some agreement with apple or something that you won't show this? It makes ZERO sense to not be interested in the factor that is an ENORMOUS part of every 3D artist's day - improving images, which relies on speed of iteration, which relies in turn on speed of render in the LV to see enough detail, or low enough noise, to evaluate our decisions.

[tripledistilled]

What I am interested in, is the look dev experience. Setting up textures, lighting, getting a clean image preview from the live viewer.

Is a benchmark going to help answer any of these questions?

The main difference I have found using Apple's M-series of chips for 3D, is unified memory. It totally changes the story about what an individual can create. Massive scenes are now possible, viewport interaction is completely seamless, my Mac can render things PC can't even open. None of that shows up on OctaneBench.

Buy the best Mac you can afford and test Octane on it. Apple have a decent returns policy if the results aren't what you were hoping for.

[northalex78]

Is a benchmark going to help answer any of these questions?

The main difference I have found using Apple's M-series of chips for 3D, is unified memory. It totally changes the story about what an individual can create. Massive scenes are now possible, viewport interaction is completely seamless, my Mac can render things PC can't even open. None of that shows up on OctaneBench.

Buy the best Mac you can afford and test Octane on it. Apple have a decent returns policy if the results aren't what you were hoping for.

Of course a benchmark answers those questions. "Buy the best Mac"... sure man, we'll just order a bunch of Mac Studio's at 10k each.
Just because you can afford something, doesn't mean it's the best use of resources. Comparing different mac chips and performance would help everyone in ALL budget ranges decide exactly which mac is the "best" for their use? Weird argument my guy. "The best mac you can afford" and "the best for your use scenario" is not always the same.

Big scenes - cool, yes, we know, that's an advantage. Personally never gone over 24gb of Vram for scenes, ever, so having 96gb of unified maybe is good for some, not really a factor for others.
Once you do have a scene that is larger than you can build on a 3090 or 4090's vram... how do you render that, exactly? If it's using 50gb "vram" because it's unoptimised, or because you filled it with giant sims, you can't just send that to RNDR or a PC. You'd have to render it on the mac you created it on, and then... well, render speed suddenly is important, isn't it? Again weird argument to make my friend.

Basically what you're saying is that there's no reason you think Otoy should have a Mac benchmark tool or incorporate mac scores into the database of GPUS ranging from 780s or less up to 4090s. And the onus is on ordinary users to go buy a mac, test, return, get a different one, test, return.

I can't see any reason why a Mac benchmark tool isn't forthcoming, unless there's some kind of background shennannigans going on. Maybe there's some deal with Apple not to show how their chips rate against Nvidia. I just don't get why. Everyone in the world knows nvidia cards will thrash macs in render scores. But WHERE on the spectrum do any of the mac chips lay? What's the harm in people knowing that? What are Otoy or Apple worried about with release of or access to that kind of data?

Because it can't be technical reasons for not releasing a Mac benchmark tool. It's just a wrapper on the scenes, isn't it? If you can render on Mac you should be able to bench on Mac.

[tripledistilled]

Once you do have a scene that is larger than you can build on a 3090 or 4090's vram... how do you render that, exactly?

On a Mac, obviously. They may not be as fast as an RTX in pure benchmark numbers, but they can still render the scene.

[brutesque]

Don't go for mac. The mac version is severely lacking. Network rendering is not working. They disabled liveDB for some reason (kept an unusable button in the interface tho). I need the liveviewer and also send my render to a windows render machine. Octane on mac crashing constantly. Not an hour goes by with crashes. This has been the trend since my classic mac pro using cuda and is still happening on my M1 Max. It is utterly unusable, as i'm trying to hit my deadline while having C4D crash every 15 to 20 minutes.
If you are about to invest in new machines, save yourself the pain trying to move to mac.

[brutesque]

I seem to always end up here complaining about how I love Octane, Path tracing is hands down the best look of many renderers with minimal effort, and yet I cannot use it in C4D on Mac. It crashes, or hangs consistently. I have a kind of workflow which involves animation in C4D then rough materials, then export as soon as possible to ORBX and finish and finesse in Standalone. It still fills me with dread using it, because I don't know when it will hang. Compare this to Blender which you can throw pretty much anything at and I feel confident that it won't die on me. But it doesn't render as nicely as Octane. This is such a shame.

I have it on iPad too and it's incredible. I recently did the same workflow ( rough in C4D and then export ORBX ) and finessed on the iPad with great success. It baffles me why it can't do the same in C4D.

This is my life exactly right now. Pure dread, while trying to get a project across the finish line.

[brutesque]

I just updated from Macos 12 to Macos 13 because someone in this thread said there was an issue with Metal. I've started up C4D, activate the LV. Navigate a little bit through the scene and no more than 5 minutes in, C4D crashes.

[brutesque]

Don't go for mac. The mac version is severely lacking. Network rendering is not working. They disabled liveDB for some reason (kept an unusable button in the interface tho). I need the liveviewer and also send my render to a windows render machine. Octane on mac crashing constantly. Not an hour goes by with crashes. This has been the trend since my classic mac pro using cuda and is still happening on my M1 Max. It is utterly unusable, as i'm trying to hit my deadline while having C4D crash every 15 to 20 minutes.
If you are about to invest in new machines, save yourself the pain trying to move to mac.

And btw. Octane doesn't render consistently between MacOS and Windows.

[Baalvon]

Why does the forum think I don't have a license