Is a Mac Studio fast enough for Houdini?

I recently bought a Mac Studio, and the question is: is it fast enough for Houdini Work? In this video I'll compare the Mac Studio M1 Ultra, with a I9 3080TI PC.
0:00 Intro
0:14 Size/Design
0:58 Simulation MS
1:39 Simulation PC
1:56 XPU MS
3:14 XPU PC
3:55 CPU MS
4:29 CPU PC
5:08 Final Thoughts
NOTES
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[@pzah33]

Thanks for the comparison.

[@alvin3171997]

Glad you’re back! 💯

[@YonnideHaar]

Thanks a lot!

[@paoloricaldone6273]

M1 Studio Ultra 4tb 128GB : super silent, almost cold even during long render session. Main software Houdini and DVResolve. I love it, never come back to PC

[@YonnideHaar]

It's really nice how quiet the Mac Studio runs, when I first switched back to PC I was like 'what's this noise'? What are you using for rendering, is it fast enough for you?

[@paoloricaldone6273]

@@YonnideHaar I use Karma in CPU mode. It's fast enough for me and it has more features than xpu at the moment. Apple silicon simply doesn't run on XPU as SideFx specs indicate.

[@workflowinmind]

Very insightful, but something is wrong are you on the silicon preview build? Because the playback lags at 1:31 is definitely strange

[@photoindra]

I can compare same projects on PC and Mac Studio M1 Max with 64 GB. On mac Redshift speed is similar to 2070RTX on windows. So pretty slow. And it is not only this - but in general interactions in viewport when polymodeling or simulating is slower on Mac. And on mac it crashes A LOT more often.

[@Andres-wq6cz]

Thanks

[@suri4Musiq]

You should have done a simulation test with OpenCL

[@kevin2028]

Just saved me a lot of money. Been considering a mac studio for some time. I just wish apple would allow EGPUs on the mac, although at this point with the M chips, I'm not sure if that is even possible. The machines are incredible on paper but real world use, it's more cost effective to go with a PC.

[@YonnideHaar]

Happy I could help! Quite gutted to be honest, as the Mac Studio is so compact and energy efficient. But think we have to wait a bit longer for Apple Silicon (and especially their GPU's) to mature.

[@kevin2028]

@@YonnideHaar I feel your pain. As your video shows the 20 Core CPU is robust for simulations, but still a snail when it comes to rendering for various reasons. Most GPU render engines are built around Nvidia technology, including Karma, unfortunately. If you could use a EGPU with apple computers it would solve the issue with slow render times. In terms of getting work done with a machine that takes 20 minutes to render vs one that take 7 mins is a monumental difference. At this point Apple's computers are not for rendering, and I'm a proud apple sheep.

[@YonnideHaar]

@@kevin2028 Yes I fully agree, not to mention that most people use multiple GPU's on a PC. Having high hopes for the future though, especially if Apple is creating a XR headset they'll need to optimise their 3D pipeline and rendering frameworks.

[@kevin2028]

@@YonnideHaar I hope you are right, fingers crossed that they get this problem fixed. I thought about writing to Tim Cook and using your video in my letter, because this has to get fixed. I'll wait until after WWDC and see what they announce...although it's mostly software, I want to see what they announce

[@vladartiomav2473]

@@YonnideHaar multiple GPUs sound nice but try to build a machine for 2x4090s 😂 For Apple it’s a clear no-no for rendering. They need to implement the RT cores acceleration in their GPU, but even if they do next year with M3, it will still take time for the software companies to adapt their programs.

[@adnanerochdi6982]

Fun fact, PC would be even faster for Houdini when running Linux.

[@migovas1483]

indeed it shaves like 30%, mindblowing.

[@adnanerochdi6982]

@@migovas1483 that's huge!

[@cjadams7434]

I for one am still using C4d for the moment.. but have setup TeamRender for network rendering so i can happily stay on the mac while using the PC for final frame like a 1-gpu (4090) render farm. - Can Karma gpu do the same? or would you have to setup say Deadline or does Houdini have a built in cross platform Network render option?

[@chr1st0pher]

You could set up Hqueue which is sort of the houdini equivalent, or yeah you could use deadline or something. I will say hqueue is definitely more annoying to set up than teamrender at the moment, i hope they improve it

[@cjadams7434]

@@chr1st0pher - the only issue that I have with team render is that on the Mac some of the rendering options are just not available in the dialogue boxes ….things like opticx, de-noising and RTX-on don’t exist on the Max side so there’s no way to check those on in redshift …..so I’m having to use a cinema 4D template “new.c4d” to try to bake in those flags so that when I send it over to the PC, it actually turns those functions on - this Hass to do with the fact that Team render was never designed for this type of thing

[@rafaelpinheiro3518]

Did you use gpu or cpu for simulation and render on Houdini? If I have a i7 processor with a 2070 super it’s bether change the processor to 13700k or change the gpu for 4070 ti?

[@liuhaiying6844]

It's more worthy of updating the cpu, generally personally speaking.

[@apguest]

Time for an M3 update....

[@cjadams7434]

ALSO would like to see this test run on an M2 Ultra with 192gig ram & 76 gpu cores.. just saying..

[@MichaelHalsell]

My Mac Studio is slower, quieter, and cooler than my Windows HP workstation. Also, my electric bill is lower with the Mac Studio. My Mac Studio is used primarily for graphic design, video editing, light 3D work/idea sketching/ with Maya, Blender and Maya. Any heavy duty rendering or dynamic simulations, I alway reserve for the HP Workstation. The speed/mathematical computation disparity has always been a known quantity. I need the reliability of the PC render times to charge clients appropriately. Also, I feel commercial software optimization over the years has been stronger on the Windows platform. Open GL/CL really never matured on the Mac platform. Different tools for different job. I have embraced the differences. Thank you for the research and content. This will be helpful to many as a planning guide.

[@Olalasa]

Can you please write your build for Windows for 3D graphics please?

[@MichaelHalsell]

@@Olalasa HP Z8 G4 Workstation 2X 3.60GHz Xeon Gold 5122

[@Olalasa]

@@MichaelHalsell thanks for answering! Can you tell me which monitor is better to choose for this job? Or maybe you can even tell me which specific model you use, I’ll be grateful

[@MichaelHalsell]

HP Z27s

[@Olalasa]

@@MichaelHalsell thank you 🙏🏻

[@davidpikachu6335]

Your patreon doesnt work?

[@BOND_BOND_007]

mac always sucks doing 3d processing . I highly recommend hp z8 its a beast I bought a 5 years old used one and never regret it

[@nimrod7785]

Is this the arm version of Houdini or running through Rosetta?

[@YonnideHaar]

I'd have to double check this, but mainly used the ARM/M1 version of Houdini.

[@Wayne-sn6qy]

was going to ask the same question 😅

[@henrythejeditube]

Thanks a lot for this eye opener, Mr De Haar, no amount of marketing and gimmicks and paid for youtube reviews can ever conceal the truth: that a good old fashioned real desktop is and will remain the best hardware an artist can invest in, plus the ability to swap out old components such as graphics card and upgrade to more powerful cards for years to come, i feel sorry for those fellow artists who are not exposed to these kind of videos like yours, it doesnt matter how much thin and lightweight some companies can claim to make their products, they can never beat a full fledged desktop computer, the laws of physics such as heat dissipation etc.. that require components to be physically big in size can never be defeated and must therefore be respected.

[@YonnideHaar]

Yea you're right! I think if you mainly do CPU based workflows or editing a Mac Studio is fast enough. But unfortunately it's not cutting it yet for 3D, especially considering you'd usually have 2/3 GPU's in a PC as well.

[@i20010]

Slightly pricier? Its 4600$ vs 3000$... The Mac prices are insane. Its like, take my money, 1.5 more, and I want a slower computer!

[@chr1st0pher]

I hope you are running the apple silicon build of houdini? if not then yeah, this is all being emulated thru rosetta and you are getting much worse performance. in general, pc with an nvidia gpu is going to kick a mac's ass at rendering with XPU beacuse sidefx needs to re-write xpu for metal as they have for cuda and embree. these days i tend to recommend people go PC for their workstations and get a mac if you want a laptop. the benefits you get from apple silicon is much greater in a laptop because the efficient chips are going to result in better battery, less heat, and a much slimmer, more compact product. macs definitely arent ideal for houdini right now but i'm still very impressed with how much my macbook air m1 can handle when compared to my desktop PCs.

[@chr1st0pher]

notably also, as you observed, the apple chips have been praised for their fantastic CPU performance, but definitely GPUs are where they are lacking compared to windows desktops (regardless of the fact that lots of software like xpu and other renderers are optimized for nvidia CUDA and not for metal yet). i am curious to see how apple approaches this issue, if at all. i did notice that in the latest iphone they added hardware raytracing, so i think theres a possibility they will be making a push for hardware raytracing and general gpu performance in the m3/m4.

[@LeeO9900]

This amazing fancy trash does not run unreal engine vr mode! Amazing apple!

[@nicksushkevich8660]

Have M1 Studio Ultra 4tb 128GB - Karma is faster than Redshift.

[@YonnideHaar]

I had high hopes for Redshift, but it's still quite slow on the Mac Studio tbh.