goat
The Intel GPU is officially unsupported

Christoph F

goat
Mac was 20-50% slower than Linux
Windows was 20% slower than Linux

what are those numbers based on?
meaning, is this sim time, disk load time, render time mantra, ..? or a combination of all?

Not to start the whole freakin OS discussion myself but Linux was always mentioned to be quickest at a lot of stuff and especially with disk operations. I wonder if this is still the same with ssds or even more so.

SreckoM

Christoph F

goat
Mac was 20-50% slower than Linux
Windows was 20% slower than Linux

what are those numbers based on?
meaning, is this sim time, disk load time, render time mantra, ..? or a combination of all?

Not to start the whole freakin OS discussion myself but Linux was always mentioned to be quickest at a lot of stuff and especially with disk operations. I wonder if this is still the same with ssds or even more so.

I think it is mostly viewport. Houdini is entirely OpenGL app, I think even UI. And problem is that OpenGl and OpenCL and now CUDA are dead techs on OSX. It does not matter what hardware you use. Best GPU on world will not help you there. Especially now when Apple does not support them, neither is willing to do any bug fixes. You have worst experience in Houdini, Blender, MODO, MARI (compared to other OSs) … name it, every app that fully utilize OpenGL, OpenCL or CUDA (which at moment, basically all of them are). Blender for example can not be used for GPU rendering on Catalina, due issues with OpenCL and no CUDA support. Latest MARI for OSX is not updated for almost a year cause they had to work more on Qt and OpenGL which was easy thing to do on Win and Linux. See, all these things can affect you as artist. And this will be case until those apps are ported to Metal, if they ever (I doubt Blender ever will for example). It is really simple as that. We hope situation will change in future but imho it will never be as on Windows or Linux platform, at least you will be limited cause many developers will not find interest into porting to Metal. Those are really facts. Personal insults will not change that.

Christoph F

goat
The Intel GPU is officially unsupported

I can’t be 100% certain if it really used the GPU.
But I think it would throw an error if Cl is on and it can’t use the GPU.
Not sure about that either though.

/Applications/Houdini/Houdini18.0.310/Utilities

OpenCL Platform           Apple
Platform Vendor           Apple
Platform Version          OpenCL 1.2 (Aug 31 2019 04:58:52)
OpenCL Device             AMD Radeon RX 580 Compute Engine
OpenCL Type               GPU
Device Version            OpenCL 1.2 
Frequency                 300 MHz
Compute Units             36
Device Address Bits       32
Global Memory             8192 MB
Max Allocation            2048 MB
Global Cache              0 KB
Max Constant Args         8
Max Constant Size         64 KB
Local Mem Size            32 KB
2D Image Support          16384x16384
3D Image Support          2048x2048x2048

export HOUDINI_OCL_REPORT_MEMORY_USE=1

houdini

===========OpenCL Memory Usage===========
Total Memory Allocated: 452 MB
In Memory Pool (cur / max): 0 / 512 MB
# of Buffers in Memory Pool: 0
In InUse List: 0 MB
Active Memory: 452 MB

===========OpenCL Memory Usage===========
Total Memory Allocated: 452 MB
In Memory Pool (cur / max): 452 / 512 MB
# of Buffers in Memory Pool: 2
In InUse List: 0 MB
Active Memory: 0 MB
OpenCL Exception: Failed to create compute grid. (-4)
OpenCL Exception: clCreateBuffer (-61)
OpenCL Exception: Failed to create compute grid. (-4)
OpenCL Exception: clCreateBuffer (-61)
OpenCL Exception: Failed to create compute grid. (-4)
OpenCL Exception: clCreateBuffer (-61)
OpenCL Exception: clCreateBuffer (-61)
OpenCL Exception: clCreateBuffer (-61)
OpenCL Exception: clCreateBuffer (-61)
OpenCL Exception: Failed to create compute grid. (-4)
===========OpenCL Memory Usage===========
Total Memory Allocated: 452 MB
In Memory Pool (cur / max): 452 / 512 MB
# of Buffers in Memory Pool: 2
In InUse List: 0 MB
Active Memory: 0 MB
OpenCL Context error: [CL_INVALID_BUFFER_SIZE] : OpenCL Error : clCreateBuffer failed: No device in the context supports the requested allocation size (911141568 bytes)!
OpenCL Exception: clCreateBuffer (-61)

callie_btw
I actually 100% agree with you on these points. Apple banning these techs was absolutely ridiculous, even though I truly do believe in Metal 2 being the future. Because until that future is here, we as artists still need those techs to do our jobs as efficiently as possible. My hope is that these developers will fully embrace Metal 2 and take advantage of Optimizing these apps for Mac. As an example, due to Maxon acquiring Redshift, and C4D's biggest userbase by far being Mac, Redshift is going to take FULL advantage of the new Mac. I know personally that Apple is handling the majority of writing this for Metal 2 optimization, and as a result, we are going to see the full power of what is capable when these apps are optimized for Apple's new hardware and tool suite.

All of this said, of course it would've been much more pleasant and a much stronger transitional period for Mac users if Apple allowed the older techs to still be supported and fully developed in the Mac environment in the meantime.

Matt Morris
So now that pricing is out on the mac pro, I wanted to see what a mid-range config would look like.

16 core xeon, 48Gb ram, 580x, 2Tb ssd - mac pro: £8,200
24 core amd tr, 64Gb ram, quadro rtx 4000, 2Tb ssd - scan custom prebuilt ugly black case: £3,800

For houdini, I really can't see anything justifying that price difference.

Matt Morris
I can see the appeal for editing/colouring, particularly if you're already committed to the mac ecosystem, and FCPX. the other apps like octane & redshift I'm pretty sure will be faster on rtx/cuda. Looking forward to seeing benchmarks next year.

Not sure that I'd go with that config for the ‘mid-range’ pc though - something like: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/493fyk [uk.pcpartpicker.com] would chew through pretty much any workload. 17k for 32 cores, 256Gb ram, 2 4tb drives, 2 quadro rtx 8000 (the expensive bit, memory pool of 96Gb though) Still has a couple of pcie4 slots free for extra cards.

callie_btw
The problem with that theory is assuming the fiber link doesn't get Houdini to register it as ONE device…as is the case with DaVinci Resolve, per their CEO, who was excited and shocked upon realizing this…maybe we should wait and here what SideFX has to say about it.

To take advantage of what Apple has created, Blackmagic had to implement ways to take advantage of the Mac Pro’s use of multiple graphics processing units on a single card.

“It was something we had to implement,” Petty said “It’s providing a huge improvement,” in part because the Afterburner system’s architecture avoids the relatively time-consuming process of sending information back and forth onto the main processor.

Fco Javier
What you should observe is that Nvidia no longer creates drivers for MacOs; If you want to use RTX technology, you should look for other options that do not come from Apple.

Danah_ismail
Thanks for ur help. unfortunately, I deleted the file. It was for a school assignment but, I remember that all my assignments were slow to render and it gets really heavy on my machine when texturing or running simulation especially the melting object assignment.

I understand that windows are better options when using 3D Software and I have thought about getting Razer blade but I honestly prefer Mac laptops over Windows. As for the workstation, I might get one in the future. Right now I am looking for a laptop cause I'm always on the move.