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At some point can we finally admit that Apple's GPU claims just aren't....true? Like, every Apple keynote they put up incredible performance claims, and every t

At some point can we finally admit that Apple's GPU claims just aren't....true? Like, every Apple keynote they put up incredible performance claims, and every time people actually get their hands on the product, it doesn't even come close to holding water in any domain where GPU performance matters (Game performance, ML training perf)

jaimex2 5y ago
I thought that would be a given by now. Won't even get into that it can't run most things you'd want that kind of hardware for.
hirako2000 5y ago
even their graphs don't look legit. they look like what you see in boxes of vitamins found on ransom websites. Got to wait for independent benchmarks with well explained scenarios. anything can run twice faster than anything with some specific tweaks to the program that runs.
threeseed 5y ago
> GPU performance matters (Game performance, ML training perf) No one plays games on a Mac. And it has nothing to do with GPU performance but rather the fact that the audience simply isn't interested in gaming on it and so there is no economic incentive to target them. So the GPU performance that matters to Mac users and is relevant to Apple is not games but rather content creation, production etc.
- kllrnohj 5y ago
  M1's blender rendering performance also wasn't very good, though. Assuming the scene was small enough to fit in the smaller VRAM of competitive consumer GPUs anyway. Video content creation specifically is where it mostly achieves what the graphs indicate, and that's mostly a "well yeah, video decoder ASICs are really efficient. I'll take things we already knew for $100, Alex"
  - tambourine_man 5y ago
    Blender didn’t even run on metal until a few months ago. It’s on beta now and the performance has increased substantially. If the software is optimized, the graphics hold up fine.
  - zamalek 5y ago
    The other elephant in the room is OptiX. Are Apple seriously indicating that they can outperform that with a iGPU?
  - bsenftner 5y ago
    Unless you specifically configure Blender for GPU rendering, it renders on the CPU(s).
- the_af 5y ago
  > No one plays games on a Mac. My wife does (I play games on Linux). I have friends who own Macs who reluctantly dual boot to Windows just to play some games -- they would completely ditch Windows if they could just play every game on Mac. I see there are Mac games on Steam. All of this points to the situation being more nuanced than "no one plays games on Mac".
  - kingaillas 5y ago
    I interpret these sorts of statements to be short for "a statistically insignificant number of people play games on macos (or linux)" rather than the literal case where as long as a single person does, it is false. According to the steam hardware survey, Windows is 95%, Macos is 4%, and Linux is 1%. And to dig deeper you'd need to see what games that 5% of the non-Windows is playing - are they simpler games that don't need graphics acceleration (e.g. puzzle games, roguelikes, etc) or ones that do? My desktop is an Intel NUC running Ubuntu, and yeah I play games on it. Slay the Spire, Spacechem, even some older MMOs like DDO or LoTRO (which run but at 15-20 fps since that system just has Intel Iris). I'm unable to even start many others (e.g. Grim Dawn) due to not having dedicated graphics. So yeah it's nuanced but lots of games that need a graphics card don't run or even display on that system. That's why I have a windows gaming system too. I'm realistic, the market just isn't there. I used to have a Mac (dropped it in 2018) and if I still did I'd subscribe to Geforce Now or just do console gaming.
    - proverbialbunny 5y ago
      If you want to get a bit more into significant numbers, Apple has the largest number of games for any platform and it has the largest number of gamers. They're mobile games, but on the M1 people can play them on their desktop. What I think you mean is competitive gamers and AAA gamers do not play on Apple hardware. This is mostly true today ofc, but keep in mind that's actually not the majority of the gaming market. Apple is raking it in from its gaming market.
    - jbluepolarbear 5y ago
      Grim Dawn is just poorly implemented. I have a Ryzen 3700x with a 2070 super and Grim Dawn runs like crap.
- airza 5y ago
  Huh? I know lots of people who play games on a mac.

jaimex2 5y ago

I thought that would be a given by now. Won't even get into that it can't run most things you'd want that kind of hardware for.

hirako2000 5y ago

even their graphs don't look legit. they look like what you see in boxes of vitamins found on ransom websites. Got to wait for independent benchmarks with well explained scenarios. anything can run twice faster than anything with some specific tweaks to the program that runs.

threeseed 5y ago

> GPU performance matters (Game performance, ML training perf) No one plays games on a Mac. And it has nothing to do with GPU performance but rather the fact that the audience simply isn't interested in gaming on it and so there is no economic incentive to target them. So the GPU performance that matters to Mac users and is relevant to Apple is not games but rather content creation, production etc.

kllrnohj 5y ago
M1's blender rendering performance also wasn't very good, though. Assuming the scene was small enough to fit in the smaller VRAM of competitive consumer GPUs anyway. Video content creation specifically is where it mostly achieves what the graphs indicate, and that's mostly a "well yeah, video decoder ASICs are really efficient. I'll take things we already knew for $100, Alex"
- tambourine_man 5y ago
  Blender didn’t even run on metal until a few months ago. It’s on beta now and the performance has increased substantially. If the software is optimized, the graphics hold up fine.
- zamalek 5y ago
  The other elephant in the room is OptiX. Are Apple seriously indicating that they can outperform that with a iGPU?
- bsenftner 5y ago
  Unless you specifically configure Blender for GPU rendering, it renders on the CPU(s).
the_af 5y ago
> No one plays games on a Mac. My wife does (I play games on Linux). I have friends who own Macs who reluctantly dual boot to Windows just to play some games -- they would completely ditch Windows if they could just play every game on Mac. I see there are Mac games on Steam. All of this points to the situation being more nuanced than "no one plays games on Mac".
- kingaillas 5y ago
  I interpret these sorts of statements to be short for "a statistically insignificant number of people play games on macos (or linux)" rather than the literal case where as long as a single person does, it is false. According to the steam hardware survey, Windows is 95%, Macos is 4%, and Linux is 1%. And to dig deeper you'd need to see what games that 5% of the non-Windows is playing - are they simpler games that don't need graphics acceleration (e.g. puzzle games, roguelikes, etc) or ones that do? My desktop is an Intel NUC running Ubuntu, and yeah I play games on it. Slay the Spire, Spacechem, even some older MMOs like DDO or LoTRO (which run but at 15-20 fps since that system just has Intel Iris). I'm unable to even start many others (e.g. Grim Dawn) due to not having dedicated graphics. So yeah it's nuanced but lots of games that need a graphics card don't run or even display on that system. That's why I have a windows gaming system too. I'm realistic, the market just isn't there. I used to have a Mac (dropped it in 2018) and if I still did I'd subscribe to Geforce Now or just do console gaming.
  - proverbialbunny 5y ago
    If you want to get a bit more into significant numbers, Apple has the largest number of games for any platform and it has the largest number of gamers. They're mobile games, but on the M1 people can play them on their desktop. What I think you mean is competitive gamers and AAA gamers do not play on Apple hardware. This is mostly true today ofc, but keep in mind that's actually not the majority of the gaming market. Apple is raking it in from its gaming market.
  - jbluepolarbear 5y ago
    Grim Dawn is just poorly implemented. I have a Ryzen 3700x with a 2070 super and Grim Dawn runs like crap.
airza 5y ago
Huh? I know lots of people who play games on a mac.