Seems that you were also hit by this bug I mentioned. Users with external AMD 5XXX card also report problems/dropped performance.
https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/ter3g2/psa_macos_monterey_123_and_amd_5xxx_and_6xxx_gpu/
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a first Benchmark from Dave2D on youtube⌠looks not that good⌠i really hoped the m1 ultra would double the M1 max´performance.
M1 max 32c 706
M1 ultra 64c 1132
RTX3090 5552
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If you look at the GPU performance section here:
None of them show a 2x improvement. For Redshift itâs only 1.2x even comparing the Max and Ultra. This graph for Cycles shows 1.6x. Difficult to tell to what extent this is something that can be improved on in the software without closer investigation.
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this channel showed also results⌠0:34 for the BMW scene is really good compared to 0:11 on my RTX3090
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Def a terrible result. I really dont think Blender 3.1 is not yet ready to use on Apple Silicon until Apple GPU or Metal are fully optimized for Blender. I dont see any reasons of using Apple Silicon over RTX 3090.
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Because RTX 3090s are rare and expensive, and M1âs are not
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Why is it rare? There are quite a lot of RTX 3090 users and Nvidia sold tons of them so I dont understand your point. Also, M1 Ultra isnât really different from RTX 3090. Beside, thatâs not a great excuse. Apple compared M1 Ultra to RTX 3090 with better performance. Being rare isnât really mean anything. Apple Silicon is just far from being optimized for Blender yet.
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Its hard to find an RTX 3090 at msrp
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What are you talking about? RTX 3090 released in 2020.
really i dont care getting a 3090 at msrp. it makes me money everyday.
i just hate to have to work on windows and would really love to go back to mac os, so i really hoped for the m1 ultra to come close to 3080/3090 at GPU renderingâŚ
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Somethingâs up with the GPU score of the 16" M1 Max there.
Iâm a bit confused here. Some days ago I updated to 3.1 stable and was awaiting to be able to make use of the GPU in my MacbookPro 16 inch (2019), also with the 8GB Radeon Pro 5500m. But as soon as I switch to Metal GPU rendering, Blender crashes. Metal CPU works fine.
Blender: 3.1 stable
macOS: 12.3 (21E230) (public release)
What am I missing here?
So, out of curiosity, and excitement for the release of Cycles for the M1 Macs, I ran render benchmarks for all of the Splash Screen files as listed on the Blender Demo Files page.
(Quick side note, can a Blender admin please rename the files with meaningful names? Many of them are called blender2.blend, or blender3.blend.)
My machine is a 14" MacBook Pro with an M1 Max (10c CPU, 32c GPU, 64GB).
How I tested:
First on macOS Monterey 12.2.1 with Blender 3.1. I did a restart of the machine, let the CPUs settle down from their post-boot activity and rendered each file one at a time.
Then I upgraded to Monterey 12.3, rebooted twice, and followed the same procedure.
The only other app I had running was Activity Monitor to verify when the app had finally spun down. In Blender > Edit > Preferences > System, under Cycles Render Devices, Metal was selected and so were both the CPU and GPU. I had a fresh download of all the files from the Blender site. After opening each file, I set the Scene Render Settings to: Cycles, Supported, and GPU Compute.
Yes, I realize âExperimentalâ would have given different results, but I wanted consistency across files. I made no other changes or edits to the files. I rendered the file exactly where it was when I downloaded the file. Hence the Frame designations for each file. Thatâs where it was saved by default when I downloaded it.
Here are my results (OS, Render time, Memory used):
Sprite Fright (Frame 155)
12.2 48:55.00 1683.53M
12.3 51:14.94 1683.53M
Still Life (Frame 178)
12.2 4:05.97 480.65M
12.3 4:09.64 480.65M
Sinosauropteryx Prima (Frame 2)
12.2 8:18.16 19805.59M
12.3 8:26.32 19805.59M
Red Autumn Forest (Frame 1)
12.2 2:33.72 1677.21M
12.3 2:36.87 1677.21M
Splash Fox (Frame 1)
12.2 1:36.61 1780.08M
12.3 1:35.73 1780.08M
Party Tug 6:00 AM (Frame 0)
12.2 2:28.43 710.51
12.3 2:34.65 710.51
Tram Station (Frame 204)
12.2 Wonât render properly in Cycles. EVEE Score: 0:3.13
12.3 Wonât render properly in Cycles. EVEE Score: 0:3.10
The Junk Shop (Frame 1)
12.2 0:46.29 4598.64M
12.3 0:46.52 4598.64M
Spring (Frame 5)
12.2 3:37.79 8701.34M
12.3 3:37.63 8816.01M
Agent 327 (Frame 11)
12.2 0:53.55 1194.89M
12.3 1:17.51 1324.23M
Procedural (Frame 2)
12.2 5:11.05 2030.18M
12.3 5:14.50 2030.18M
Racing Car (Frame 7)
12.2 1:54.10 1715.42M
12.3 1:53.81 1715.42M
Fishy Cat (Frame 1)
12.2 1:31.03 686.90M
12.3 1:29.22 686.90M
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Yeah, should work âout of the boxâ, idk what is going on, maybe try SMC /NVRAM / PRAM resets.
I guess Apple Silicon GPU will be more utilized when the Apple developers add an alternative to Optix to Metal: a library dedicated to optimizing ray-tracing calculations using the GPU. Iâm sure theyâre working on that.
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would be great if a developer could confirm that 
i just ordered the m1 ultra with 64 gpu cores anyway⌠i have hopes there will be more optimizations in the next monthsâŚ
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Iâve also put in my preorder for the 64 core Ultra. Iâm happy with the performance, but of course any optimisation is always welcome! I hope the team is working on some sort of acceleration for Apple Silicon, similar to OPTIX, and could give us an ETA on it!
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There is no SMC in M1 
And NVRAM/PRAM works differently compared to Intel Macs.
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One uses Blender on Apple Silicon if they already have a Mac or have other reasons to be a Mac. Most people like 99% of the population would not buy a computer just for Blender.
One could be an app developer and wants to use Blender to create game sprites and assets. A video editor could want to render accurate 3D animation motion graphics to use in FCP projects. A UX designer or graphics designer may want to use Blender to show off some packaging labels or UI using some kind of 3D animation.
Blender isnât as fast on AMD either. Just because its not as fast as a $2,500 3090 GPU doesnât mean its bad. The entire Mac Studio M1 Max is only $2,200 for the full CPU and GPU. Thats less than just the cost of the 3090. Thats before you buy a case, motherboard, CPU, ram and storage.
Besides even if the 3090 is faster so what. Adding Metal support is about making Blender more useful to existing Mac users. Not to give an alternative to buying a PC. I use a Mac for 99% of what I do during the day and now Blender makes more sense vs having to buy a second computer just to use it with a PC. I am not going to use Windows or Linux so for me having Metal support is huge and very welcome. I develop iOS apps and you couldnât pay me to use Windows instead.
Finally there is more to Blender than just Cycles. A lot more. Some of us donât waste time and wear and tear on our main computer anyway and we use a render farm service to render. As long as Metal support is fast enough for us to work on our models and scenes its good enough to then hand off to a render service.
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Doesnât really change the fact that Apple Silicon optimization on Blender is totally bad. You better check several communities for many disappointments.
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