Just wondering, is the performance that we’re seeing in this Alpha right now going to improve in the coming versions, as the optimalization furthers?
I’m contemplating on buying the 32 core M1 Max, and this is a deciding factor to me.
I guess so as performance tuning is still on the to do list, how much is the big question.
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Michael Jones and Apple, thank you very much as well as all the Blender contributors over the years.
While a very early Alpha, the performance increase has me ecstatic to see what the final result will be once GA. Thank you again for your efforts!
Using it with a MacBook Pro M1 Max.
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Has anyone noticed that Blender uses a lot more RAM for the same project when using GPU vs CPU? A particular project I’m working on uses 2.5GB RAM while on Cycles CPU, and as soon as it’s switched to GPU it slowly increases and creeps up to 8+GB in Activity Monitor. I’m running a 14" M1 Pro with 16GB RAM.
Yes same here. GPU uses more Ram when rendering, GPU + CPU not. Not sure why.
I have noticed the same here. My brief testing shows that:
- GPU + CPU uses more ram than GPU
- GPU + CPU takes about the same time as GPU to render my scene
- GPU keeps the temp on my computer considerably cooler than GPU + CPU (maybe this causes my second point because of throttling).
I am using a MacBook Air M1 with 8GB Ram
Many thanks to the Blender team for bringing this exciting update!
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Interesting. On my setup (M1 Pro) I’m finding that GPU will use significantly more RAM at render when compared to GPU+CPU, though the actual performance is pretty comparable.
Also, I was testing the 3.1 alpha with this free Blender file from Gumroad and noticed that when I switch the viewport to Cycles render preview then play the animation, the RAM usage will keep growing endlessly until the animation is paused. The memory doesn’t get released until I exit the render preview and switch back to Solid or Material Preview in the viewport. Can someone here try on their end and confirm if they’re getting the same behaviour?
Here is the specific Blender file I’m testing on if anyone wants to try on their end
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Are you referring to the RAM usage indicated in the render window or activity monitor? For me, the RAM usage indicated by activity monitor is basically the same for GPU and GPU+CPU, it’s just that the render view shows a much higher RAM usage for GPU only.
I am getting the same behavior on the build from 22. December. The RAM usage keeps growing even if the animation loops back to the beginning.
Referring to the RAM usage in the render window, though I must admit I haven’t cross referenced that with the RAM usage in Activity Monitor - will give it a try
Interesting I will have to check that too.
Yes memory usage is pretty much the same in the activity monitor.
I tried a bunch of scenes on my base M1 MBA. The one with only 7 GPU cores and 8GB ram total.
GPU + CPU is pretty much always 2x faster across the board which is a huge upgrade for a free software only update. Still very far from the 2060 PC laptop I have but I’m not expecting miracles from a M1 which is a consumer grade basic system. I tried everything from a logo animation, a R2D2 model and a graveyard scene I did for a live Halloween DJ streaming event. All render 2x faster which is awesome. I look forward to any optimization juice that can be squeezed out of this.
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Looks like this release:
blender-3.1.0-alpha+master.8c4edd1b379d-darwin.arm64-release
is quite broken. Most rendering tasks lock it up. Some, including enabling denoising on the one project I actually did get to load, cause it to crash the instant viewport denoising is turned on. The Rivet project linked above causes it to lock up in the middle of loading it.
Hi there !
There is a serious issue with the texture and UV on GPU rendering (I’m using M1 Pro).
The CPU one (on top) looks great and the GPU… well, no need to tell what’s wrong.
Not on this modele but sometimes, textures are just all black.
Using the last version (2021-12-30)
Otherwise, a huge thank to the team ! This Mac GPU update is gold <3
I was running the Dec 30 build getting absolutely amazing GPU speeds, 3-4x faster than CPU - suddenly blender started crashing and even after deleting and reinstalling I can’t get those speeds back. It is eating up all 32gb of RAM available even with Persistent Data turned off within 45 seconds of building the render.
Edit: Applied my Adaptive Subdivision modifiers and went back to Supported mode and renders are back to blazing fast on GPU.
A bug report would be appreciated. This can be done by selecting from the top of Blender Help -> Report a bug then filling out all the relevant information.
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Done ! Thanks for the tip !
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For me, the builds from January 6 and 7 crash on starting to render, the builds from the days prior are ok.
Edit: January 8 renders again 
I’ve tested the January 9th build, and the render times have gotten worse than the last build I tested; back when the M1 GPU was first being tested in the alpha build.
my times went from 40-50 seconds to 50-60 seconds.
I just tested the December 30th build, because I heard some good things about it.
The results are closer to what I was getting with earlier builds.
One thing I noticed that was greatly improved over any other build I’ve tested so far; was the render window was able to close a ton faster than it did before if you interrupted the render. Before it would take up to a minute or longer just to close the window if you didn’t wait for the render to finish.
It looks like the current build is only using GPU for rendering even if CPU+GPU is enabled. That could explain the increased rendering times compared to builds where CPU+GPU rendering was effective.
I’m not seeing increased rendering times with the BMW benchmark file, but I can confirm that the CPU is not being engaged during rendering, even when the checkbox is checked in Preferences.