Using Digital Foundry’s vid as the main perf orientation source for ballpark estimates, it seems that in gaming applications depending on a game M1 Max is anywhere from 2.1 to staggering 4.5 times slower than desktop 3090 (350W GPU), with geomean sitting at embarrassing 2.76. In rendering Pro Apps, on the other hand, using Blender as an example, the difference is quite a bit smaller (even though still huge), 1.78.
From Apple’s event today it seems to be pretty clear that information on generic slides pertains to gaming performance, and on dedicated pro apps slides - to pro apps (with ray tracing). It appears that M3 Mac / M1 Max in gaming applications, therefore, is 1.5x, which would put M3 Max at 1.84x slower still than 3090. Looks like it will take M3 Ultra to beat 3090 in games.
In pro apps (rendering), however, M3 Max / M1 Max is declared having a staggering 2.5x advantage, moving M3 Max from being 1.78x slower than 3090 to being 1.4x faster than 3090 (desktop at 350W), or alternatively, 3090 being only 0.71x of M3 Max’s performance.
Translating all of this to 4000 series using TechPowerUp ballpark figures, it appears that in gaming applications M3 Max is going to be only very slightly faster than… a desktop 4060 (non-Ti; 115W). At the same time the very same M3 Max is going to be a bit faster than a desktop 4080 (320W GPU) in ray-tracing 3D rendering pro applications (like Redshift and Blender).
With an added detail that a desktop 4080 is a 16 GB VRAM GPU, with the largest consumer grade card - 4090 - having 24 GB of VRAM, while M3 Max can be configured with up to 128 GB of unified RAM even in a laptop enclosure, which will probably make about 100 GB or so available as VRAM, about 5x more than on Nvidia side, which, like the other commenter said, unjustly downvoted, makes a number of pro tasks comically impossible (do not run) on Nvidia very much possible on M3 Max.
So, anywhere from a desktop 4060 to a desktop 4080 depending on application, in games, 4060, in pro apps, “up to 4080” depending on the app (and a 4080 in at least some of the ray tracing 3d rendering applications).
Where does that put a CAD app I’ve no idea, probably something like 1/3 away from games and 2/3 aways from pro apps? Like 1.45x slower than a desktop 3090? Which puts it somewhere between a desktop 4060 Ti and a desktop 4070.
I’m sure you can find how to translate all of that from desktop nvidia cards used here to their laptop variants (which are very notably slower).
I have to highlight for the audience once again an absolutely massive difference in performance improvement between games and 3D rendering pro apps: M3 Max / M1 Max, as announced by Apple today, is 1.5x in games, but 2.5x in 3D rendering pro apps, where M1 Max already was noticeably slower in games than it presumably should have been given how it performed in 3D rendering apps, relative to Nvidia.
Let’s put some science to it, shall we.
Using Digital Foundry’s vid as the main perf orientation source for ballpark estimates, it seems that in gaming applications depending on a game M1 Max is anywhere from 2.1 to staggering 4.5 times slower than desktop 3090 (350W GPU), with geomean sitting at embarrassing 2.76. In rendering Pro Apps, on the other hand, using Blender as an example, the difference is quite a bit smaller (even though still huge), 1.78.
From Apple’s event today it seems to be pretty clear that information on generic slides pertains to gaming performance, and on dedicated pro apps slides - to pro apps (with ray tracing). It appears that M3 Mac / M1 Max in gaming applications, therefore, is 1.5x, which would put M3 Max at 1.84x slower still than 3090. Looks like it will take M3 Ultra to beat 3090 in games.
In pro apps (rendering), however, M3 Max / M1 Max is declared having a staggering 2.5x advantage, moving M3 Max from being 1.78x slower than 3090 to being 1.4x faster than 3090 (desktop at 350W), or alternatively, 3090 being only 0.71x of M3 Max’s performance.
Translating all of this to 4000 series using TechPowerUp ballpark figures, it appears that in gaming applications M3 Max is going to be only very slightly faster than… a desktop 4060 (non-Ti; 115W). At the same time the very same M3 Max is going to be a bit faster than a desktop 4080 (320W GPU) in ray-tracing 3D rendering pro applications (like Redshift and Blender).
With an added detail that a desktop 4080 is a 16 GB VRAM GPU, with the largest consumer grade card - 4090 - having 24 GB of VRAM, while M3 Max can be configured with up to 128 GB of unified RAM even in a laptop enclosure, which will probably make about 100 GB or so available as VRAM, about 5x more than on Nvidia side, which, like the other commenter said, unjustly downvoted, makes a number of pro tasks comically impossible (do not run) on Nvidia very much possible on M3 Max.
So, anywhere from a desktop 4060 to a desktop 4080 depending on application, in games, 4060, in pro apps, “up to 4080” depending on the app (and a 4080 in at least some of the ray tracing 3d rendering applications).
Where does that put a CAD app I’ve no idea, probably something like 1/3 away from games and 2/3 aways from pro apps? Like 1.45x slower than a desktop 3090? Which puts it somewhere between a desktop 4060 Ti and a desktop 4070.
I’m sure you can find how to translate all of that from desktop nvidia cards used here to their laptop variants (which are very notably slower).
I have to highlight for the audience once again an absolutely massive difference in performance improvement between games and 3D rendering pro apps: M3 Max / M1 Max, as announced by Apple today, is 1.5x in games, but 2.5x in 3D rendering pro apps, where M1 Max already was noticeably slower in games than it presumably should have been given how it performed in 3D rendering apps, relative to Nvidia.
4080: 9558.15 M2 max: 1916.93
M3 max to get nearly 5x rendering vs m2 max
Okay