M1 Ultra with 48 or 64 GPU cores ?

[pixelium]

Hello,
I'm considering buying a Mac Studio M1 Ultra with 20 CPU cores and 48 or 64 GPU cores.
My question is whether all the GPU cores will be used during processing that uses the GPU.

[Bzuco]

Hello pixelise,

yes all GPU cores will be used, but if they will be utilized at 100% or lower depends on which metashape tasks is running and what parameters are you using.
Did you consider also PC platform? For the price Mac costs, you can buy beast on PC platform.

[pixelium]

Thanks a lot for your answer, is it something you could test?
Concerning the platform, I've been working on Mac for a long time and I do a lot of other things than Metashape, I already have a lot of software on it and work habits, especially video editing and the Mac Studio is quiet and very very efficient for that
Moreover, I was able to test Metashape 1.8.4 on Mac and on PC in //.
With a basic Macbook Air M1 I had better performance than a core i7 / RTX2080 gamer PC under Windows. I imagine that the Mac Studio much more powerful than the MacBook Air will get very good results if Metashape allows to use all the cores
In fact, on Mac M1/M2 the memory is shared (unified) between the CPU and the GPU, which avoids transferring data (very time consuming) from one to the other and which allows to have a lot of video memory (64 or 128 GB). In the case of Metashape I guess this is important because the processing is done alternatively by the CPU and the GPU, I would like to have an opinion of the developers on this.

[Bzuco]

I don't have mac, so no tests possible.

Maybe you saw this article https://jenacopterlabs.de/?p=1572
According the results and especially this graph https://jenacopterlabs.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/MBP16-10C32C-update-1-1024x259.jpg
I still think, that with same amount of money you will get more performance from custom build PC.

Price of MacSturio M1 ultra with 48c gpu is expected in my country 4699€.
MacBook Pro 2021 M1 Max 10c cpu and 32c gpu, 64GB RAM - 3699€.
In comparisson just AMD Ryzen 9 5900X(from graphs) costs now 450€, GPU RTX 3080 Ti 1100€, ....200€ motherboard, 250€ 64GB ram, ...so you see the difference.

[pixelium]

Thank you very much for this article on the performance of the M1 Max (https://jenacopterlabs.de/?p=1572) that I did not know.
Since the M1 Ultra is the equivalent of 2 M1 Max processors, I think the performance will be outstanding 😊
For the price, you can't compare a big brand Machine (+OS and software suite, after sales service...) with a machine made by yourself
However, the main reason for using the Mac are my other uses and work habits 😊

[Bzuco]

Pay much more for just big brand, OS and software suite, after sales service...does not increase performance. 
But I agree if you have a lot of software for Mac, some work habits and the price is not problem, then it is definitely better product for you.