News Apple M4 Max CPU transcribes audio twice as fast as the RTX A5000 GPU in user test — M4 Max pulls just 25W compared to the RTX A5000's 190W

[Admin]

Apple's M4 Max chip purportedly encodes audio in half the time as Nvidia's previous-gen discrete GPUs while consuming eight times less power.

Apple M4 Max CPU transcribes audio twice as fast as the RTX A5000 GPU in user test — M4 Max pulls just 25W compared to the RTX A5000's 190W : Read more

 

[ezst036]

It's a shame that in order to have these faster processors that means you gotta get stuck in that walled garden.

No thank you.

 

[JamesJones44]

That's interesting. Most of the GPU benchmarks put the 40 "core" M4 Max roughly in line with a 3060 or a 4070 (depending on the benchmark). The official Geekbench OpenCL benchmarks puts the OpenCL score at about a 3060 Ti while blender has it about a 4070 Ti which is where the A5000 falls in similar benchmarks. I'm guessing the media accelerators must be optimized for this use case (or the benchmark is a one off).

Still, pretty impressive from an iGPU pulling 25 watts for this benchmark.

https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks

https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/query/?device_name=Apple M4 Max (GPU - 40 cores)&device_name=NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070&blender_version=4.2.0&group_by=device_name

 

[Giroro]

I didn't know there was an M4 Max system that would let you install an A5000 gpu

 

[Mama Changa]

It's a shame that in order to have these faster processors that means you gotta get stuck in that walled garden.

No thank you.

Hopefully that Linux project gives us an alternate option eventually. I wouldn't mind an M4 Pro based Mac mini if I could run Linux.

 

[JamesJones44]

Hopefully that Linux project gives us an alternate option eventually. I wouldn't mind an M4 Pro based Mac mini if I could run Linux.

Fedora Linux does support Apple Silicon, but it's still a very bumpy ride and a lot of desktop Linux applications are not crossed compiled for ARM on Linux yet given it's a relatively new development.

 

[mcfadyeni]

The main advantage of the M4 Max is its large number of encoders. Rather than having just one or two encoders, as many GPUs today do, the M4 Max features four total encoders, two regular video encode engines, and two Pro Res encode and decode engines.

Undoubtedly, Apple's investment in heavy encoding performance helped fuel the M4 Max's impressive transcoding win against the RTX A5000 [...]

Think there's some confusion here—Whisper is not the same as transcoding, and encode/decode engines wouldn't help with this task since it entirely relies on the actual GPU cores themselves and not the encode/decode engines 🤔

 

[Moores_Ghost]

To be most effective, ALL of the best producers, beat makers and artists I know create using Mac and PC as well as arrays of analog equipment and specialty items.
Mac has always been known for high quality audio work. The first digital studios used Mac. The PC caught up quick, as always, and provided a lower cost entry point to digital music making.
Later, the mobile market came to fruition as processing on small ARM devices became more powerful.
Today you have a robust landscape of options for your digital audio studio. Gone are the days of single machine solutions. Interoperability being the name of the game.
It's great the fastest Apple silicon can beat Nvidia's offerings from yesteryear, and at a significant reduction in power.
I see Apple as a walled garden in some aspects however the file types generated by these programs are compatible with most machines. Moreover, the same programs run on different machines, like Audacity and Pro Tools.
Whereas Mac was second fiddle to Amiga for video (Due to the Video Toaster and AmigaOS) Apple beat the Atari ST (Which was better than Amiga) in audio manipulation and built on that since.
What we see now is the convergence of these technologies allowing musicians to work together, digitally, in a way that was much harder in the past.
If the M4 is this good, I can't wait to see M5.
Now, if someone could convince Apple to knock the wall down, things could progress far faster.