Macbook Pro hardware recommendations wanted: GPU vs CPU vs Memory & M370X

lars_rengersen

Not using Onshape on a daily basis, but still quite often.
Hope you can think along what my best bet is in terms of Mac hardware.
I had a 2015 Macbook Pro 13" with only 8GB of RAM. Upgraded to a 2015 Macbook Pro 13" with 16 GB RAM.
That one now has a hardware failure so I can only use it with external keyboard and mouse.
It isn't very fast and it only has the Intel Iris 1.5 GB GPU. So my question is, what do I do:
1- Revert back to the 2015 Macbook Pro 13" with only 8GB of RAM and add an external video card (eGPU)
2- Upgrade to the 2015 Macbook Pro 15" with 16GB RAM and dual GPU (Intel Iris Pro + AMD Radeon R9 M370X)
- other....
I'm not really a fan of the newest Macbook Pro's (overpriced, in my view lower build quality, inferior keyboard due to less key travel) so that's why I prefer to continue using the late 2015 models.
I am using parallels to run some Windows applications, so that votes for 16 GB RAM.
So I am currently leaning towards option 2.
Anyone else using Onshape on a 15" Macbook Pro with AMD Radeon R9 M370X?

NeilCooke

Until recently, I had a MBP 2015 with your option 2 spec and was happy with it (until it broke) and most of the hardware we use at Onshape is that spec. If you want to stick with Mac, that is probably the best machine (although you should probably get more than one opinion). https://cad.onshape.com/check would show about 85m triangles/s but only about 25m lines/s - still adequate enough for most purposes.

lars_rengersen

Thanks! Sounds good.
My current MBP2015 (with the broken keyboard) and only the Iris GPU gets:

Measured triangles per second = 106.3 million

Measured lines per second = 39.0 million
So from your message I take that that isn't that bad either.
Main reason for changing machine also is the broken touchpad/keyboard but it's nice to also see some GPU improvement while doing so.

NeilCooke

I took those numbers from memory - the IRIS was/should be a lot worse.

By comparison, my 2018 MBP with AMD Radeon Pro 560X is 29.9 million triangles, 244.3 million lines.

Can anyone else post results to check?

brian_brady

Here are my results for a new MacBook Pro 15" using Safari. Specs for this machine are 2.9 GHz Core i9, 16GB DDR4 RAM, and AMD Radeon Pro 555X 4GB.

Bottom line is 465 million triangles/sec and 250 million lines/sec.

Your browser is compatible with Onshape

Browser

User agent

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_14_4) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/12.1 Safari/605.1.15

Platform

MacOS

Browser

Safari

Browser Version

12

WebGL and extensions

Core WebGL

Float textures

Anisotropic texture filtering

32-bit indices

High precision fragment shaders

Renderer

GL renderer

AMD Radeon Pro 555X OpenGL Engine

GL vendor

ATI Technologies Inc.

Performance check

Overall performance*

Measured triangles per second

465.6 million

Measured lines per second

249.7 million

*For information on graphics performance, visit: Graphics Performance Recommendations

WebSockets

WebSocket connection

Geographical data

Location

Big Rapids, United States

Onshape server region

us-west-2

Expected server region

us-west-2

lars_rengersen

Impressive stats for those new ones. I used the mid 2015 from my wife to do the test.
I am a bit puzzeled by the results:

Iris GPU active
Triangles per second = 185 million
Lines per second = 65 million

AMD GPU active
Triangles per second = 20 million
Lines per second = 106 million

I had expected both figures to be higher with AMD. Overall performance indicator seems similar. What is the difference between the two measurements?
And is the AMD situation indeed preferable?

Evan

We are tracking an issue with Apple's drivers for Radeon chipsets. There appears to be an interaction between these drivers and our ambient occlusion routines that is hindering performance when ambient occlusion is active.  Onshape will automatically drop ambient occlusion if a reduced framerate is observed during interaction.  So for these chipsets, you are likely to see better performance than is advertised by the /check page.  I would recommend continuing to use the AMD GPU.

We are working to get closer to the root cause of the issue to see that either the driver problem is resolved, or a suitable workaround can be applied.

NeilCooke

It would also appear that Safari is not affected which is why it reports good numbers. In practice, all browsers will have similar performance due to the reasons given above. 

brucebartlett

I am looking at getting a new MBP as my 13" 2015 is having trouble on the charging port and I am starting to worry about its reliability. I am happy with the 13" especially the smaller size for portability but would be like to have the better graphics card of the 15". I'd be keen to see if anyone has numbers for a new 2019 13" MBP. vs 15" to help me make a decision. 

lars_rengersen

How clean is the charging port? Is is relatively easy to replace. I am also using my Macbook in my workshop where I also do some metalwork. Due to the fact that the chassis is magnetic, sometimes small pieces of metal would pile up on the laptop creating a distance between the contacts. As a result, a small spark is created and burns the contacts of both the chassis and the connector. After replacing both I had a solid and reliable connection again.

Mehul_Gala

Evan said:

We are tracking an issue with Apple's drivers for Radeon chipsets. There appears to be an interaction between these drivers and our ambient occlusion routines that is hindering performance when ambient occlusion is active.  Onshape will automatically drop ambient occlusion if a reduced framerate is observed during interaction.  So for these chipsets, you are likely to see better performance than is advertised by the /check page.  I would recommend continuing to use the AMD GPU.

We are working to get closer to the root cause of the issue to see that either the driver problem is resolved, or a suitable workaround can be applied.

Is this still being investigated? I am using a MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports) with an eGPU (Radeon RX 560 4 GB) added yesterday. I thought it would be a more noticeable improvement, but the numbers don't support this.

Any advice? 

Evan

@Mehul_Gala the issue with the Mac drivers still persists.  We took measures to improve performance in the application.  However, these improvements will not be reflected in the performance check page.

Are you experience performance issues while using the application? Or is the issue with the numbers on the performance check page?  If you're experiencing issues in the application itself, I would suggest filing a support ticket so we can dig in further.

Mehul_Gala

Evan said:

@Mehul_Gala the issue with the Mac drivers still persists.  We took measures to improve performance in the application.  However, these improvements will not be reflected in the performance check page.

Are you experience performance issues while using the application? Or is the issue with the numbers on the performance check page?  If you're experiencing issues in the application itself, I would suggest filing a support ticket so we can dig in further.

Thanks for the response. The performance seemed to degrade when I had many tabs open. It was not as smooth and not as responsive. I thought this would be an economical solution. The compatibility check numbers:

before with the IRIS graphics: 130M triangles, 54M lines
after with the eGPU: 13.5M triangles, 220M lines


It seems to be better, but I need to use it a little more. I just would like some guidance on whether this is a good solution or should follow another strategy.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

Evan

Mehul_Gala said:

It seems to be better, but I need to use it a little more. I just would like some guidance on whether this is a good solution or should follow another strategy.

The Radeon should perform significantly better in rendering tasks, in general.  The disappointing 13.5M triangles highlights the driver issue.  Specifically, AMD GPUs on mac have trouble with our ambient occlusion routine.  So we disable this for interactive frames in Mac+AMD environments. This will make for good performance in pan/rotate/zoom in the system, but it is not captured in the performance check page.  

Your solution is worth while, though not easily validated by the performance check page.

One caveat to that is that a more powerful GPU will only help performance for GPU-related things, such as rendering and selection.  Other performance issues can arise when using many tabs simultaneously (bandwidth constraints, CPU contention, memory constraints, and synchronization).

lars_rengersen

Another comment on a topic I created myself.
Back then I bought another 2015 Macbook with a Radeon gpu.
In 2020 when Apple improved the keyboard I bought a new Mac. 

Nowdays it becomes slow and Onshape gives performance warnings so the eGPU question pops up again.
it feels like a flexible solution to buy a Razer X Chroma enclosure https://egpu.io/razer-core-x-chroma-review-absolute-unit/

Then I can always upgrade the GPU later.
So my question is: what kind of GPU do I need for Onshape?
Apple only supports Amd so that is easy https://support.apple.com/nl-nl/HT208544

There is a lot to choose
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

Will a Vega 56 or 64 already make a huge difference?
Or is it better and spending a bit more om a Rx5700XT or even a 6xxx series?
Thanks!