Ryzen or M1

[Paul Knight]

Hi.
I am a C4D R15 user (can’t afford to upgrade and it does what I need for now) who has been using a 2014 Mac Book Pro (i7 Cpu and no discrete GPU) and am looking to upgrade my hardware. It’s just getting a bit slow to use when I have a complex model to manipulate!
I was convinced I needed to move to PC (reluctant but will do if needed) and was considering a Ryzen 9 5950x build, with a cheap GPU (Nvidia GT730) to keep the cost down. Would this system still perform well, or would I perhaps be better going for an M1 Mac Mini with 16gb of ram? Cost wise it’s about the same.
I was concerned that my version of C4D (R15) would have to run via Rosetta2 and would be too slow to use, or maybe even worse than my current Mac Book pro!
I like the look of the Ryzen chip, especially for rendering out frames for the animations I produce, but will the display port performance be good with such a bottom end GPU? I know C4D viewport performance is all about CPU (and the Ryzen excels here) but does this hold true when you go so basic on the GPU?
Until the M1 came along the decision would have been easier, but when I see people posting such impressive results, it makes a decision more difficult! Has anyone tried running R15 on an M1 please?
What setup would you recommend please? All help and thoughts VERY much appreciated!
Thanks very much.
Paul

 

[Alex Glawion]

The CPU's single core speed is the main performance driver for the viewport in Cinema 4D, but if you pair it with such a low-end GPU you might very well see slowdowns. The GPU still has to display the resulting meshes on the Monitor and is responsible for shading and or rasterizing any wireframes and screen-space effects like AO, Anti Aliasing, Transparency etc. in the viewport.

The M1 and upcoming M2 are quite good in cinema 4d's viewport. You can take a look at the benchmarks here.

I am not entirely sure if R15 will run on the M1 Macs, you might have to reach out to Maxon to be certain.

 

[Paul Knight]

The CPU's single core speed is the main performance driver for the viewport in Cinema 4D, but if you pair it with such a low-end GPU you might very well see slowdowns. The GPU still has to display the resulting meshes on the Monitor and is responsible for shading and or rasterizing any wireframes and screen-space effects like AO, Anti Aliasing, Transparency etc. in the viewport.

The M1 and upcoming M2 are quite good in cinema 4d's viewport. You can take a look at the benchmarks here.

I am not entirely sure if R15 will run on the M1 Macs, you might have to reach out to Maxon to be certain.

Thanks very much! Greatly appreciated.

I think given the upgrade potential of a PC build over M1 Mac mini, I've decided on a Ryzen 5900x, and use the difference in price between this and a 5950x to get a better GPU. I figured a second hand GTX970 or 980 might be ok?

Thanks again

 

[Alex Glawion]

Sounds good. A second hand GTX970 or 980 is fine as long as you don't plan on doing any extensive GPU Rendering.

 

[Paul Knight]

Sounds good. A second hand GTX970 or 980 is fine as long as you don't plan on doing any extensive GPU Rendering.

Thanks.

Thought it might be helpful to post up a reply I got back from Maxon re: R15 and M1 Macs. Might help someone else who has similar queries. My question first and Maxon's response below.

Thanks again,
Paul.
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Hi,

I have a licence to Cinema 4D R15 (Studio) and currently use it on an old 2015 MacBook Pro.
I am looking to update my hardware and was considering moving to a PC (Ryzen 5600x, or maybe 5900x) with a basic GPU (Nvidia GTX 970 perhaps?) since I know Cinema 4D display port performance is CPU limited, and less reliant on the GPU.

However, the M1 macs have come along and now I’m less certain that Ryzen is a good way to go. I’ve seen display port performance of the M1 macs (Mac Mini in particular) and they look impressive! This however, is using an optimised version of C4D, tuned to run on M1 macs.

Given I can’t afford to upgrade hardware AND software, I’m considering using R15 on my new machine. Can you please advise if you know what performance of R15 is like under Rosetta2 on the Mac Mini M1? Will it run, and if so, will it give me noticeable improvement (better than my MacBook Pro) in performance?

Any help or advise would be much appreciated.

Many thanks
Paul.

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Hi Paul

Unfortunately upgrading to an M1 Mac would require both a hardware and software update. Due to some changes in Catalina, R20 has some difficulty installing, and R19 and lower cannot be installed at all. The only way to get R20 to work is to remove the quarantine flag that the OS assigns the installer so that the installation can proceed. For R19 and lower it must be installed on Mojave or lower versions of MacOS and either copy/pasted to your Catalina or higher machine, or it must be installed on a Mojave or lower system that is then upgraded to Catalina or higher.

Fortunately, we have a handy knowledgebase article on this subject here; please give it a read for more details:

https://support.redgiant.com/hc/en-...-Sur-and-Cinema-4D-Caution-with-R20-and-older

If you're able to port your installation over from your old Mac, you might be able to make the M1 work, though.

Another thing of note is that R15 does use an OpenGL Viewport, so the GPU does play into its performance. For R15, though, a GTX 970 should be just fine.
Your friendly neighborhood Maxon Tech Support guy - Steve