Apple lauded Sketchup’s performance on the new M3 Max laptops at the “Scary Fast” keynote tonight.
Anyone know anything specific about Sketchup performance on the M3 Max??? Layout?
Best,
Wm
It’s going to improve for sure but not something very noticeable specially on Layout, I have the i7 13700K which is one of the most powerful CPU’s I got recently an upgrade from the 4070ti to a 4080 and also have an M1 max that is very powerful as well, but there are more things that must improve on the software side, Im not a developer so i couldn’t say exactly what should be done, I just know that apple doesn’t support newer versions of OpenGL which is the API that Sketchup and Layout use. On a thread posted some months ago I read that the developers are working on a migration from OpenGL, right now the best API´s are Metal for MacOS and DirectX for Windows and a lot of programs on mac are built using metal, like blender, archicad and vectorworks, besides the latest games that need to get the most out of a machine. Trimble keeps very secret their plans regarding future releases and features so it’s hard to know what are they working on, I just hope they keep up with the latest technologies and competition so we can enjoy this great software even more.
PD. If I said something wrong about the API´s or anything related to software development, dont be harsh on me I´m just an architect that loves technology.
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Hi,
answered in the other thread
short is, no. we don’t know anything. And don’t hold your breath, just because SU was taken as an example in the 30 min long commercial last night doesn’t mean much. Wait and see.
I did order one. Will know in a couple of weeks what things are faster compared to either Intel or M1 Macs.
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Was sketchup involved in testing the new M3 Max MacBook Pros?
if they did, it was under a heavy NDA from Apple. they’ll never tell you.
And even if they did, it must have been a very small team. Colin works at SU and just ordered his.
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Look at the improvements Adobe has made regarding InDesign’s rendering engine. It was very slow before and now it’s awesome!!! I am guessing that Trimble could the same but they do not see a return on the investment and will not…
Not that I know of. We were all pleasantly surprised that Apple mentioned SketchUp.
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Hey Colin! It’s only been 16 days but wondering if you have any updated opinions about it. Currently getting a lot of rainbow spinning wheel on my M1 Pro and considering upgrading, and trying to choose between a standard cheaper M3 or a loaded M2.
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They are in a difficult position with a vast user base wanting more and in the same breath complaining about cost.
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Apologies if this is a silly question but I’ve been having trouble with my Sketchup 2023 – I’m running it on a 2021 Macbook Pro M1, and was told by support that Sketchup doesn’t support the Sonoma OS.
My question is, if Sonoma isn’t supported, how is Sketchup running on the new M3 Laptops? I’m considering getting a new one but won’t if the program doesn’t work on the new models.
Any help is greatly appreciated!
@sposada :
That Sonoma is not supported does not mean it can’t run SketchUp! @colin has run SketchUp on Sonoma without problems, but there are many users that have SketchUp crash on Sonoma!
Safest option is to wait untill SketchUp 2024 wich will most likely support Sonoma…
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Any Mac you buy right now will have Sonoma by default, and don’t forget that apple’s event was also marketing, don’t expect a noticeable increase of performance, at this point CPUs are reaching the top of the performance possible due to Moore’s law. I was hyped also when I saw the announcement but after thinking about it I decided to keep my M1 Max MacBook Pro.
For a software to gain noticeable performance, the software and hardware must be optimized, so far Blender has announced that version 4.0 will be able to make use of the new gpu features, mesh shading and ray tracing, and if you use it to make renders you should get a new M3 cause rendering times will take almost 90% less time, but sketchup doesn’t make use of those features. You should wait for the M4 or M5, probably sketchup and more programs will be better optimized by then, the ray tracing and mesh shading will for sure improve in the future cause it’s the first generation with this features.
I just switched from VRay to Enscape and this switch shows me how much is actually possible with computers once you completely rethink of “how it is done”. I used to render a panoramic image for about 1,5 h for decent quality - same rendering in Enscape prox. 3 minutes at higher resolution. It’s fleckin’ insane!
So - yes the M1 is awesome and the M3 is even more awesome. And now Sketchup/Layout needs to rethink certain ways of doing things deep in the background to get the software up to speed. 
But - it is possible!
You can get great results with enscape, I also use it and I love it, but Vray will make more realistic renders cause the rays calculated are a lot more and precise while on enscape they’re approximated.
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Very true. For what we do Enscape is more then enough. V-Ray works on a finer level but it will only look realistic if you really put in the work and understand all these thousand little settings. We got decent stuff out of V-Ray but Enscape fits my Sketchup Workflow (lightning fast iterations) so much better. In a way I think Enscape is the Sketchup of Renderers. Easy, quick results, decent results, fun. Annoying limitations once you reach a certain level…
M1 was about 2 / 3,2 Ghz
M2 was 2,4 / 3,5 Ghz
first test clocks the M3 at 2,75 / 4,05 Ghz
(eco cores / perf cores)
meaning day to day uses won’t feel that different (eco cores), but things that need performances will be.
yeah, but this is where it will be interresting to see Colin’s test of SU on a brand new - clean installed sonoma.
One of the problem with our machines is that they are the result of years of use and abuse. (I’ve been transferring data and mac os preferences from machine to machine since 2003, my mac os isn’t exactly stock anymore )
upgrading a machine from one OS to the next won’t give exactly the same results as a clean install. plus, other softwares can interfere, other parameters, things you’ve tinkered with.
So while upgrading to Sonoma might be at your own risks, getting an out-of-the-box sonoma machine might actually be completely fine.
I don’t notice any difference in performance between an M1 Max and an i7 13700K that reaches higher clock speeds than the M3 Max. Clock speeds aren’t really the most important factor to measure the performance of a CPU, the M1 reaches 3.2ghz, an i9 11900K over 5ghz, and the M1 gets higher scores on most benchmarks. I bet if you’d have three brand new MacBooks in front of you, with an M1 max, M2 max and an M3 max, all of them with sketchup installed, you wouldn’t be able to notice which one has the “most powerful” chip.
yeah well I wouldn’t exactly classify Sketchup as a thing that need performance. it run on a potato with a screen
I’m thinking live rendering, video editing, complex calculation. the things most people don’t do on a daily basis anyways.
hence my full sentence
This took me a bit of time, partly because I was getting 60 fps on all of my Macs.
I took the FPS test that has been posted in the forum, and made 64 sets of the geometry showing all at once. That slowed things down enough to tell some differences.
My work Intel MacBook Pro gave about 5.9 fps. My M1 Max, that I am wiping soon so I can pass it onto a friend, gave 6.2 fps. The M3 Max gave 8.1 fps.
There was a different test I could do, which I can’t actually describe for now, where in that case the Intel Mac was 15 fps, M1 was 27 fps, and M3 was 37 fps.
So, for what it’s worth, M1 is marginally to significantly faster than Intel, and M3 is a worthwhile amount faster than M1.
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