eGPU on MacOS High Sierra for OpenCL acceleration support?

[AFlo00]

Hello,

I am experimenting with MacOS High Sierra's new (under the table) support for eGPUs.

It's quite amazing to see what I can do with this setup.

However, I did notice that my Premier and Media Encoder and not taking advantage of the eGPU enclosure and AMD RX 580 GPU for OpenCL Acceleration though.

Any ideas on how to switch from the internal GPU to the eGPU?

Anyone know if Adobe will eventually support doing so?

Thanks in advance!

Austin

[Guest]

I have been having the same issues. Even though High Sierra 10.13.4 brought native support for eGPUs and Radeon cards, Adobe hasn't updated their programs to officially support them.

[Gelert]

I'm in exactly the same situation. I have the full eGPU RX 580 for 10.13.4 and not a single Adobe CC app (even the latest update) on macOS recognises it at all. I've been working with AMD on ProRender for Blender on macOS with the eGPU and that is working amazingly well now. But no Adobe CC acceleration.

I read that the AMD WX9100 Radeon Pro GPU is optimised for Adobe Premier CC the other day but I'm assuming it's on Windows not macOS. Hopefully that will happen soon as that GPU is certified by Apple and AMD for eGPU use on macOS.

If I get the eGPU to work with Adobe CC apps I will come back here and update. But so far... no joy.

[Gelert]

I have an update to this. Adobe CC apps are picky about your exact eGPU connection setups!

I have been generally using the eGPUs as "compute assist" devices. So my Laptop has been powering the main display and the eGPUs are added without screens to add OpenCL or Metal computing power. This works perfectly in some applications like Blender 3D but none of the Adobe CC apps recognise the eGPU.

I now have a Radeon Pro WX 9100 inside a Sonnet 650 eGPU and my original Sapphire RX 580 inside a Sonnet 350 eGPU.

I've been doing some experimenting and the setup of the eGPU and screen within in macOS is critical to any of the Adobe apps "seeing" and using the eGPU.

Photoshop will only see it if the laptop is in Clamshell mode and the eGPU is powering the main screen.

Premier will see the eGPU and use it if the eGPU is powering the main screen but the laptop doesn't have to be in clamshell mode.

Using Activity Monitor > Window > GPU History you can see which GPU is being used by the apps when you use an accelerated function in macOS 10.13.4.

Blender 3D doesn't care... just set the rendering engine to use all the eGPUs and it'll suck all the compute it can from them.

[UncleDAC]

Is this still the case? What is the recommended eGPU to get now for an iMac 5k to improve the Adobe Premier rendering performance of UHD videos?

[Joel2018]

I am very curious what the answer is, as well. I'm very surprised to find so little online about this groundbreaking support from Apple. My MBP has the potential to be far more of a powerhouse, now, but it's difficult to find information on best setups and current stability.

Does this work yet or have official support apart from Apple? Anyone know? Adobe?

[mmedibu]

No answers here for a recommended eGPU for macOS users yet for the Adobe suite? Perhaps any users out there that can at least offer their current setup and limitations / performance?

[Gelert]

I'll do some testing today for you guys. Latest 10.13.6 with Sonnet eGPU RX 580 and eGPU WX 9100. I'll start with the WX 9100 only because that's "meant" to have full Premier support. I have the latest version of Adobe CC installed.

None of the eGPUs work with Adobe apps if they're added as "compute only" eGPUs.

The best way to force Adobe apps to see the eGPU is to clamshell the Laptop and connect your screen to the eGPU.

For me it's way easier to plug in 1 eGPU or 2 eGPUs when I need them as compute units for Blender so I rarely bother hooking up the screen to the GPUs because my laptop powers the screen just fine. I only want the additional compute oomph from the eGPUs.

Apple designed "Metal 2" with eGPU support so that Apps can see the eGPUs when they are attached and react to them. However... I've found that almost no apps do this yet. They need updates to support it.

I'll do a test with some 4k video in Premier (that I know my laptop on it's own could barely play back nevermind edit) and see if having the WX 9100 as solo eGPU will give it a kick. I'll report back ASAP.

[ajayrajdev45@gmail.com]

windows

[Gelert]

Back again. I've done some testing...

MacBook Pro 2017 3.1GHz i7 16GB 1TB SSD with 4xTB3 + Sonnet eGPU with Radeon Pro WX 9100 16GB.

Adobe CC latest version as of today.

macOS 10.13.6 fully up to date.

Setup: Laptop in clamshell mode.

Apple 30 inch Cinema connected directly to the WX 9100 so fully seen by macOS as the main GPU.

Use GPU History to see usage and About this Mac to see which GPU is listed as the main Display.

Photoshop - sees the WX 9100 and all 16GB and says accelerated for OpenGL. Makes very little use of the GPU at all - only specific plug-ins do though.

InDesign - sees the WX 9100 and all 16GB and uses it for page rendering. No real benefit.

Illustrator - same story. Sees it, uses it for display. No real benefit.

Premier Pro CC - it sees and uses the WX 9100 properly - using 4k footage with a Project set to use Metal. I setup some colour correction on all the clips. It plays back ok - not amazing - but better than the Laptop only. Then I went to export it and look at the screenshot. It went and used the Intel HD GPU on it's own. You can see the other two more powerful GPUs are barely being used during the export. So I think there's some work to be done.

I have also used DaVinci Resolve and that sees both eGPUs and uses them for everything. It is very impressive. Premier needs to step up and soon.

It is definitely worth buying an eGPU setup now. Apple's collaboration with Blackmagic on the eGPU released yesterday looks great and it has a Radeon Pro 580 (same as a RX 580). That is the best bang for buck available by far.

I won't be changing my Sonnet eGPUs for one though because I can run a high powered card like the WX 9100 but I like that the new eGPU is taking the outputs from the GPU and sending them out via Thunderbolt 3 so in theory if you could change the GPU inside the new eGPU you'd get TB3 output from a different GPU... depending on exactly what's inside. I expect this to be how the modular Mac Pro is setup. You'll stick any old GPU in it but the Display will be connected via TB3.

I have little dongles for everything on mine to get the Dual DVI up and running from the Cinema Display but it still works great.

After Effects works as well but again it's not using the WX 9100 effectively and seems to also want to use the Pro 560. My experience in Blender has been that when Metal wants to use two or more GPUs they need to be equally powered. So when I run the RX 580 + WX 9100 I get double the performance but if I add in the Pro 560 I get overall slower performance because they fight over the workload. There's an overhead of passing around the work. So you're best when you can manually select which GPUs you want active for a task and I'd always choose 1 super powerful one over the two built in ones on the Laptop. It's all down to software though as Apple has provided the means. Paying Adobe Tax isn't getting us the support we need right now. I wish I didn't need Adobe CC but I have used Adobe software since the Mac II so I just keep foolishly paying for it.

If you need a specific test doing let me know. At the moment... an iMac Pro would be the Mac to have for Adobe CC and Apple themselves admit that you'll need an eGPU on the iMac Pro to "upgrade" it in the future. However, hopefully with proper eGPU support from Adobe things will be almost as good on MacBook Pros soon. We can hope, right? We pay enough.

Blender 3D and AMD ProRender are totally free and that works great!!

[mmedibu]

This is very informative. Thank you! I've been digging for some insight like this for quite a while and my interest immediately sparked up again yesterday after seeing the Blackmagic solution. Needless to say it's ordered now. 😉

ADOBE PLEASE ADD SUPPORT! This would make everyone's lives easier (except maybe Apple and iMac Pro sales).

[Gelert]

Let us know how you get on with the Blackmagic eGPU and good luck.

[charleshull]

I got the Blackmagic eGPU yesterday, and installed it on a 2017 13 inch Macbook Pro.  My hope is this will run Premiere CC.  So far there is no improvement over the built in Intel Graphics 650.  I can't play the timeline smoothly (it is really jerky), and there is no improvement with the Radeon Pro 580 eGPU, either in OpenCL or Metal.  The Activity Monitor shows the eGPU is working in OpenCL and Metal, but it's not helping Premiere CC's performance.

But FCPX now screams.  (FCPX screams on any new Mac, but now it REALLY screams.)  And of course Blackmagic Resolve now runs really well on this computer, where it wouldn't run before.  Again, I hope Adobe gets this going with Premiere CC.

[Gelert]

Thanks for updating. I'm glad you're getting great performance on FCPX and Resolve.

It doesn't surprise me that Premier is not really showing much/any improvement. Shame on Adobe but no surprise from long suffering users.

Have you really pushed the eGPU yet to get it spinning it's fans up? If so, what the heat / noise output like?

[Gelert]

I can confirm that Resolve is working brilliantly from a RX 580 with the same 4k video I was using in my Premier CC test. It's butter smooth. However, to get Resolve to use the eGPU I did have to go into clamshell mode using the Hardware Auto setting. But yeah, astonishing difference between Premier and Resolve.

My previous test was done in clamshell on the WX 9100 eGPU because that is "Premier Certified". However, makes no odds. The RX 580 is a serious upgrade on built in MacBook Pro hardware if the software will use it. Adobe Software just doesn't use it.

[andrewkeil]

This is very helpful as I'll be picking up a BM eGPU this week too, now I'll know not to get my hopes up for what it'll do for Premiere/AE.

Can you not set Resolve to use the eGPU in the system configuration preferences and keep the MacBook Pro open? It would be a shame to not have the option.

[Gelert]

Yes, you can set which eGPUs Resolve uses manually if you want. It's one of the better apps.

Some apps just require clamshell mode and it's just better to force macOS and then the less well written apps to use the eGPU by closing the laptop screen. They'll get there, hopefully.

Adobe will ultimately catch up, I'm sure.

[andrewkeil]

Oh that's good to know, thanks.

Are you able to select both the eGPU and the internal MacBook graphics card in Resolve so they can work simultaneously?

[Gelert]

Yes in apps that have GPU options you can select which ones get used. Resolve allows this.

However, I've never found there to be an advantage to adding in either of the internal Laptop GPUs (the Intel or the Pro 560) to either the RX 580 or the WX 9100. If you're going to use 2 x GPU they need to be equally specced otherwise the much slower one just drags down overall performance. At least that's the case with 3D rendering which uses all of the available GPU it can.

Internal dGPU Pro 560 will get about 45000 OpenCL / Metal scores which seems ok.

But a RX 580 will get up to 130,000 and a WX 9100 has a much more variable score from 140,000 to 170,000 (I'm not sure why it has such a variance). Those are huge compute scores. The internal dGPU just doesn't help, it hinders.

[andrewkeil]

Yes thought that could be the way it would work.

Adobe really do need to up their game with regards to performance. Premiere, AE and Audition crumble under the slightest pressure. Playback is nowhere near where it should be considering what we all pay each month. Proper eGPU support would be a start.

Looks like I'll have one more reason to use Resolve over CC.

Thanks for your help.

[charleshull]

This is an update from my July 15 post about the Blackmagic eGPU with my 2017 13 inch Macbook Pro.  At that time this combination would not run Premiere Pro CC at all smoothly.  I had not looked a PP since then, until today.  PP now runs smoothly, and does a very satisfactory job.  There have been a couple of changes.  Adobe issued the 2.12.2 update to Premiere Pro, that includes hardware accelerated H.264 for Mac.  (My input is H.264.)  Also, I switched from an old Thunderbolt display to the new 5K LG display.  My guess is the improvement is from the Adobe upgrade, not the new display.

This runs much better with OpenCL than with Metal, and it runs 4K 30p full screen smoothly.  It does slow down with color correction inputs, but is still very useable at 1/2 display resolution.  My conclusion is that Adobe has fixed the PP eGPU problem.

After Effects is still slow as molasses, with no improvement.  As I understand AE is more CPU limited.

[PowerMike G5]

I'm glad I found this thread.  I've been thinking of getting an AMD RX 9100 for my 2010 Mac Pro tower.  Do you have any more insight on how it is running on your eGPU setup with the latest Adobe Premiere Pro?

I'm primarily interested in smooth timeline playback of 4K at full resolution. 

Do you find that this GPU has better performance, given Mojave and the updated 2019 Adobe CC apps are now out?

[Chris Newcombe]

I took delivery of my Blackmagic eGPU today.

After a few teething issues (Resolve just crashed every time I tried to run anything - updated to latest Public Beta and it's now fine) I managed to get her up and running. The cable that comes with it is ridiculously short - thankfully my LG UltraFine 5K display has a 2m TB3 cable supplied so I can run off that, and run the screen through the eGPU using the shorter cable. Why can't you find decent TB3 cables online that are longer than 0.8m? I also had a few issues plugging in peripherals - they seemed happier going into the monitor than the eGPU (especially hard drives). Bandwidth issue?

First off I ran out a 30s clip in Resolve with Noise Reduction:

'Job 1' is using the eGPU, 'Job 2' is using the built in Radeon Pro 460 (4Gb) and 'Job 3' is using both cards simultaneously. It would appear to offer a ~ 150% increase when side-stepping the built-in GPU, and a 200% increase when using both together. Playback within the app is also much improved - I can now playback in near realtime with multiple nodes switched on plus Noise Reduction, which I haven't been able to do before.

I have since played out a few longer edits which also have Noise Reduction, and I am seeing roughly a 3x speed increase across the board. Renders that took 3m45s are now taking 1m15s. It really is a remarkable jump in performance. If you are colouring longer form content (most of my work is for social media platforms) I would imagine the time saving would be fantastic. Please note that running in 'Metal' over 'OpenCL' seems to result in a very slight performance increase.

Premiere and AME are a different story however. Whilst I can see the eGPU working in Activity Monitor (I run my laptop in clamshell mode anyway) the performance was slightly lower than when using the Radeon Pro 460 on a three-cam Multicam edit, with me getting dropped frame indications in full-res in HD whereas before I got none. I do however get a slight bump in render times through AME, but it's about 10 - 15%. I can also see in the Activity Monitor that the eGPU is being side-stepped significantly, and that the CPU and the Intel Graphics 530 ( ! ) are doing most of the donkey work! Madness.

Over-all then, Adobe CC18 does appear to work with the new eGPUs - but don't expect a massive performance boost just yet. I am sure now that Apple have weighed in that Adobe will think about optimising, but for the time being the major improvements are in Resolve. If you use APP, AME and Resolve a lot (like I do) it still makes sense, as your Adobe apps will run the same (kinda) but when you come to colour your projects you will reap the benefits.

[xxmrexx]

there are active 2m tb3 cables, for example belkin tb3 around retail/web stores (apple store, amazon...).

have you tried running a script to enable all application for using egpu (and even internal display) maybe to get better results with adobe products?

for all application

https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/potentially-accelerate-all-applications-on-egpu-macos-10-13-4/

for the internal display

GitHub - mayankk2308/set-egpu: Display-agnostic acceleration of macOS applications using external GP...

[allenm89490965]

"InDesign - sees the WX 9100 and all 16GB and uses it for page rendering. No real benefit."

This is huge, to me. I create some pretty heavy vector and pixel art and I compose all of it (non-flattened, non-rasterized .ai / .psd, etc) in InDesign, going back and forth between PS/IL/INDD as I develop layouts. In order to really see what I'm doing in InDesign, I can't really work in any mode other than high-quality preview, which eats up a lot of processing power and gets very laggy right at times that I need to get lots of work done.

If I can really use the WX9100 for this, then there is a light at the end of the tunnel in regards to dealing with InDesign being sluggish - and this would translate to higher quality work and faster turnaround times. I really don't understand why there aren't other creatives actively discussing this anywhere online. (none that I can find)