eGPU on MacOS High Sierra for OpenCL acceleration support?

Report · Nov 09, 2017

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

Report · Feb 05, 2019

hey man, did you buy the WX9100? How are you doing with your programs? I'm thinking of the same setup with my rMBP m2012 15". I'm wondering if an eGPU could really help me with PS/AI/INDD or if I should get a late 2014 mac mini

Report · Feb 05, 2019

No I didn't - not yet.

I was going to buy a 2018 MBP so I could run eGPU (with WX9100) over a short thunderbolt 3 cable, but I decided to make my current MBP last another year when I found out that simtech sells an adaptor for M.2 hard drives that actually works in my mid 2014 (11,2)

So I upgraded the HDD to a Samsung 970 Evo m.2 (1TB) and it's been operating smoothly for one month now - buying me some time. Read/write speeds went up from around 600/400mbps to around 1350/1300mpbs. Recently I've done tons of post production work on a cosmetics shoot with huge multilayered images around 300mb-1200mb each, and the performance increase was VERY noticeable. Still, I need something that makes the vector rendering faster when I combine these with complex typographical and illustrative elements, as I still get into lag in those areas - as always.

I've been considering getting an external GPU housing that runs over thunderbolt 2 so I can use a card like the WX9100, but like I said in my last post, there seems to be ZERO creatives who work in INDD/PS/ILL who are doing this and talking about it online. I'm a bit wary of spending all the money if it's not going to give me a real advantage. I've explored the possibility of building a PC, but I rely on the sense of 'flow' the mac OS enables for me. I've done plenty of creative in PC environments, and I could do it again, but it just feels better on mac. I think I'm just going to have to wait until I get the latest MBP and then run eGPU through thunderbolt 3.

Still, I'd like to see real world examples of other creatives using this solution - regardless of whether it's tb2 or tb3. Guess I need to try another tact, but not sure where I would go - maybe some other forum or social media environment where I could find creatives who might have tried this? I think it's odd that the majority of high performance computing discussion is all related to PC and gaming. Professionals of all kinds - not just creatives - need more power if we want to work as fast as our minds can go. I miss out on so many permutations / possibilities due to hardware limitations, and with the iPadPro (adobe draw / affinity / astropad) allowing me to create complex vector art and do post-production on photography even faster, I'll need this kind of power as I push the boundaries of what I can create.

I wonder if there's a proven adapter for the mac mini you referred to. The one I got is the first M.2 adapter proven to not cause issues when adapting a standard M.2 to a mid-2014 macbook pro, but I think the mac mini 2014 requires apple-only blade-type SSD. (I think this would be the bottleneck that you would want to attend to before attempting to run eGPU if you go that route.)

For your current MBP, apparently you can increase speed and storage a bit with this adapter:

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-860-mSATA-Internal-MZ-M6E1T0BW/dp/B0781VNJVJ

and this drive:

https://www.amazon.com/QNINE-Adapter-MacBook-Replacement-Converter/dp/B01LXLU3A9/ref=sr_1_3?s=electr...

However, modifications like this can be a bit difficult. I'd look for youtube videos. Again, for that machine, hard drive speed is the bottleneck in performance you should address before considering eGPU. Get a hard drive performance test app and compare the results to projected speeds - you can get an idea of what kind of advantage you'd get by reading the amazon reviews for the adapter. (first of the two links above)

Report · Feb 06, 2019

Thanks for your response I have upgraded my rMBP to 1TB myself couple of years ago. I'm still contemplating whether to get the Akitio Node or Node Lite and a TB3->TB2 adapter with an RX580 (a lot in the eGPU.io forum uses this aside from 1060/1070, but Apple doesn't support NVIDIA cards right now, though you can still have a workaround this). I understand the bottleneck that will happen and quite wanting to have my rMBP live longer. Buying a new mac mini or rMBP is defnitely not an option right now (cash issues and I feel it's not a "worthy successor" to the 2012 and 2015 rMBP).

Gelert's post above is definitely very helpful. I'll let you know if I find anything useful with an eGPU setup.

allenm89490965 wrote
Still, I'd like to see real world examples of other creatives using this solution - regardless of whether it's tb2 or tb3. Guess I need to try another tact, but not sure where I would go - maybe some other forum or social media environment where I could find creatives who might have tried this? I think it's odd that the majority of high performance computing discussion is all related to PC and gaming. Professionals of all kinds - not just creatives - need more power if we want to work as fast as our minds can go. I miss out on so many permutations / possibilities due to hardware limitations, and with the iPadPro (adobe draw / affinity / astropad) allowing me to create complex vector art and do post-production on photography even faster, I'll need this kind of power as I push the boundaries of what I can create.

I agree!

Report · Feb 06, 2019

Here's what I found so far. These are just the few of what I have in my Notes. Not sure if you have read these :

Report · Feb 07, 2019

from Apple Shares Recommended Graphics Cards and Chassis in New eGPU Support Document for macOS High Sier...

Note that this was started last March 2018

--------

"Not supported" and "not compatible" are completely different things.

Most common Nvidia cards are compatible with Mac, they just aren't supported by Apple. You have to download the drivers from Nvidia. Nvidia continues to provide MacOS display drivers and MacOS CUDA drivers for their cards.

There are many people using "not supported" 980, 1080, Titans, etc. just fine...either internally (PCIe Mac Pro) or externally in a Thunderbolt enclosure.

There are a couple of cards that have poor compatibility, so do your research first.

--------

and

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"And Apple wants to use OpenCL instead of CUDA so they go AMD."

"AMD GPUs > integrated and/or included discreet graphics"

Report · Apr 25, 2019

So, I've got a WX7100 in an Akitio Pro Node and I'm running Premiere Pro 2018. No effects or anything, just straight 1080i60 MXF files exporting to H264 and H265. Activity Monitor doesn't show exclusive use of the WX7100, but the same load on all three GPUs - integrated UHD 630, desecrate 560X, and eGPU WX7100. I've tried it in clamshell too. Is there a 'trick' to this? Or will the eGPU only pick up the load for certain effects? I'm puzzled...

Report · Apr 25, 2019

Premiere of course only uses a discrete GPU card (or now, eGPU) for things off the GPU Accelerated Effects List, and then only as the CPU/RAM get stuff of their own processed and send stuff to the discrete GPU. And not in general for basic exporting/playback.

On-board graphics are built to take certain tasks from the CPU on their own, and so function a bit to a lot differently.

So in your situation, that on-board is doing things the CPU/mobo/onboard are set up to do as a 'team', and Pr will be using the discrete GPU card and the eGPU unit as it has work for them to do. I'm not familiar yet with how they've wired the program to select what goes to what GPU.

Neil

GPU Accelerated Effects: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/effects.html

Report · Apr 25, 2019

Awesome. So, in other words, an eGPU is absolutely useless for my intended project. Thanks Adobe... :facepalm: (starts eying FCPX longingly again)

Regardless, thanks for the info R Neil Haugen!

Report · Apr 25, 2019

I don't see that implication at all ... and some people in some cases are getting good use of the eGPU. For what GPUs do in Pr ...

Different NLEs run different things through the hardware subsystems, and typically ... it's all tradeoffs. X process may work a bit faster in one because they use the GPU ... but because they do, Y is slower. There's only so much hardware there.

FCPx has some intriguing ideas in the UI, but then, I can't actually work with it not owning any Mac gear. Always love the aisle-talk at NAB. I don't think a perfect NLE exists. There's some things that supposedly work a bit better/faster in each Avid, FCPx, Resolve, and Pr. And some things that don't in each.

Pick your poison, really. They're tools. Just ... tools.

Neil

Report · Apr 25, 2019

Oh, I totally understand.

I'm sure Premiere Pro and an eGPU is awesome for folks doing long-form projects or using more than simple transitions. But like I said... "absolutely useless for my intended project". If my users aren't using anything on the list of GPU accelerated effects, and the eGPU isn't accelerating anything else, then there's practically no point in having an eGPU.

Kind of like buying a massive SUV and living in Manhattan - it's just a status symbol at that point and next to useless for day-to-day stuff.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Report · Apr 25, 2019

I hear ya.

Most of my work doth involve color correction ... and therefore, GPU is always gonna be in use. But again, for that. We all work differently ... every blessed one of us. Which is a source of great fascination to me.

For Pr general exporting, that's a CPU/cores/RAM/cache battle. Fast cores, 3.8Ghz or better is good ... more cores up to 10 or 12, is good. RAM running as close as possible to 10GB/core is good. So that's the basis of Pr machine ... 8-10 or 12 fast cores, with as close to 10GB/RAM per core as possible, on a mobo that can handle a ton of data without getting cranky because of overloads on certain channels/busses/lanes/whatever.

Then a strong GPU ... then probably mostly SSD/NVMe drives for as much as possible.

There's some people with dual Xeon's, maybe 20 cores total, but ... 2.2Ghz. Really ... slow. Pr will completely ignore half of those cores, and the rest ... aren't going fast enough to use the maybe 128GB of RAM they've got. Those folks get cranky as they've got what "seems" a major machine. But it ain't got the right parts. Multi-threading is good only up to as many cores as the program can handle. At that point, the speed of the cores becomes paramount.

Neil