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Known Participant
October 1, 2020
Answered

Support for new iMac 2020 AMD Radeon 5700XT?

  • October 1, 2020
  • 4 replies
  • 8267 views

I cannot see that Premiere Pro is supprting the new graphics cards in 2020 iMac. Please tell me this isn't true. Can somoen advise please?

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Steve Griffiths

I don't know for sure that the new iMac graphics cards work with Premiere Pro but as a user of a new Mac Pro with a AMD Radeon Pro W5500X and a new Macbook Pro with AMD Radeon Pro 5600M (HBM2) card both don't seem to have any issues running Premiere Pro (2019 & 2020). Working extensively with these machines for the last few months - and GPU (Metal) acceleration is on.

4 replies

Participant
October 6, 2021

Adobe dont support the new iMacs. Performance is horibly slow. You can disable "hardware accelerated decoding" in premiere. But that is simply not a solution. 

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 6, 2021

Premiere Pro runs fine on iMacs.

 

 

Participating Frequently
October 7, 2021

Unfortunately - It doesn't.
See my specs below.

Premiere is running slow - Even on the iMacs build in SSD. My iMac from 2017 is faster. 
I think this is because of their lack of support for the AMD Radeon PRO 5700 XT.

 

Participating Frequently
August 24, 2021

Hey guys.

 

Brand new iMac 2020 AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT 16 GB User here.

Also:
3.6 GHz 10 -core i9, 64 GB Ram, Retina 5K 27" 2020.

 

Premiere is performing so bad that I have to close it many times day, rendering is slower than my iMac 2017. 
What's happening @Steve Griffiths ??? Can you please fix this so that professional people like me can work in Adobe? Or else.. DV Rslv is next up....

Inspiring
August 24, 2021

Zyrtech - I don't work for Adobe. I'm just a professional person like you - working with Adobe software.

phil bauch
Known Participant
January 19, 2021

Hi Jan, I'm close to buy a 27" with the 5700XT, too, Do you have any updates, and has it been fixed meanwhile? Or what are your experiences till now? Thanks and cheers, 
Phil

Known Participant
January 22, 2021

Hi Phil - I beleive the issue was resolved by an update. Howwever, I decided that the XT was overkill for my needs and went with the Radeo Pro 5700 6GB memory instead. All working fine so far, Kind Regards Jan

Jeff Bellune
Legend
January 27, 2021

Hi everyone around suffering poor Premiere Pro performance on his new iMac (and everyone else of course, too 😄)

The more I look around, the clearer it becomes that it's all based on Adobe's bad (or better non-existing) GPU support of the AMD 5XXX GPUs (e.g. 5500, 5500m, 500, 5700XT, just to name some of those).

Officialy this can easily be checked at PP's official recommendations, none of the new cards is mentioned here:
https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/user-guide.html/premiere-pro/system-requirements.ug.html

As I mentioned above, I had a chat with the adobe online support about performance, compatibility and known bugs/issues of AE / PP with the new iMac (AMD GPUs). I emphasized clearly the bad user experiences here AND in other places. They stated literally that this iMac and all hardware is "... good enough to run both apps...".

 

Another somehow useless answer in this conversation was the following (I pointed the employee directly to the spec's site):
"... see, the cards which are not listed can only require force rendering on timeline (not necessary) (...) but that will work ..."

So, either they are badly trained or just ignorant and don't care about their clients anymore (or both). Anyway, what to do? I still haven't switched to new the new iMac, but I need to do really soon, so it will affect me, too.  ANd more important: I love Apple & Macs. So I don't want noone all around the world having bad experiences. I'm really empathic in this 🤣 

So, my suggestions for now:

  • Pressure Adobe, always directing them to forum posts like this, and their official documents
  • The same about Apple, when having a support chat, always mention the problems with Adobe and the new iMacs (I would think that Apple neither is really happy about having angry clients complaining about bad 5.000$ Apple machines or worse, even giving up Mac and switching to PC or whatever). 
  • Read and make use off the user-votes section of Adobe: There are more and more posts complaing (although sadly they are noit bundled to one topic, as everyone writes his own post, instead of upvoting exisiting). That's why they just have 1, 2 or three "likes" each. Sadly, but anyway... Here are some links: 
    https://adobe-video.uservoice.com
    https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/category/332674/filters/new?page=2

 

Pretty sure there can be found more, but that's a start for everyone. Dont forget to upvote all posts concering this (or similar) issue(s)

Meanwhile, more options, at least to think about (for me, too)

  • Switching to DaVinci Resolve. It's getting better reputation of professionals every daxy. Personally I git a lot of buddies and some agencies, already having kicked out PP and reporting awesome experience in DaVinci Resolve. I'll give it try now, too
  • Switching to Final Cut Pro. Well, performancewise this should be the best. Anyway, I really dislike the magnetic timeline concept of FCP, it's not intuitive for me. I started NLE with early Avid Systems and then went all the road along with the known NLE solutions. Liked FCP quite a while even more than Avid and Premiere, but with the magnetic one, well ... hard to become friend with it, simple trimming makes me furious. Maybe I should retry .... 🧐

 

Third option:
- Swtiching to PC 😵 WOOOHAA ... DID I say this? Nope, don't worry, more likely I'd re-install Avid Media Composer a 7.x.x system on a Power Mac hahahaha.  And be aware that bad performance, GPU driver issues and laggy UI are reported in the WIN-world, too. 

Hope this gave you all some new ideas. Let's cross fingers... Meanwhile, feel free to report any more personal experience especially concerning comparisons of real-world daily work with 5500/5700 and i7/i9. Still not sure, what config will be the best for me, so every voice counts here, too  👍

Cheers, have a great day and stay tuned 😎🤘
Phil





For those of you with a 5K display, could you please check Pr's performance when it's launched in low resolution?

(Finder>Applications>Adobe Premiere Pro 2020>Select Adobe Premiere Pro 2020>Command+I and check the box Open in Low Resolution)

Steve GriffithsCorrect answer
Inspiring
October 3, 2020

I don't know for sure that the new iMac graphics cards work with Premiere Pro but as a user of a new Mac Pro with a AMD Radeon Pro W5500X and a new Macbook Pro with AMD Radeon Pro 5600M (HBM2) card both don't seem to have any issues running Premiere Pro (2019 & 2020). Working extensively with these machines for the last few months - and GPU (Metal) acceleration is on.

Known Participant
October 4, 2020

Thankyou Steve.