Using a GPU on Mac OS Mojave and blender 2.8

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1

Hello guys,

I have an Imac and a mac book pro using Mojave, when I use blender 2.79 I can see the EGPU but not in blender 2.8
is this going to fix on the future?

if not is having boot camp on my macs could be a solution I also have a EGPU NVIDIA 1080 as a box that I could connect but it won’t work under mac but because of Mojave doest update Nvidia drivers.

I’m a mac person and I want to find a way to use blender 2.8 with my macs and be able to use my egpu’s I know going to PC would a solution but that is not the route I want to go.
thanks for the help!

2

unfortunately apple doesn’t support Nvidia (as you mentioned) and is abandoning OpenCL so cycles gpu rendering on AMD hardware is also no longer supported:

https://blenderartists.org/t/cycles-opencl-rendering-on-macos-is-no-longer-supported/

on the up side for 2.8, eevee is supported on amd gpus, although I have noticed broken eevee features (like volumetrics) on my Vega 64 egpu that work fine on the substantially less powerful 560x in my MacBook Pro.

as egpu Mac users are a niche within a niche, I’m now not very sure what priority fixing those issues will be.

I’m really disappointed with the situation apple has created for us.

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Tks for your answer. Do you think that installing boot camp could be the solution to use all the power of my Imac with an EPGU connected to it?

4

I would do a little digging here https://egpu.io/forums/

5

You should checkout ProRender. https://community.amd.com/docs/DOC-2183 . Mostly a dropin replacement for cycles. Renders on GPU (using Metal2) on macOS.

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6

I’m also trying to use Blender on a mac with an eGPU. As the OP said that 2.79 is capable of using the eGPU, would it be possible to run 2.79 on a separate system and render using Cycles in a renderfarm setup. Will 2.8 and 2.79 work in conjunction to share the render the way it used to do?

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@photoserge @Backwash

As long as Apple or NVIDIA cannot put aside their dispute there wont be any CUDA and web drivers for anything after MacOS High Sierra.

So if you want to use the eGPU you will need to use macOS High Sierra with the available NVIDIA web drivers.

That’s what I use on my 3 MacPros.

1 Like
8

Am I wrong in assuming that Mojave works perfectly fine with eGPUs combined with any render engine that supports Metal?

In the video production world we are using eGPUs and Mojave with zero issues.

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@anon55679826 If the render engine supports Metal then yes eGPU works perfectly under macOS Mojave and so on. Just not NVIDIA or AMD openCL.

Sucks for us macOS users …

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Thanks, good to know.
The workstation with eGPUs I was using in video most of the time belonged to a company.

I was thinking of getting a couple of eGPUs for my home system to use with Blender. Glad to know the option is open.

#lifeasamacuser

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@anon55679826 while Apples go Metal move is highly annoying with also cutting out openGL/openCL it makes for them sense to replace that old tech with a more modern approach.

Still it burns that NVIDIA is fully left out.

But nearly most pro companies have or do switch to Metal. That includes ProRender Unity Game engine etc.

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My Mac book pro That uses Sierra Blender 2.8 detects my EPGU GFORCE GT 750m, but my other Mac book Pro who has Mojave and a pro Radeon pro 460 nothing gets detected. That is probably because of Mojave that is not compatible with CUDA any more, so I installed windows with book camp and same thing the pro radeon pro 460 is not detected?

I was thinking to boot camp my Imac 5k and install my Nvidia Card (i have a 1080 xt EPGU) but is this going to work?

In short I have lots of macs and I want performance with this machine using EVEE blender not any other engines as I do only real-time animation and trying to find what EGPU and what os to install for all that to work FAST.

13

So eGPU has the bottle neck of the connection technology.
More modern macs have faster ports - keep that in mind.

I am not sure why the Radeon Pro 460 was not detected under windows.
I still run a 2008 MacPro and win10 to be quite honestly runs extremely well on it.
So this maybe must be a driver issue considering that I found in Google this guy
using the same GPU in boot camp for gaming

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That falls on Nvidia. They had drivers for Macs, but they are most likely holding off on anything for Mojave since the next version of macOS is supposed to have am updated 3rd party kernel driver api. So Nvidia may have chosen to save the effort and wait until the 10.15 gets released.

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Now if that is true then alleluia !

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The OP may or may not be interested in running under Bootcamp on their Mac. I am interested in rendering with Blender 2.8+Cycles with eGPU and 2019 MacBook Pro (OS Mojave) running under Bootcamp with Windows 10. Does blender/cycles support both AMD (Vega 64) and the Nvidia (G Force 1080) under Bootcamp windows 10? Does Apple? I expect I many need to download additional drivers? Thanks for your feedback.

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It all depends on what Bootcamp or other methods of running Windows provides as far as hardware/emulation goes. If you are just running WIndows on your apple hardware , it should be fine. You will need all the drivers for it, as long as you can find the drivers.

Another option would be looking at running the Windows version of Blender under Wine, I am guessing that they probably did not abondoned their opengl drivers. Wine is not emulation btw.

This page seems to offer some help for Wine running on Mojave

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Hello, I’m not sure… I work on a Mac running macOS Catalina. And I want to buy an eGPU. I was thinking the Blackmagic eGPU. (Can get it in the Applestore) But what I don’t know. will this work with Blender (2.81/2.8) ?? Can anyone help ?

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Any supported eGPU will work with Catalina. Blender will also take advantage of the eGPU. Your viewports and Eevee will be accelerated.

Cycles, however, is CPU only on macs.

I had the following system here up and running:

  • base MacBook pro 1.4 GHz
  • Razer Core X eGPU enclosure
  • RX580 8GB GPU inside

I was mainly testing Blender and BMD Fusion, and both just worked fine :slight_smile:. This is past tense because the MacBook pro was a testing machine that I returned.

Just think twice about that Balckmagic eGPU. It is a fine choice for sure, but You can’t upgrade the GPU inside. If You opt for an eGPU enclosure like the Razer or Sonnett, You’ll be able to choose and upgrade the GPU itself.

1 Like
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Thanks !!!