Using a GPU on Mac OS Mojave and blender 2.8

Support Technical Support
21

If I buy a Razer Core X housing. What graphic card do you recommend. And is it plug and play ?

22

Sorry for the late reply. TBH I donā€™t know which particular card will work best. Unless You havenā€™t already, consult Youtube or Google. My guess is that most modern AMD cards will do, as long as they physically fit into the Razer Core.

My setup was plug and play, macOS instantly recognized the eGPU and the card inside.

23

Sorry Iā€™m very new to Blender so I donā€™t know if this will work. I also use Linux rather than MacOS. So hopefully someone more experienced can validate my suggestion. Itā€™s been said that GPU rendering isnā€™t supported on MacOS because Apple dropped support for OpenCL and that many users prefer using MacOS. But Iā€™ve not seen any mention of network rendering across multiple nodes. Could those of you who prefer MacOS use it as the front end, but then have a cheap Windows (or Linux - doesnā€™t need an OS license) machine on the same network to perform most of the rendering?

e.g. iMac/Macbook to build your models and scenes, with a cheap generic Linux/Windows machine packed with RAM and a GPU of your choice (which presumably those with an eGPU already have). The rendering would then be handed off to the Linux/Windows machine which supports rendering via any AMD or nVidia card.

This is a good example of the reason I prefer open technologies and standards where possible, such as FOSS software (Linux, Blender, etc) along with AMDā€™s open source drivers, OpenCL, freesync, etc. It means a proprietary company canā€™t just unilaterally decide to remove a feature you previously enjoyed.

24

thanks Iā€™ll consider an Razor Core X. (a small problem is that Iā€™m short 1 thunderbolt 3 exit on my computer. If I go for the BlackMagic Iā€™ve got an extra HDMI. for my second Monitor)

25

Is an AMD Radeon 5700 XT a good choice ? I really donā€™t have a clue

26

That is why I work on two macPros
one for work and one for rendering my 3D scenes and video edits.

I fully support the idea to build a cheap render slave PC. The only thing that is beneficial on the working machine is still fast rendering when doing the modeling etc. The faster the preview the better. But one can also do now quick test renderings with super low samples and use intels denoise. would be killer when cycles also offers the viewport denoise like Lux Render.

27

macos or windows?

28

You just install windows 10 install the bootcamp drivers and then install all the other stuff.
A mac today is just a PC and windows10 runs killer good on it.

Having a new MacBookPro the eGPU under windows and openCL should work very well.

29

MacOS . And the AMD in a Sonnet e GFX (eGPU)

30

You will use it as eGPU? I am not sure if I would now buy an AMD and rather wait a short moment till the new GPUs are out.

With macOS will you use AMD ProRender?

31

I understand that AMD prorender is not compatible with the AMD Radeon 5700 XT. But I thought it wil give me a good boost for EEVEE. (raytracing and Cycles must be Nvidea (no good for Mac))
When do you expect new GPUā€™s from AMD ?

32

I tired googling this but did not find a hit quickly. XT or all this Frau tracing stuff is pretty new so it might take some time for it to penetrate also the render engines and being used there.

I am not sure if right now I would settle for a card that has features which are not yet fully supported and mainly used by games

33

First I thought that the AMD VII was a good idea but I heard that de AMD 5700 XT was cheaper and faster. What card would you recommend ?

34

I do a similar thing, I use my MacBook Pro for Blendering, and then I do the complex/long renders either on a render farm (Renderstreet) or on a cloud pc (Paperspace or Shadow). That works perfectly for me. Blender on Mac also has on very big advantage for me and that is that it is perfectly usable with a trackpad (with gestures for navigation).

35

Agree. Navigating Blender with gestures on the trackpad is exceptionally well executed. Best implementation Iā€™ve experienced with any MacOS app.

36

best in class vs windows :slight_smile:

37

What gpu you guys have?
Also how does LokDev go with mac os and that gpu?

38

I have a macpro 4.1 and 5.2 with Gtx 570 and gtx 1070Ti

Knowing Cuda is gone and I want to try out the new MacOS I am considering to get an amd es 580 or a explain 5700 xt so i could try out metal vs Nvidia Cuda.

1 Like
39

Latest ProRender release is quite good. https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/radeon-prorender-downloads

40

seems to me also that metal is a lot faster than openCL.