Has anyone tested how much slower is the Afterburner card on x8 slots (instead of x16 slots)? I'm deciding between Afterburner vs the Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card - one will take the x8 and one will take the x16. Any suggestions welcome.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
MP 7,1 Afterburner Card on PCIe x8 slots
- Thread starter strangerthanlight
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Tough to say - I have the afterburner in the 16x slot 5. You may end up bottlenecking the Sonnet 4x4 PCIE card if it is just in an 8x slot with 4x NVMEs in raid on it - if you're doing some heavy export like 4444 XQ.
I would likely prefer to put the PCIE on the 16x if that's a big part of your workflow, and do some A/B tests with the afterburner in an 8x and 16x slot to see any limitations. It may be minor
I would likely prefer to put the PCIE on the 16x if that's a big part of your workflow, and do some A/B tests with the afterburner in an 8x and 16x slot to see any limitations. It may be minor
I tried the Afterburner in an 8X slot and I got a warning popup from the PCI-E configurator when I started up telling me to movie it lol. I'm sure the performance is actually fine, but the warning would get annoying unless it can be dismissed permanently.
In the system monitor, the Afterburner never really maxes out for me anyway (at least with 4k prores). Perhaps the extra bandwidth is useful if you're doing 8K prores raw or similar.
In the system monitor, the Afterburner never really maxes out for me anyway (at least with 4k prores). Perhaps the extra bandwidth is useful if you're doing 8K prores raw or similar.
I saw the warning initially, but at subsequent restarts it will not pop up anymore
Are we in this thread the entire population of afterburner users? lol
Missed opportunity for Apple. Why not open API? universal decoder will make it much more useful
Yeah definitely. I think they left it open ended, but never put any resources into further developing it for some reason. Maybe low adoption rate?
I guess it does do the Pro res part well enough - especially if you are working with multi-stream and 8k. But certainly would have been nicer to do other things too
I think they may have been hoping cameras by this point would be shooting prores raw internally and many people's workflow would benefit from the Afterburner. Obviously the RED patents have nuked those aspirations for now... it also doesn't help that Resolve doesn't support prores raw.
For most people if you're working with 4k prores, having a powerful CPU and GPU is good enough.
I'm balls deep in a prores workflow because I own a Mini LF, so I'm glad I've got it. I'm tempted to get an R5 with the Ninja V+ so I can make use of the 8K prores raw... but again Resolve doesn't support it. There's just always a couple of hurdles in the way!
For most people if you're working with 4k prores, having a powerful CPU and GPU is good enough.
I'm balls deep in a prores workflow because I own a Mini LF, so I'm glad I've got it. I'm tempted to get an R5 with the Ninja V+ so I can make use of the 8K prores raw... but again Resolve doesn't support it. There's just always a couple of hurdles in the way!
Those patents have existed for many years so I highly doubt Apple was expecting this.
Last edited:
