AMD Polaris GPUs Plug and Play in macOS 10.12.6 & 10.13

[zemaker]

I would say to everyone running any RX xxx variant of a GFX card to skip 10.13.2 and remain on 10.13.1

Lets hope they fix all the bugs introduced in the latest release by 10.13.3. Apple quality control has really gone down hill.

 

[t8er8]

I would say to everyone running any RX xxx variant of a GFX card to skip 10.13.2 and remain on 10.13.1

Lets hope they fix all the bugs introduced in the latest release by 10.13.3. Apple quality control has really gone down hill.

When my 560 comes to the store I ordered it to, I hope won't experience this, I'm on the 10.13.2 beta (17C79a)
I'll keep you all updated to see whether the beta is affected.

 

[t8er8]

Well, kiss OOB support goodbye with High Sierra 10.13.2.

At least, if you want sleep to work properly. Apparently, only Sapphire RX 580 Pulse in 10.13.2 has sleep function working properly.

My RX460 which has been trouble-free up until 10.13.2 no longer has sleep working.

Sleep bug is... machine goes to sleep either user-initiated or automatically will not go to sleep... display is off, and LED power light on the Mac Pro will glow in and out like it is asleep, but, the thing is still on. Also, can't resume from sleep. So, I have to press and hold power button to turn it off and turn it back on, again.

This makes my cMP basically behave like a hackintosh! Doh!

This is not good news because if this is not fix, it means the marked up price of the already marked up Sapphire RX580 Pulse will get even more marked up.

Not fun.

Do you know if just turning off sleep fixes the issue? Or is this bug inevitable.

 

[t8er8]

I would say to everyone running any RX xxx variant of a GFX card to skip 10.13.2 and remain on 10.13.1

Lets hope they fix all the bugs introduced in the latest release by 10.13.3. Apple quality control has really gone down hill.

10.13.3 beta 1 came out, haven’t tested it yet, but I’d recommend everyone try it, tell me if it works, thanks

 

[thomasthegps]

I received my RX 580 8Gb NITRO+. I edited the vbios and it works really well, I'm running a 4K display, it is now recognized as an RX 580 8gb and sleep/wake works.

 

[BeatCrazy]

Would a Sapphire Pulse RX580 and 10.13.2 support HEVC hardware accelerated encoding and decoding?

 

[Squuiid]

Would a Sapphire Pulse RX580 and 10.13.2 support HEVC hardware accelerated encoding and decoding?

Nope. Apple in their infinite wisdom only do HEVC on the latest Intel CPUs. Pathetic really.

 

[BeatCrazy]

Nope. Apple in their infinite wisdom only do HEVC on the latest Intel CPUs. Pathetic really.

Well crap. There goes 80% of the reason I wanted to buy the Sonnet eGPU + RX580 box.

How does the new iMac Pro get around the lack of appropriate Intel processors to support HEVC hardware encoding/decoding? I assumed some update would facilitate the appropriate AMD cards to handle the HVEC.

 

[h9826790]

Well crap. There goes 80% of the reason I wanted to buy the Sonnet eGPU + RX580 box.

How does the new iMac Pro get around the lack of appropriate Intel processors to support HEVC hardware encoding/decoding? I assumed some update would facilitate the appropriate AMD cards to handle the HVEC.

I suspect Apple will allow that on the iMac Pro, but may be as usual, with lots of artificial limitation on older Mac to stop us using GPU HEVC hardware acceleration.

 

[BeatCrazy]

I suspect Apple will allow that on the iMac Pro, but may be as usual, with lots of artificial limitation on older Mac to stop us using GPU HEVC hardware acceleration.

But allowing the HVEC hardware encoding/decoding would seem like a primary use case for Apple's "developer" eGPU, right??

 

[h9826790]

But allowing the HVEC hardware encoding/decoding would seem like a primary use case for Apple's "developer" eGPU, right??

I don't think Apple really care. In their logic, if you want to use a dGPU for HEVC hardware encode / decode, buy the iMac Pro (if they really enable that... properly).

 

[thomasthegps]

I hope that with a future mac os update hevc decoding on gpus will be enabled.

 

[JayKay514]

Hey all. Based on these largely positive experiences, I've ordered an AMD Radeon Pro WX 3100 (Polaris architecture) for my cMP. Should arrive today or tomorrow, I will let you know how well it works.

For those of us who just need multiple UHD / 4K displays but not monster 3D acceleration, for audio editing, 2D design or productivity, and who would prefer a half-height, single-slot card, to leave the other 3 free, this may turn out to be a good option. (Would have gone with the WX4100, but prices have gone nuts for it at the moment.)

 

[Caesar_091]

For those of us who just need multiple UHD / 4K displays but not monster 3D acceleration, for audio editing, 2D design or productivity, and who would prefer a half-height, single-slot card, to leave the other 3 free, this may turn out to be a good option. (Would have gone with the WX4100, but prices have gone nuts for it at the moment.)

Which monitor are you using right now? Multiple 4k displays? Which connection (DP/HDMI/etc) are you using?

 

[JayKay514]

Which monitor are you using right now? Multiple 4k displays? Which connection (DP/HDMI/etc) are you using?

Dell UHD monitors, P2415Q model, mixed with some HD U2412 models I think. Using mDP-to-DP cables.

 

[Caesar_091]

Dell UHD monitors, P2415Q model, mixed with some HD U2412 models I think. Using mDP-to-DP cables.

Thanks

 

[h9826790]

Yeah. We have been testing these videos on the other boards. They are 4K 60FPS 10bit. If a Mac can't play these back then a video editor or content creator is handicapped. They can't play their render output.

4kmedia.org

The Polaris GPUs can decode them easily in Windows. Even a crappy dual core Skylake Pentium can do software decode in Windows with 25% CPU usage.

In High Sierra, still no GPU decode, Kabylake hardware decode isn't perfect, Skylake software decode is terrible.

Just wonder did you see this thread. It's about Vega 10 bit HEVC hardware decode on the iMac Pro.

Do you have a chance to play around with the iMac Pro yet? Do you think the Vega's HEVC hardware decode is activated on the iMac Pro?

 

[Naimfan]

How about a WX 5100 or similar? Might there be better support out of the box? Even though Apple doesn't ship anything with a WX card . . .

 

[h9826790]

How about a WX 5100 or similar? Might there be better support out of the box? Even though Apple doesn't ship anything with a WX card . . .

From memory, someone tried those WX card before, won't have better support then the normal RX card because WX card has different Device ID, which require kext edit to make the card work (if lucky enough the card can actually work).

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Just wonder did you see this thread. It's about Vega 10 bit HEVC hardware decode on the iMac Pro.

Do you have a chance to play around with the iMac Pro yet? Do you think the Vega's HEVC hardware decode is activated on the iMac Pro?

I’ll check now. There’s a new one in the studio.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

I’ll check now. There’s a new one in the studio.

4K 10 bit videos play smoothly enough. CPU usage was around 20-30% across a few cores so I don’t know how much GPU assistance there is.

The MacBook Pro 2017 has similar performance but that’s definitely accelerated on Kabylake CPU. Polaris on Macs have no decoding.

On a PC with AMD card the CPU usage is less than 5% which indicates more efficient use of the GPU.

On a PC with Nvidia card the CPU usage higher than with AMD card (tested in summer, might’ve improved by now)

 

[h9826790]

4K 10 bit videos play smoothly enough. CPU usage was around 20-30% across a few cores so I don’t know how much GPU assistance there is.

The MacBook Pro 2017 has similar performance but that’s definitely accelerated on Kabylake CPU. Polaris on Macs have no decoding.

On a PC with AMD card the CPU usage is less than 5% which indicates more efficient use of the GPU.

On a PC with Nvidia card the CPU usage higher than with AMD card (tested in summer, might’ve improved by now)

May I know if you play the video by QuickTime Player (or simply use preview) in MacOS? It's possible that Apple only allow AMD hardware decode in their own player. All 3rd party player not catching up yet.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

May I know if you play the video by Quicktime in MacOS? It's possible that Apple only allow AMD hardware decode in their own player. All 3rd party player not catching up yet.

I don’t think 3rd parties have access to the decoder. This might explain why Adobe Media Encoder is so much slower on Mac than Windows, also why FCP is so much faster than AME on Mac.

 

[lowendlinux]

When I stopped reading this discussion a while ago there were polaris cards that didn't work..

I bought a couple hundred dollar MP 4,1 and got it in yesterday did the flash and high sierra upgrade then threw my XFX RX480 GTR in and it runs my 4k monitor out of it's first display port all peachy and stuff..

 

[JayKay514]

Hey all. Based on these largely positive experiences, I've ordered an AMD Radeon Pro WX 3100 (Polaris architecture) for my cMP. Should arrive today or tomorrow, I will let you know how well it works.

Well, it's not working OOB under 10.12.06. Have not tried editing kexts or anything and not sure if that would even work...

Will test again under High Sierra once I can get a card so I can actually see what I'm doing... reverting back to a stock ATI 5870 mac edition.

Poking around on my Mac over Target Disk Mode, I noticed the system updated on January 1st. I think I must have automatic system updates turned on, and this is what started my issues - I had the Nvidia Quadro P600 in and working perfectly with the web driver, but this must have overwritten or disabled it.