MP All Models AMD Polaris, Vega, & Navi GPU macOS Support

[MisterAndrew]

Currently running 10.14.2 in my 2010 MacPro with a Sapphire Vega 64 WO any problems. Has anyone Updated to 10.14.3 that is running a Vega 56 or 64?

Cheers

Yes, I'm running 10.14.3 for my main install and 10.14.4 beta on a 2nd disk. Both work well.
[doublepost=1549323625][/doublepost]There's no Vega 20 accelerator driver support in today's beta so there will not be day 1 support for Radeon VII in macOS. However, it appears AMD has not released the driver for Windows or Linux yet either, so it's possible there will be support in next week's beta.

 

[alchemistics]

MacPro 5,1 12-core here.

Sapphire Vega 56 working, with an LG5K, see this post.

I do use the two standard 6 (to 8) Pins.
Geekbench OpenCL Score is at 175'000!

BIOS used successfully (to eliminate the fan issue and get a stable boot):

- Sapphire Nitro+ RX Vega 56 (secondary) 113-D0500310-S01
- PowerColor Red Devil RX Vega 56 (Silent) J8B27OAN.HLD

The PowerColor seemed to keep the Card / Fans silent for longer (~56° instead of ~52° with the sapphire).
But I'd stick with the Nitro+ BIOS, cause of the lower TPD.

I do get a power-supply shutdown while GFX Metal Bench is running (/ loading a scene).
No other shutdowns reproducible. Heaven runs through, Gaming (Forza Horizon 4 @5K!) under W10.

PCI-Bus Power seems to stay low at max. 1.5A.
6-Pin Power does exceed / top @7.99A.

FCPX editing works reliable, topping at around 7.5A on the PINS. Normally around 2-4A.

I do see that with the BIOS TPD this "can" get to high.
It would be nice to have a working BIOS with 165w..

Eventually I consider the Pixlas mod. But for now I don't see any noticeable benefit (besides hardcore benchmarking) in day to day use with the 56. I rather lower the TPD for ease of use. I do lower the TPD over wattman in W10 and can monitor the watt's drawn. Which I set to top @ around ~160w.

Does the power-supply security feature work under W10?
Could a warm-boot (to macOS) keep the GPU settings?

Thanks for the vital tips in this thread. This made the upgrade possible!

EDIT: Added iStat images

 

[MisterAndrew]

It looks like previous rumors that Radeon VII supply will be extremely limited at launch are true.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-radeon-vii-graphics-card-limited-supply,38566.html

 

[MisterAndrew]

No graphics driver updates in today's 10.14.3 Supplemental Update.
[doublepost=1549576626][/doublepost]I downloaded the Windows driver for Radeon VII. The device ID is 0x66AF.

 

[MisterAndrew]

A lot of reviews are out for the Radeon VII. It appears to excel at compute workloads, besting the competition in CompuBench and SiSoft Sandra benchmarks, and is a great improvement over the Vega 64 for gaming. AnandTech says, "By the numbers, the latest Radeon flagship is around 24% faster at 1440p and 32% faster at 4K than its predecessor." It also consumes less power than the Vega 64 under load.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13923/the-amd-radeon-vii-review
[doublepost=1549580563][/doublepost]Look at those Luxmark scores!

[doublepost=1549581229][/doublepost]Here's a great review on the Radeon VII's workstation performance.

https://techgage.com/article/amd-radeon-vii-workstation-performance/

 

[w1z]

I am glad I didn't finalize my VII order this morning as I just saw (heard) how loud it gets

yikes!!

I'll wait for a review of Sapphire's version before considering it again otherwise I'll hold off until the navi cards are released.

 

[HaypurTiryading]

I am glad I didn't finalize my VII order this morning as I just saw (heard) how loud it gets

yikes!!

I'll wait for a review of Sapphire's version before considering it again otherwise I'll hold off until the navi cards are released.

-Drivers are still broken. Steve from GN and der8auer said that on their youtube channel. They can't overclock the VII or monitor via 3rd party apps.

-Clocks not always hit the 1800mhz, frequency is spiking. Temperature is generally low (I saw between 62-68C most of the youtube channel.) but I think fan curve is aggresive due to Junction limit. Junction limit is new feature.

-I believe improvement and optimization will come a few driver later. We should wait.

 

[MisterAndrew]

One review I read showed the decibels are lower on the VII than the reference 64. We should see custom versions from the AIBs later this year with better coolers. For macOS though it would probably be best to wait for the Apple version (new Mac Pro) unless you need a new card right away.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

I am glad I didn't finalize my VII order this morning as I just saw (heard) how loud it gets

yikes!!

I'll wait for a review of Sapphire's version before considering it again otherwise I'll hold off until the navi cards are released.

They are loudish but reviewers measure noise directly without a PC case.

Inside a case the GPU has cool air being pulled across it from the case fans so that should in theory make the card cooler and less noisy. Optimally you need a great case. The cMP case is lousy for cooling most high end GPUs.

 

[eksu]

It's too bad the Radeon VII doesn't have a blower style cooler like the frontier edition, I think that's preferable for the cMP, especially if you use lots of the PCIe slots.

 

[MisterAndrew]

User Matty_TypeR has installed a Radeon VII in a 5,1 and discovered it is able to deliver basic display functionality without acceleration in macOS with the current driver and so far the fans behave normally.

Post linked below.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/vega-vii-reviews-inbound.2168829/#post-27081191

 

[fireedo]

https://www.techpowerup.com/252493/...radeon-vii-company-promises-one-click-updater

Is this mean we will have boot screen with vega VII ?

 

[MisterAndrew]

https://www.techpowerup.com/252493/...radeon-vii-company-promises-one-click-updater

Is this mean we will have boot screen with vega VII ?

Probably not. I’m sure someone will test it soon though.

 

[tsialex]

Probably not. I’m sure someone will test it soon though.

To have pre-boot support with a Mac Pro up to MP5,1, the GPU has to have UGA support. GOP is the pre-boot graphics protocol of MP6,1, so AMD releasing GOP UEFI support will be useless to us.

 

[Pressure]

Mindfactory.de has VEGA 56 for only €259.

 

[zozomester]

Question. Has anyone tried to flash Vega 56 or Vega 64 with WX 8200 or WX9100 Bios? In principle, they have the same structure except for the outputs.
Thank!

 

[MisterAndrew]

Question. Has anyone tried to flash Vega 56 or Vega 64 with WX 8200 or WX9100 Bios? In principle, they have the same structure except for the outputs.
Thank!

WX 9100 has 16GB of HBM2 so that wouldn’t work, but the WX 8200 bios might work. I think there’s a security feature that will prevent the flash, but you could try it. I’m not sure why you’d want to though unless you need the pro Windows drivers for a specific professional app. The performance is lower than the RX cards except in certain professional uses. The benefits of the WX card are a higher binned chip and ECC memory (and pro app certifications).

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/205876/amd-wx8200-8192-180922

 

[zozomester]

WX 9100 has 16GB of HBM2 so that wouldn’t work, but the WX 8200 bios might work. I think there’s a security feature that will prevent the flash, but you could try it. I’m not sure why you’d want to though unless you need the pro Windows drivers for a specific professional app. The performance is lower than the RX cards except in certain professional uses. The benefits of the WX card are a higher binned chip and ECC memory (and pro app certifications).

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/205876/amd-wx8200-8192-180922

Thank you this answer! I probably.....

 

[zozomester]

Unfortunately it doesn't work with it....

 

[09872738]

My apologies beforehand in case this is the wrong thread for this post. If it is, please advise.

Did anyone here try to run an AMD card along with an nVidia card?

I consider a Vega card as primary device to drive my displays, while using a GTX 1080 Ti for CUDA development.

Any experts here that tried something like this? Thanks in advance.

 

[teagls]

My apologies beforehand in case this is the wrong thread for this post. If it is, please advise.

Did anyone here try to run an AMD card along with an nVidia card?

I consider a Vega card as primary device to drive my displays, while using a GTX 1080 Ti for CUDA development.

Any experts here that tried something like this? Thanks in advance.

To my knowledge this doesn't work. In order to use the 1080 Ti you need Nvidia Web driver, which has to be manually enabled. Doing so disables the native drivers, thus making Vega unusable.

 

[09872738]

Thanks for the reply.

For now I got two nVidias (1070/1080 Ti) as described; as you say one has to choose between Webdrivers and Apple provided ones.
I am not sure, however, what happens once an AMD card comes into play. In theory each driver could handle its respective graphics card.

Question is, therefore, if choosing the Webdrivers disables the native system drivers as a whole or just selects the Webdrivers over native nVidia. Unfortunately I have no AMD card to confirm what works.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I had my Nvidia GTX 680 installed alongside my RX Vega 56 before in my 5,1 and both worked fine in macOS. I didn't test that configuration enough to tell if there were stability issues.

Edit: Also just realized both of those cards were using the native drivers. If you are going to use an Nvidia card that needs the web driver then perhaps it wouldn't work as well. So if you need to mix Nvidia and AMD you should probably choose an Nvidia card that uses the native driver, which is necessary for Mojave anyways.

 

[09872738]

Thx. Mojave is not an option though because of dreaded feud - and due to heavy workloads on the cards, nVidia Pascal cards are the minimum option.

So thanks for your answers to all; I'll just stick with the nVdias I got now.

 

[Le_Cactus]

Thanks for the reply.

For now I got two nVidias (1070/1080 Ti) as described; as you say one has to choose between Webdrivers and Apple provided ones.
I am not sure, however, what happens once an AMD card comes into play. In theory each driver could handle its respective graphics card.

Question is, therefore, if choosing the Webdrivers disables the native system drivers as a whole or just selects the Webdrivers over native nVidia. Unfortunately I have no AMD card to confirm what works.

Hi 09872738,

I can confirm that it works with the Nvidia webdrivers, and the AMD drivers in the OS, I've just installed a Sapphire RX 580 Pulse 8Gb, with my two GTX 1070 (one Founder Edition and a single slot Katana, and the correct webdrivers, for multi GPU).

Since a few days, I've removed the Nvidia's ones, to test Mojave, the RX 580 is a good model, even alone in High Sierra.

Guillaume