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 Is the W5700X the best card for most users?
- Thread starter sammyman
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I believe, like you, that it is. However, many users are getting errors (freezes/restarts etc) with some Adobe apps due to what appears to be not ready for prime time drivers. Apple has promised a fix shortly. If I were buying my NcMP today it would be with the ProW5700X. I bought mine with the Pro580X before the W5700X was released. I am running an Aorus RX5700XT GPU with no issues, except for the lack of a boot screen with my setup.
Lou
Lou
I live in the world of Adobe and I received my 7,1 July 2nd with the w5700x. When it works, it seems to work great, but I have been plagued with freezes, shutdowns, logouts. It is really strange behavior as the type of problem seems to move around.I went almost a week without an issue, then it came back with a vengeance. The past week I have been averaging 2-3 logouts or freezes per day.
With certain Adobe apps (Acrobat DC, AI, InD) every freeze I have experienced occurs when I first launch the app either by double-clicking the app icon or by launching a new file. The freezes occur usually just as the pallets appear - sometimes just locks up (cursor freezes) or sometimes get the spinning beachball followed by an OS logout. Last night Acrobat froze three times in a row upon launch - fourth time it did not freeze and went on to work in it for a couple hours?
The past three days, following sleep, when I wake the computer up, I am greeted by the boot screen asking for my password followed by a message that the computer shutdown improperly.
I have been experiencing this Hell for over a month now both with and without any PCI cards/peripherals connected and through two entirely separate sets of RAM modules - so it is not PCI card or RAM related. Either the video card implementation or the Mac Pro itself is the cause. Since others with this configuration have been reporting similar issues that seem to be remedied by swapping out for a Vega II Pro, I assume the video card is the root of the problem (I hope). If that is the case, I think Apple should send everyone a Video Card upgrade if they cannot get this fixed soon!
With certain Adobe apps (Acrobat DC, AI, InD) every freeze I have experienced occurs when I first launch the app either by double-clicking the app icon or by launching a new file. The freezes occur usually just as the pallets appear - sometimes just locks up (cursor freezes) or sometimes get the spinning beachball followed by an OS logout. Last night Acrobat froze three times in a row upon launch - fourth time it did not freeze and went on to work in it for a couple hours?
The past three days, following sleep, when I wake the computer up, I am greeted by the boot screen asking for my password followed by a message that the computer shutdown improperly.
I have been experiencing this Hell for over a month now both with and without any PCI cards/peripherals connected and through two entirely separate sets of RAM modules - so it is not PCI card or RAM related. Either the video card implementation or the Mac Pro itself is the cause. Since others with this configuration have been reporting similar issues that seem to be remedied by swapping out for a Vega II Pro, I assume the video card is the root of the problem (I hope). If that is the case, I think Apple should send everyone a Video Card upgrade if they cannot get this fixed soon!
it has become apparent to me over recent months that Apple is great at developing their own apps and it all works great with MacOS [Logic, final cut etc]
However when it comes to third party professional apps the world of windows offers so much more stability and speed it is embarrassing.
No more am I supporting Apple in my business use until this is sorted. I am hopeful of Apple Silicone helping this situation but until it does, I am using windows to be actually productive [and this is coming from a 20 year plus Apple devotee].
Apple need to sort out the graphics situation, and ensure that developers can create apps that are not sluggish in comparison to their windows counterparts.
I sort of get the feeling that all the focus is on Apple Silicon and not the intel machines, and they are putting all effort into ensuring the apps on the AS side are running well, where as the current intel ones are going to suffer. If it hasn't been right for the last few years there is no way it is going to get much better.
However when it comes to third party professional apps the world of windows offers so much more stability and speed it is embarrassing.
No more am I supporting Apple in my business use until this is sorted. I am hopeful of Apple Silicone helping this situation but until it does, I am using windows to be actually productive [and this is coming from a 20 year plus Apple devotee].
Apple need to sort out the graphics situation, and ensure that developers can create apps that are not sluggish in comparison to their windows counterparts.
I sort of get the feeling that all the focus is on Apple Silicon and not the intel machines, and they are putting all effort into ensuring the apps on the AS side are running well, where as the current intel ones are going to suffer. If it hasn't been right for the last few years there is no way it is going to get much better.
Agreed. However, when it comes to Adobe apps on the Mac, they have had years to sort this out on Intel-Macs and they still are not optimized. So I would not hold my breath on them improving much in the next few years on Intel or AS. I am used to the wasted time when running Adobe on Macs, but until I bought this new 7,1 I was just fighting "speed" issues... I was not freezing and restarting! In Dreamweaver last night I could not even cut-and-paste a word in Code-View! Restarted DW and it worked fine the rest of the night. There is just something really wrong.
I am not a heavy Adobe user so cant comment, but the same issues you report are similar for Autodesk / Unreal / Rhino. I was opening files in auto cad Mac and there would be at least a 3 second lag on selecting some lines - opened the exact same file in bootcamp and was instant.
rhino is slow as a dog in Mac.
Unreal and twinmotion are both noticeably slower on Mac than windows.
Note these comparisons are being made on the same computer !! Its insane really
The speed issues are definitely Adobe-related vs Apple hardware. If Adobe were starting out the past few years on the Mac, they would never have gained much market share. They are just riding on a large previously installed base from software-code that was apparently written right after the Civil War. Some people are just switching to alternatives (like Affinity), but other people like me have 30 years of training in Adobe-specific workflows and tens-of-thousands of dollars and thousands of hours invested in training, tricks, plugins, memorizing key-commands etc. Adobe has really taken us for granted - especially after going to subscription.
That’s awesome.
It’s a solid average card.
I run a w5700 in macOS and also a RTX 2080 super on bootcamp.
The rtx is much faster, more stable and cost me less....It will be going in my new desktop PC shorty.
Yup, I wish Apple would ditch AMD despite the issues dealing with nVidia. Either that, or seriously take a stab at their own graphics processors for Mac Pro level performance. Of course, that really limits add-in options for graphics but a fast and stable graphics setup is fast and stable ... doesn't matter so much about "available options" in terms of brands as long as there are a couple for different price points.
Interested to see what happens when Apple moves the entire line over to their SOC's how they will tackle the Mac Pro. I've not had any real stability issues at all with my Mac Pro and W5700X at all since I had the initial sleep crash issues; but I completely wiped the drive clean and fresh installed MacOS and since then and 10.15.5/6 it's been rock solid with 0 crashes whatsoever.
Mind you ... I no longer touch Adobe apps with a 10 foot pole, but I use various development IDE's etc. and Affinity apps and haven't had a single stability issue. One thing I will note is that the initial load of Affinity photo etc. is painfully slow. Don't know what the heck is going on there; the Adobe apps -I'll give them that- loaded instantly.
As much as Windows is crap in many ways, I am starting to agree in some sense with the performance issues in MacOS. I'm really hoping these are sorted and the move to Apple silicon will see the kind of performance and stability we see with iOS.
Interested to see what happens when Apple moves the entire line over to their SOC's how they will tackle the Mac Pro. I've not had any real stability issues at all with my Mac Pro and W5700X at all since I had the initial sleep crash issues; but I completely wiped the drive clean and fresh installed MacOS and since then and 10.15.5/6 it's been rock solid with 0 crashes whatsoever.
Mind you ... I no longer touch Adobe apps with a 10 foot pole, but I use various development IDE's etc. and Affinity apps and haven't had a single stability issue. One thing I will note is that the initial load of Affinity photo etc. is painfully slow. Don't know what the heck is going on there; the Adobe apps -I'll give them that- loaded instantly.
As much as Windows is crap in many ways, I am starting to agree in some sense with the performance issues in MacOS. I'm really hoping these are sorted and the move to Apple silicon will see the kind of performance and stability we see with iOS.
I think stability issues have grown over the last 4-5 years on all products.
Also, I heard a rumor that the reason nvidia refuses to deal with Apple is because apple got caught reverse engineering their graphics cards. Just a rumor, but we're on Macrumors right?
Actually, I think the reason Apple isn't working with Nvidia is because of Metal.
There probably isn't much of a demand for Metal since Nvidia has CUDA. So Nvidia isn't supporting metal because of lack of demand probably.
I have the Affinity apps and struggle with them even though I agree are stable and fast. I got my adobe subscription back and tbh do enjoy it far more, but as I mentioned earlier not my core tool. I am liking their AR apps though and will be using those more.
it will be very interesting to see what happens over the next few years. Apple have helped Octane develop for MacOS and Metal and may be doing so for others.
But really my feelings are that MacOS is for consumers and is fantastic for this. I love it to bits and really struggle with windows for my music, photography, video etc. But 3D and rendering is a totally different story.
I’ve only had my W5700X Mac Pro for a few weeks and I’ve had no problems with Adobe CC. I work mostly in PP, AE, and Media Encoder.
I have not had any issues in AE or really Photoshop, just the Adobe apps that are text-intensive (AI, Acrobat Pro, InDesign). Also had the MacPro logout during sleep 3-4 times per week.
Apple is likely wary of allowing CUDA onto macOS, as many developers would simply port their existing CUDA code rather than bothering to support Metal for compute. This would both suppress Metal adoption and create a situation where pros would naturally demand Nvidia GPUs in their machines, putting Apple over a barrel when negotiating on price. Perhaps Apple suspect Nvidia would put a lot of work into optimising macOS CUDA but little into Metal compute, so CUDA would always have a performance advantage and would therefore be everyone's preferred choice.
So, much of this comes down to the price Apple has to pay for GPUs. As the industry leader, Nvidia probably won't budge too much on price, whereas AMD will as they are always looking to pick up business (e.g. games consoles are typically AMD based). HP or Dell wouldn't get away with avoiding Nvidia, but Apple is the sole provider of macOS hardware, so they're free to go for the best deal and their customers don't get a say.
I can't see why it's Metal support related. Nvidia GPU itself support Metal (since Kepler).
I do more technical illustration than photo editing. I got tired of expensive upgrades from Adobe, moved to Affinity Designer in 2016, and later picked up photo. Other than it taking a while to get arrowheads, I've been happy with them (spend most time in Designer)...and haven't paid for an upgrade since.
But both open very quickly for me. How much time are you talking about? Each take about one second to get to the splash screen, and another second to draw the window behind it (whether empty or a simple image open). It sounds like you're seeing something else.
I wouldn't recommend this card at all. I've had nothing but bother with it from the start. Restarts, panics. Just appalling performance.
Mine will sit for a good "20 bounces" on the dock. It seems to take forever to load. Did you purchase your copy directly or from the App Store? I wonder if that makes a difference at all.
It's been dreadfully slow to launch with fresh installs on both the apps, and OS from Catalina and 4 or 5 versions older of Affinity etc. across both an iMac and the new Mac Pro with a beefy setup. Multiple other users on the Affinity forums are complaining of the same. Wish I could solve it ...
Only thing I can think of is App Store purchase vs. direct from Affinity
I would imagine it's the app store. Wasn't there some recent downtime of a server at Apple that Gatekeeper uses to verify binaries? Probably something similar in this case.
Affinity Designer and Photo bounce three times for me on Mojave on the Trashcan. Open in about 1.5 seconds at most. I do only run the 1.8.4 versions at the moment though (from Affinity store). Perhaps the problem came in with newer versions?
Last edited:
Latest version of Affinity Designer takes mine 3-bounces to open
Latest version of Adobe Illustrator takes mine 18-bounces to open
I have recorded 33 Mac Pro crashes since they replaced my entire machine (11/5/20). Most of the crashes occur while the Mac is asleep or when I try to wake it from sleep, but still get occasional crashes in AI, Photoshop, Quicktime & Safari.
I am still in Catalina 10.15.7
Latest version of Adobe Illustrator takes mine 18-bounces to open
I have recorded 33 Mac Pro crashes since they replaced my entire machine (11/5/20). Most of the crashes occur while the Mac is asleep or when I try to wake it from sleep, but still get occasional crashes in AI, Photoshop, Quicktime & Safari.
I am still in Catalina 10.15.7
Well I managed to fix it by purchasing standalone (non Mac App Store version) copies while Photo and Designer are on sale. Sucks I had to buy it twice, but the load speed is directly related to some combination of how Affinity runs their purchase verification routine, and a delay from Apple servers. You can see in the standalone version, the verification of the app directly in MacOS takes 3-5 seconds on initial load. Subsequent loads (on reboot or otherwise) load to the splash screen almost instantaneously vs. the App Store version taking a good 10 seconds with the app icon bouncing.
I believe Affinity checks every time the software loads, and is a problem with their code. They should essentially run a check once on initial load connecting to the App Store, then save the credentials and don't check again or check only after the UI loads after initial loads. Bad startup routine in Affinity with the App Store version they don't really care to fix, but are aware of the issue it seems.
Choreo, I believe for sure something has to do with your accessories or possibly just Adobe software in general as I've seen it crash on an iMac before. Must be frustrating, but it's not the Mac hardware I can assure you. I have now 3 Mac pros, and all of them from Catalina 10.15.7 to now BigSur 11.2 and very stable. I did get a couple crashes in Safari with 11.0 which turned out to be a software bug that was patched in a subsequent BigSur release. Are you running the latest version of Safari 14? I know Safari 14 vs 13 was pretty buggy on initial release even on Catalina it was atrocious.
I will admit, it seems like Apple's software team is a bit asleep at the wheel lately. I've never seen so many bugs introduced over a decade and a half of using Apple stuff now.