MP 7,1 Its up and running: 2x VII + 580X

[Passingby]

Works in Hackintosh with correct sleep function. Works in Windows/Linux PCs with sleep function. Works in cMP with correct sleep function. Search google 'Radeon VII sleep doesn't work'

Top two results:

Radeon VII eGPU fans run full speed in sleep mode

Many who have tried the AMD Radeon VII in an eGPU enclosure experienced this fan issue, I wanted to start a topic to collect different enclosure confi...

egpu.io

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/bpajnr

It looks like Apple or AMD gimped the sleep mode in this card because it was predictable that you would try to use this in the Mac Pro 7.1 to save money instead of the $2500 variant of this Vega 20 thing.

Am afraid you are going to have to hand over more money to the giant corporations and their shareholders. This is the price you pay for an Orwellian walled garden.

 

[Stanly.ok]

I always go to the switch user screen and then let it sleep on it’s own

you can also press control + shift + eject (arrow on the top-right corner or power button on MacBooks) to put your Mac to sleep (=

*good luck solving the VII's fans!

 

[Z28McCrory]

Maybe there will be a fix for it in the next Catalina update........ 🤞

Does the 580 need to be in for boot screens, the fan issue may not be present if this is removed (So just the VII’s), just a thought, clutching for straws here... 😜

Yep fingers crossed. Though, this is the “perfect crime” for Apple... they can intentionally not fix the one card that’s such an obvious direct alternative to their Vega II, and persuade users to use theirs instead.

Btw, Rob @ barefeats just replied to my email. He says he has the same issues with the VII in his 7,1. So it looks like I’m simply going to surrender to the fact that I have to live with this quirk/bug.

 

[klemsaba]

My main worry is “forgetting” about the issue due to old habits, and letting it go to sleep, then leaving home with fans spinning at full blast for hours... not sure if the fans would simply fail after some time or if it could damage something else in the process.

You could set the Mac to shut down and restart automatically... shutdown at 8pm, restart at 6am. I do this with the Macs my editing team uses. Just need to remember to save your work or the shutdown won't happen.

 

[_Kiki_]

are you expected Unigine Heaven 4.0 to utilise more than one GPU in OpenGL mode? really nice joke
also try something more serious like luxmark which can utilise all GPUs (+CPU)

Also found this guy on twitter who was testing the VII inside the Mac Pro:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1207628065523650560

may be worth reaching out to him and see if he had the same issue

Blender 2.79 is really old version, is there something wrong with 2.8 (or newer) on MacOS ? 😂 killer config 😂 because Apple screwed up all pro users by not updating OpenGL and OpenCL 😂

 

[Z28McCrory]

are you expected Unigine Heaven 4.0 to utilise more than one GPU in OpenGL mode? really nice joke
also try something more serious like luxmark which can utilise all GPUs (+CPU)



Blender 2.79 is really old version, is there something wrong with 2.8 (or newer) on MacOS ? 😂 killer config 😂

I just tried Luxmark.

Results for Luxball:
99898 GPUs
105741 CPU+GPUs



Results for Hotel:
12891 GPUs
14705 CPU+GPUs




The processors were maxed on both VIIs for all tests. The memory usage on the VIIs were still pretty low (around 25% on the primary, and 10% on the secondary).

On the tests that included the CPU, it indeed maxed usage all 16 cores.

The overall system memory used was around 11 GB at the peak of each test.

 

[norsemen]

Barefeats Luxball score with 1 Radeon VII and 2 Pro Vega IIs were 149,229 KSamples/sec.

I think your two Radeon VII did alright. Congrats on your purchase

 

[Z28McCrory]

Just for the sake of experimenting, I also just ran each VII separately in GPU only mode on the Luxball.

The primary VII with 2 monitors (LG 4k) attached scored 51002
The second VII with no monitors attached scored 48878

 

[_Kiki_]

I just tried Luxmark.

Results for Luxball:
99898 GPUs
105741 CPU+GPUs

View attachment 885063View attachment 885066

Results for Hotel:
12891 GPUs
14705 CPU+GPUs

View attachment 885065View attachment 885064


The processors were maxed on both VIIs for all tests. The memory usage on the VIIs were still pretty low (around 25% on the primary, and 10% on the secondary).

On the tests that included the CPU, it indeed maxed usage all 16 cores.

The overall system memory used was around 11 GB at the peak of each test.

I would say not really impressive for 2019 config

my config from January 2018
Radeon Pro Duo Fiji (literally 2x R9 Nano) from 2016 and Radeon Pro Duo Polaris (2x Radeon Pro WX7100) from 2017

 

[Z28McCrory]

Barefeats Luxball score with 1 Radeon VII and 2 Pro Vega IIs were 149,229 KSamples/sec.

I think your two Radeon VII did alright. Congrats on your purchase

Thats awesome to hear. Based on my tests of 1 VII vs 2 VIIs, it scales pretty linearly. So it sounds like the VII and the Pro Vega II perform nearly the same.
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I would say not really impressive for 2019 config

my config from January 2018
Radeon Pro Duo Fiji (literally 2x R9 Nano) from 2016 and Radeon Pro Duo Polaris (2x Radeon Pro WX7100) from 2017

*shrug* I think the results are pretty good for a pair of $499 cards.

 

[_Kiki_]

Thats awesome to hear. Based on my tests of 1 VII vs 2 VIIs, it scales pretty linearly. So it sounds like the VII and the Pro Vega II perform nearly the same.
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*shrug* I think the results are pretty good for a pair of $499 cards.

but my result is from 2 years ago, I paid £600 for Pro Duo Fiji in the middle of 2017 (failed one year later), 2nd Pro Duo Polaris was a gift

 

[Z28McCrory]

but my result is from 2 years ago, I paid £600 for Pro Duo Fiji in the middle of 2017 (failed one year later), 2nd Pro Duo Polaris was a gift

I don't have 4 GPUs to test, to give an Apples to Apples comparison. But if I did, and they scale linearly, it would be about a ~50% improvement over your scores. I know things move fast in tech, but a 50% improvement in 2 years seems decent?

The price of "gift" doesn't really count, does it? lol

 

[norsemen]

I look forward to more of your posts Z28McCrory and hope you will find a solution to the sleep/fan-issue.

 

[Pressure]

Be sure to use the feedback form so Apple learns about this issue.

 

[vinegarshots]

Blender 2.79 is really old version, is there something wrong with 2.8 (or newer) on MacOS ? 😂 killer config 😂 because Apple screwed up all pro users by not updating OpenGL and OpenCL 😂

OpenGL and OpenCL is deprecated in MacOS in favor of Metal. Blender removed OpenCL support for Cycles in the recent Mac version, so you can’t use GPU acceleration for renders unless you use a Metal-based renderer like AMD ProRender.

 

[chfilm]

I’m curious, I have a single Vega II- if I’d combine it with one of these Radeon VII- I would run into the same issue I guess, right?

 

[Z28McCrory]

I’m curious, I have a single Vega II- if I’d combine it with one of these Radeon VII- I would run into the same issue I guess, right?

It seems so, yes.

Rob @ Barefeats is experiencing the same fan sleep issue with two Vega IIs + a Radeon VII. He just didn’t seem to be bothered about it as much as I was, lol.

After “dealing” with the fan issue for ~24 hours and changing my habits (going into power saver settings and making sure it doesn’t go to sleep, and simply shuts the monitors off), and actively putting myself in the mindset of shutting it down instead of putting it to sleep, it’s not as big of a deal as I initially reacted about.

It’s silly (Apply could easily fix this), but that aside, I think the ability to have such an affordable-yet-capable GPU option is still a worthwhile trade off.

 

[_Kiki_]

I don't have 4 GPUs to test, to give an Apples to Apples comparison. But if I did, and they scale linearly, it would be about a ~50% improvement over your scores. I know things move fast in tech, but a 50% improvement in 2 years seems decent?

The price of "gift" doesn't really count, does it? lol

You paid for both cards I have one for free, do you have a problem with that?
are you trying to tell me, you need 4x Radeon VII to beat 2x old Radeon Pro Duos ? nice joke 😂
it's 2 graphics cards in 2 slots and they are much older than Radeon VII, Polaris architecture is from 2016 and Fiji is from 2015, so it's 3-4 years old technology not 2, you probably should buy Radeon Pro Vega II Duo from Apple not this cheap equivalent, if you want I can show you later score from 2xTitan Xp but this probably can happen in the next week

OpenGL and OpenCL is deprecated in MacOS in favor of Metal. Blender removed OpenCL support for Cycles in the recent Mac version, so you can’t use GPU acceleration for renders unless you use a Metal-based renderer like AMD ProRender.

so that's mean Blender users are screwed under MacOS

 

[Flint Ironstag]

I bet they'll fix it soon enough.

 

[Z28McCrory]

are you trying to tell me, you need 4x Radeon VII to beat 2x old Radeon Pro Duos ? nice joke 😂
it's 2 graphics cards in 2 slots and they are much older than Radeon VII, you should buy Radeon Pro Vega II Duo from Apple not this cheap equivalent



so that's mean Blender users are screwed under MacOS

Both of your cards were dual cards. You even mentioned this in your post. So you had 4 GPUs at work...

Im just trying to equate that to the nearest equivalent to what I’m working with, which is 2 GPUs.

I doesn’t seem logical to pay Apple $5k for a Vega II Duo when I can use two VIIs (that perform basically the same, and fit my needs in terms of ports, etc) for 1/5th the price. But it sounds like you simply threw that into the mix so you could call my setup cheap.

If the cost doesn’t factor in, and the number of GPUs per card doesn’t mean anything in your world, then compare your two cards to two Vega II Duos instead of four VIIs. Performance wise, it would be very similar.
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I bet they'll fix it soon enough.

I hope you’re right. In the grand scheme of things the good vastly outweighs the bad, so I’m concentrating on that in the mean time.

 

[_Kiki_]

Both of your cards were dual cards. You even mentioned this in your post. So you had 4 GPUs at work...

Im just trying to equate that to the nearest equivalent to what I’m working with, which is 2 GPUs.

I doesn’t seem logical to pay Apple $5k for a Vega II Duo when I can use two VIIs (that perform basically the same, and fit my needs in terms of ports, etc) for 1/5th the price. But it sounds like you simply threw that into the mix so you could call my setup cheap.

If the cost doesn’t factor in, and the number of GPUs per card doesn’t mean anything in your world, then compare your two cards to two Vega II Duos instead of four VIIs. Performance wise, it would be very similar.

I can easily beat 2x Radeon VII with 2x Titan XP from 2017 but probably you don't want this

so looks like Radeon Pro Duo Polaris is better choice for rendering than Radeon VII

you don't know this, because Vega II can be better optimised than Radeon VII and can score much more, Radeon VII is more like prosumer card but not clearly professional and lack of Radeon Pro drivers, this card was designed for gaming but clearly lost with GeForce RTX 2080/Super, so AMD cancelled whole production

 

[Pressure]

Both of your cards were dual cards. You even mentioned this in your post. So you had 4 GPUs at work...

Im just trying to equate that to the nearest equivalent to what I’m working with, which is 2 GPUs.

I doesn’t seem logical to pay Apple $5k for a Vega II Duo when I can use two VIIs (that perform basically the same, and fit my needs in terms of ports, etc) for 1/5th the price. But it sounds like you simply threw that into the mix so you could call my setup cheap.

If the cost doesn’t factor in, and the number of GPUs per card doesn’t mean anything in your world, then compare your two cards to two Vega II Duos instead of four VIIs. Performance wise, it would be very similar.
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I hope you’re right. In the grand scheme of things the good vastly outweighs the bad, so I’m concentrating on that in the mean time.

Yes, they will fix it. Even faster if you go through the proper channels and write to Apple about it instead of only talking about it here. Give them the feedback.

 

[Passingby]

I can easily beat 2x Radeon VII with 2x Titan XP from 2017 but probably you don't want this

so looks like Radeon Pro Duo Polaris is better choice for rendering than Radeon VII

you don't know this, because Vega II can be better optimised than Radeon VII and can score much more, Radeon VII is more like prosumer card but not clearly professional and lack of Radeon Pro drivers, this card was designed for gaming but clearly lost with GeForce RTX 2080/Super, so AMD cancelled whole production

You can install Radeon Pro drivers on Windows with the VII. Just like you can install Nvidia Studio/Creator drivers on the Geforce cards.

VII is not '7'. It's short hand for Vega Series II. People call it '7' because AMD was did some marketing malarky when promoting 7nm GPU and the CPU.

Vega II is the Vega 20 chip. The chip that failed to sell well as the Instinct MI50/MI60, failed to sell well as the VII and now they are dumped on Mac users for five times higher price.

AMD Vega 20 GPU Specs

4096 Cores, 256 TMUs, 64 ROPs

www.techpowerup.com

 

[goMac]

Yes, they will fix it. Even faster if you go through the proper channels and write to Apple about it instead of only talking about it here. Give them the feedback.

One thing to remember is that the Radeon VII is not on Apple’s GPU support list. Probably for reasons like this.

I’m sure they’ll fix it and get it on the supported list. And we know it works well enough in the drivers. But worth repeating at present the Radeon VII is _not_ an officially supported card by Apple in any configuration.

 

[Pressure]

You can install Radeon Pro drivers on Windows with the VII. Just like you can install Nvidia Studio/Creator drivers on the Geforce cards.

VII is not '7'. It's short hand for Vega Series II. People call it '7' because AMD was did some marketing malarky when promoting 7nm GPU and the CPU.

Vega II is the Vega 20 chip. The chip that failed to sell well as the Mi60, failed to sell well as the VII and now they are dumped on Mac users for five times higher price.

It's the fastest compute card AMD has, so it has its place.

Do you have sales figures on Mi50 and Mi60?