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JDLang76

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 1, 2018
155
57
dual X5690s
128gb RAM
SSD

Just replaced stock card with a flashed GTX 1080 Ti FE.
On Sierra. Installed latest nvidia drivers.
Hooked up to 2 new dell ultrasharp monitors via Displayport.
Graphic performance is very bad.
Can't even watch a movie without the screen stuttering during action scenes.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?
I'm totally stumped.
Thanks!
 
dual X5690s
128gb RAM
SSD

Just replaced stock card with a flashed GTX 1080 Ti FE.
On Sierra. Installed latest nvidia drivers.
Hooked up to 2 new dell ultrasharp monitors via Displayport.
Graphic performance is very bad.
Can't even watch a movie without the screen stuttering during action scenes.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?
I'm totally stumped.
Thanks!
Test with a clean install of High Sierra, do it on an empty disk.
 
I was afraid that was the answer. I hate APFS. Ill try in the morning and report back
You can still install High Sierra with HFS+, just do it via startosinstall. You will need SIP disabled to use converttoapfs=no.
 
Oh. I thought you could only do HFS when upgrading from Sierra. Thanks for the tip.
 
Oh. I thought you could only do HFS when upgrading from Sierra. Thanks for the tip.
It's Mojave that block HFS+ installs, High Sierra installs via startosinstall still can be done to HFS+ volumes.
 
While you can install it, I don't think that's a good idea. Later versions of High Sierra require APFS to update. Unless there's a workaround for this. At least that was the error I would get, updated to APFS and was able to get the latest updates.
 
Last edited:
dual X5690s
128gb RAM
SSD

Just replaced stock card with a flashed GTX 1080 Ti FE.
On Sierra. Installed latest nvidia drivers.
Hooked up to 2 new dell ultrasharp monitors via Displayport.
Graphic performance is very bad.
Can't even watch a movie without the screen stuttering during action scenes.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?
I'm totally stumped.
Thanks!

Sounds like your web driver is not loading correctly but only using the EFI (flashed) to drive the screens.

Anyway, if you want better performance from the 1080Ti, you should go for the latest HS (with the associated web driver).
 
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Out of curiosity, why?

Once a drive is formatted to APFS, you can't properly manage it using disk utility. The only way to do anything with the drive is totally wipe it with diskpart or something similar. Also, some other operating systems and filesystems don't recognize it well when moving data between systems. Its Apple's way of becoming even more brand-exclusive.
 
Test with a clean install of High Sierra, do it on an empty disk.

Did that. Same problem. Found something interesting though. I was only using 4K video on VLC. I used 4K video in quicktime and iMovie, no problems on either sierra or high sierra. 1080p played fine in VLC. So it seems to be VLC's foult. Hmm. Guess I have some digging into VLC to do. I downloaded the latest version. Usually its awesome. I'm surprised by this.
 
Did that. Same problem. Found something interesting though. I was only using 4K video on VLC. I used 4K video in quicktime and iMovie, no problems on either sierra or high sierra. 1080p played fine in VLC. So it seems to be VLC's foult. Hmm. Guess I have some digging into VLC to do. I downloaded the latest version. Usually its awesome. I'm surprised by this.

You problem is GPU independent.

In macOS, the video is decoded by CPU (not GPU) on cMP. Therefore, the video play back performance won't be improved by upgrade to 1080Ti.
 
the 1080 ti was for video editing. I didnt know that however. But the issue is all VLC. Any other player works fine.
 
Which version of VLC are you using?
Latest release: https://get.videolan.org/vlc/3.0.6/macosx/vlc-3.0.6.dmg

If you have a bug, report it to them:
https://wiki.videolan.org/Report_bugs

What version of NVIDIA Web Drivers?
What macOS version and build?

Hardware decoding checked or unchecked?

Screen Shot 2019-02-19 at 4.54.10 PM.png
 
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the 1080 ti was for video editing. I didnt know that however. But the issue is all VLC. Any other player works fine.

If you want to fully utilize the 1080Ti's function in video editing, you better use it in Windows. Then you can even use it to encode HEVC video in high quality and easily 10x faster than the cMP can do in macOS (by CPU).
Which version of VLC are you using?
Latest release: https://get.videolan.org/vlc/3.0.6/macosx/vlc-3.0.6.dmg

If you have a bug, report it to them:
https://wiki.videolan.org/Report_bugs

What version of NVIDIA Web Drivers?
What macOS version and build?

Hardware decoding checked or unchecked?

View attachment 822601

AFAIK, that hardware decode option has no effect on cMP. It's mainly for Intel QuickSync (or may be iMac Pro's Vega as well). For cMP, all hardware video encoding / decoding functions is blocked as OS level (in macOS). It's impossible for VLC to utilise the 1080Ti's video decoding ability (in macOS).
 
AFAIK, that hardware decode option has no effect on cMP. It's mainly for Intel QuickSync (or may be iMac Pro's Vega as well). For cMP, all hardware video encoding / decoding functions is blocked as OS level (in macOS). It's impossible for VLC to utilise the 1080Ti's video decoding ability (in macOS).

There's a difference between H264 hardware decode and H265/HEVC hardware decode. Mac Pro is basically limited to H264 for hardware decode and my understanding is that is because the CPU does not support (and is not directly related to GPU's ability to support). Unless things have somehow changed with RX 580 on Mojave, but that was not the case during my last test.

This thread may be helpful for OP:
https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=142424

Turning that box ON/OFF can prevent a false triggering of GPU acceleration attempt, which could create playback issues (conflict) and/or crash during playback. Unsure what fail-safe measures are in place via software. There's also a lot going on here that the OP didn't report. Codec, bitrate, frame rate, HDR, profile and exact resolution were not provided.

FYI, Mac Pro CAN hardware accelerate many other codecs. My GTX 1080 FE does it nearly every day with Adobe software.
 
VLC in OSX is a little meh these days. It’s still by far the most capable player but compared to its performance capability in windows there are significant degradations. Large video files, .mov files, even clicking throughout the timeline are all rather buggy at times. I assume it’s apples graphics ecosystem at fault but hard to say.
 
There's a difference between H264 hardware decode and H265/HEVC hardware decode. Mac Pro is basically limited to H264 for hardware decode and my understanding is that is because the CPU does not support (and is not directly related to GPU's ability to support). Unless things have somehow changed with RX 580 on Mojave, but that was not the case during my last test.

This thread may be helpful for OP:
https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=142424

Turning that box ON/OFF can prevent a false triggering of GPU acceleration attempt, which could create playback issues (conflict) and/or crash during playback. Unsure what fail-safe measures are in place via software. There's also a lot going on here that the OP didn't report. Codec, bitrate, frame rate, HDR, profile and exact resolution were not provided.

FYI, Mac Pro CAN hardware accelerate many other codecs. My GTX 1080 FE does it nearly every day with Adobe software.

Any reference about the cMP can do H264 hardware decode in macOS? I never see that.

AFAIK, lack of hardware decoding support is the reason why we can't smoothly edit H264 video directly.
 
Any reference about the cMP can do H264 hardware decode in macOS? I never see that.

AFAIK, lack of hardware decoding support is the reason why we can't smoothly edit H264 video directly.

There was an Adobe support document about this a few years ago, will see if I can find this week. I've never run into issues editing any flavor of H264 on my MP5,1 with Adobe software. No background transcoding either.

What software was presenting these issues?

If you mean file based editing (just cutting head/tail) there are dedicated tools for that, but the resulting file is not technically an H264 compliant file. That method is only supposed to work within spec for MPEG-2, but even then creates problems with broadcast.
 
the 1080 ti was for video editing. I didnt know that however. But the issue is all VLC. Any other player works fine.

A friend of mine told me VLC isn’t the best choice to play 4K UHD videos due to stuttering or freezing. Below are some topics on problems with VLC playing 4K videos smoothly and some possible solutions, though I am not sure if these fixes are applicable in Mac OSX. And I think h9826790 is correct in saying that playing videos is more of a CPU task and not much on GPU.


https://superuser.com/questions/1143658/how-to-configure-vlc-to-play-4k-content-properly
https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=136448
 
Any reference about the cMP can do H264 hardware decode in macOS? I never see that.

Only reference I can find right now is from this 2008 press release for 8800 GT on Mac Pro for hardware decode:
https://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1208339777927.html

“Compatible with any Intel-based Mac Pro, the GeForce 8800 GT includes NVIDIA’s video processing technology which offloads H.264 decode enabling silky smooth playback of high-definition video.“
 
Only reference I can find right now is from this 2008 press release for 8800 GT on Mac Pro for hardware decode:
https://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1208339777927.html

“Compatible with any Intel-based Mac Pro, the GeForce 8800 GT includes NVIDIA’s video processing technology which offloads H.264 decode enabling silky smooth playback of high-definition video.“

Thanks! This is interesting. If 8800GT can do, then all newer card should has this function as well.

Now I wonder why few years back, MVC has a post about he can't get a 4k video playback smoothly until he upgrade the CPU to 3.46GHz. May be that's actually a HEVC video but not H264 video.

Anyway, I just downloaded the H264 Jellyfish video from here.

http://jell.yfish.us

It use quite a bit of the CPU resources during playback.
Screenshot 2019-02-20 at 3.39.47 PM.png


But when I did the HEVC 4k HDR BT2020 hardware decode test back in 10.14.0, the CPU usage was something like 10-20%, way way lower than this.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/hdr-4k-video-support-macos-vs-windows.2130924/#post-26373054

Also, the resources usage is identical no matter I turn hardware decoding ON/OFF inside IINA's preference. So, the above H264 playing test looks like CPU decoding to me.

I am wondering what's the exact condition that can utilise H264 hardware decode in macOS on cMP.
 
OP - please mark this thread as RESOLVED if your issue is resolved.

@h9826790 - have you tried MP4 files vs MKV? The MKV container can be nearly as broad as AVI and MOV with "flavors" of filetypes and broad set of features. Many players (still) do not properly decode them with all the features enabled. I've always had the best experiences with H264/MP4 and H264/MOV files.
 
OP - please mark this thread as RESOLVED if your issue is resolved.

@h9826790 - have you tried MP4 files vs MKV? The MKV container can be nearly as broad as AVI and MOV with "flavors" of filetypes and broad set of features. Many players (still) do not properly decode them with all the features enabled. I've always had the best experiences with H264/MP4 and H264/MOV files.

I remuxed the same video into a MP4 container. About 450% CPU usage required in IINA when playing back the video.

But the funny thing is, Finder (preview) and QuickTime can NOT play back the video smoothly. Heavy shuttering with CPU demand fluctuate between 20%-200%. Exactly the same symptom as when the system try to use HEVC hardware decode.

So, it's a sign that macOS try to use the GPU hardware decode.
 
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