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MP 7,1 Best aftermarket video card?
- Thread starter kjohansen
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The Radeon VII is pretty much the Vega II without the MPX goodies, half the RAM and a fifth the price 👌
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I got the single Vega II, but I think if you’d put two Radeon VII, it should be quite the beast... 🤓 or you could wait for the WX5700 option.
I’m really really curious how my new setup is gonna perform and if I’ll feel any need for a second GPU or not...
I’m really really curious how my new setup is gonna perform and if I’ll feel any need for a second GPU or not...
Please do let us know, as I'm in the market for a new Mac as well.. Still wondering if the MP is worth it for me or if I should wait for an iMac Pro refresh for example..
iMac, iMac Pro, and Mac Mini all are "due" for a refresh at some point in the next year. Debatable about what options could be available without at least partial redesigns, however.
I'm likely waiting 3-6 months for MP7,1 and maybe for at least one of those to be refreshed to get a better gauge on the Apple desktop options. A Core i9 desktop with 128GB+ RAM would likely meet most of my "needs" short term.
I'm likely waiting 3-6 months for MP7,1 and maybe for at least one of those to be refreshed to get a better gauge on the Apple desktop options. A Core i9 desktop with 128GB+ RAM would likely meet most of my "needs" short term.
I’m sure there’s gonna be others who receive their device earlier, I’m due on January 2nd! But I’ll surely post a video editor’s review!
The Radeon VII seems to be the most logical solution for aftermarket cards. It’s “discontinued”, but it appears the only reason they discontinued it is because they needed the resources to produce the Vega II (which uses the same core components).
Of the concerns listed above, the only thing that initially grabbed me was the louder fan noise. Then I remembered I had an 8 bay Synology sitting next to it, so I doubt it’ll be audible compared to the NAS.
Of the concerns listed above, the only thing that initially grabbed me was the louder fan noise. Then I remembered I had an 8 bay Synology sitting next to it, so I doubt it’ll be audible compared to the NAS.
The Radeon VII is still a good option if you can find one.
However, putting two Radeon VII in the new Mac pro means you have to sacrifice the Radeon Pro 580X because of power constrains.
The downside of sacrificing the Radeon Pro 580X is you won’t be able to drive a 5K or 6K display that’s currently on sale
However, putting two Radeon VII in the new Mac pro means you have to sacrifice the Radeon Pro 580X because of power constrains.
The downside of sacrificing the Radeon Pro 580X is you won’t be able to drive a 5K or 6K display that’s currently on sale
Just to help me clarify this to myself... the VII can drive a 5K or 6K display, it just can't drive the Apple XDR TB3 display, correct? But any DP 1.4 compatible display would be fine?
As usual, it depends. Density is a factor for my purposes, so Radeon VII is out with the triple axial fans. 3 Radeon RX Vega 64 per box slightly undervolted have tested best for me by far. if we still had Nvidia drivers, I would go with 3 GTX 1080Ti per box. Currently running a mix of 1080s and 1070s.
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Maybe this is a silly question, but as I don't need to run an intense GPU for my OSX work, how plausible would it be to stick an Nvidia card into the MP tower alongside the default 580, and just use the RTX card for Bootcamp (basically treating it like an eGPU)?
My reasoning here is that I'd rather not build a second computer tower just to run the occasional PC game. I would already have a gratuitous amount of CPU and RAM in a Mac Pro, so why not just plug in a gaming GPU and Bootcamp it? Saves me a lot of desk real estate, and another grand or two on a second machine.
I've never really used eGPU before, so this is pretty new to me.
Boot camp is a clunky solution. I would look into virtualization via ESXi, KVM, or other. You have enough power to spare 4 cores, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GPU and some storage to run any game.
So yes, very plausible minus the rebooting.
So yes, very plausible minus the rebooting.
Is that so! I'd always just assumed that virtualization would bleed more performance than booting into Windows.
I'd never really thought about it in terms of all those spare, unused cores that no game is ever going to utilize.
Not sure about this. I have the Radeon VII in a Hackintosh right now, and the score in Geekbench is half of the Vega II (and half of the score I got when I tested it under Window). In other word: not sure the Radeon VII has the same quality drivers as the Vega II.
This is the GB5 Metal score? I was in the GB website yesterday and noticed a similar divide (I think it was like 49k VII vs 84k Vega II.
I was under the impression that Metal also takes the CPU into account, so these scores may be biased since a 7,1 with a Vega II likely has a more capable CPU than a system someone would have used a VII on?
Either way, I may have to be a test dummy for this. I ordered my 7,1 last night (16c, 580X) and also placed an order for two VIIs (on sale for $499 each right now, so it was too tempting). I’ve been pulling my hair out for days contemplating this decision, but ultimately came to the conclusion that for the software I care about most, a pair of VIIs would surely outperform a single Vega II.
great, looking forward to what you find out. I forgot to mention that I’m on 10.14.6, but haven’t seen any evidence that Catalina improves the VII performanc. We will soon find out! 👍
The performance penalty on modern virtualization is tiny, 2-4% I'm guessing. You may find this video enlightening.
To get real information about GPU performance use Luxmark instead of Geekbench
Sure, however I have seen other performance issues that makes me think that the low score in Geekbench is not an outliner, unfortunately. We will see once somebody installs the VII in a proper Mac Pro 7.1.