My mini i7 runs a bit warmer at idle with a Vega 56 than without. I'm not surprised at this.
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External GPU (eGPU) Resources
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My mini i7 runs a bit warmer at idle with a Vega 56 than without. I'm not surprised at this.
I'm not surprised by it either (the CPU is now responsible for more things than before), just slightly alarmed... I do not remember my mini running this warm before. What I mean by that is this, my 2018 mini did run quite a bit warmer than my other minis at idle, but it now feels hot to the touch versus warm. I was just curious if anyone else noticed a difference in temp.
I'm running the mini and Vega 56 right now, and the mini enclosure isn't isn't warm, let alone hot.
According to Intel Power Gadget, my CPU is currently running 38℃ to 39℃.
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In theory, any shared RAM the onboard video would be using without the eGPU would now be offloaded to the external video card's memory. The system will utilize some to handle the TB3 connections with the system, but it would be no where near the amount the system should usually use for the iGPU.
Alright, it might have something to do with how I have my minis/eGPU laid out. Thank you again for all your insights on this matter. I have found this thread super helpful in the whole eGPU endeavor.
In case you haven't noticed it, I updated my post with current CPU temperature from Intel's Power Gadget, just in case it helps.
So, someone asked up above about running dual 4K displays from an eGPU with an RX580 - I'm currently considering the OWC Helios RX580 bundle - has anyone used this spec card (I'm going to assume the case itself won't make much different so long as it provides enough power) to run 2x4k displays?
That is an interesting discovery especially since a major claim of the BlackMagic eGPU is its silence, relative to similar options - and maybe one of the few justifications of the higher price tag. I will be interested to hear more of your experience on this, thanks for sharing your results.
I think I had a stuck process or something. My mini was running at 80℃ to 83℃. I restarted it last night and it is now running between 40℃ and 42℃. I will continue to monitor the temp until I am confident it was an anomaly. Thank you!
During her keynote speech at CES today, AMD head Lisa Su announced Radeon VII, which is a second generation Vega card using 7nm technology. She said that it has 16GB memory and will improve performance over Vega 64 for DaVinci Resolve and Premier Pro by up to 27% and 29% respectively.
Launch date for the reference card is February 7. Price is US$700, bundled with three games. No mention of custom cards by Sapphire, Asus, etc.
She said nothing about Navi, except that further announcements are coming over the course of the year.
More details on Radeon VII from...
AnandTech: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13832/amd-radeon-vii-high-end-7nm-february-7th-for-699
The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/9/18175493/amd-announces-radeon-vii-next-generation-graphics-gpu
Launch date for the reference card is February 7. Price is US$700, bundled with three games. No mention of custom cards by Sapphire, Asus, etc.
She said nothing about Navi, except that further announcements are coming over the course of the year.
More details on Radeon VII from...
AnandTech: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13832/amd-radeon-vii-high-end-7nm-february-7th-for-699
The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/9/18175493/amd-announces-radeon-vii-next-generation-graphics-gpu
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A have a few thoughts on this.
The Radeon VII presents an interesting bifurcation in strategies between NVIDIA and AMD.
Vega was AMD's attempt to take a lead on the compute side of GPUs. On paper, it's vastly superior to the GTX 1080 (its more or less competitor) in raw floating point performance, memory bandwidth and some integer operations. Yet, because it has lower raw pixel rate (and probably less optimization support in drivers and games), it can rarely outperform the GTX 1080 in gaming. Combined with the crypto craze driving its price through the roof it just never sat right in the market.
Now, Vega 2nd gen (i.e. Radeon VII) has 16GB of wickedly fast video RAM - twice the capacity and more than twice the bandwidth of its competitor, the RTX 2080. But, the RTX 2080 has new dedicated machine learning ("tensor") cores and hardware acceleration for bounding-volume intersection tests ("RT" cores).
This is really strange. If DLSS and real-time ray tracing takes off in the next year, Radeon VII will be rendered pointless for high-end gaming (which its $699 MSRP is targeting), yet remain irrefutably useful in some workstation scenarios. I'm really disappointed to see $699 debut prices on this class of hardware, previous generations priced it at $549. Both companies are going to make the argument that the higher costs are justified by significantly new capabilities (not just performance bumps), which there certainly are, especially on the NVIDIA side.
However, neither card will likely compete with each other in the same space because they have drastically different feature sets. Thus, this card brings no new real competition and we're probably going to be stuck at these inflated price points for a while :/
TL;DR: for macOS folks, Radeon VII will likely be pretty awesome if you need it. It will also be pretty nice for dual booting into Windows to play current and previous generation games, but will probably not age well on the gaming front.
In other news, NVIDIA has recently and publicly stated that Mojave drivers are coming soon, whatever that truly means. Still, it's a positive development.
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https://vocaroo.com/i/s1nVD08zpo4J
thats the constant Coil Whine sound of the Blackmagic eGPU Pro. Im getting a replacement now, lets see if the new one has the same problem. This coil whine is even a lot more annoying then the SSD Mac Mini and Macbook Pro 2018 Coil Whine at the beginning.
thats the constant Coil Whine sound of the Blackmagic eGPU Pro. Im getting a replacement now, lets see if the new one has the same problem. This coil whine is even a lot more annoying then the SSD Mac Mini and Macbook Pro 2018 Coil Whine at the beginning.
There's this (and confirmation from another user a few posts later of a similar email exchange):
https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/...for-macos-mojave-10-14-/post/5306801/#5306801
Don't spend too long in that thread though, it's toxic.
Ah, ok. I'm familiar with that thread. I don't consider that a public statement from NVIDIA. It's possibly a response to a support message from a level 1 support person. I am hopeful that we'll eventually get drivers, but I've seen nothing concrete.
That
Presumably, that’s an anomaly. That noise would drive me crazy.
Looking forward to your comparison. Given that the Black Magic Pro is about US$450 more than a Vega 56 with Asus XG Station Pro, my gut feeling is that it would have to have magic properties before I’d purchase one.
One could buy AMD’s new Radeon VII card and the Asus enclosure and still save almost $200.
Presumably, that’s an anomaly. That noise would drive me crazy.
Looking forward to your comparison. Given that the Black Magic Pro is about US$450 more than a Vega 56 with Asus XG Station Pro, my gut feeling is that it would have to have magic properties before I’d purchase one.
One could buy AMD’s new Radeon VII card and the Asus enclosure and still save almost $200.
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Let's say I put together a Mac Mini i7 with 32GB ram and an eGPU with the just announced AMD Radeon VII. If I use Bootcamp so I can play Windows games at top performance and use Windows VR, the graphics power would be top class but would the computing power of the processor be too slow and limit performance?
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Not to detract from your main point, but unless AMD worked a miracle here, the Radeon VII might be beyond the Asus enclosure's power capabilities.
Pedantically, yes, technically the i7-8700B in the 2018 Mini will not give you the same CPU performance in games as a brand new i9-9900K would. Practically though, no, the CPU is rarely going to be an important bottleneck, especially if you're playing at resolutions greater than 1080p and high/ultra quality settings.
Indeed, it's not a press release from NVIDIA corporate, but when support starts getting the OK to say something is being worked on and is coming soon, it's often true.
True, it’s unclear whether the Asus power supply will support the Radeon VII. Which mostly means that one could save more than US$200 over the Black Magic Pro by purchasing an enclosure that costs less than the Asus
X-Plane, and perhaps simulators generally, may be an exception, but in X-Plane the CPU is very much a limit on performance. Running X-Plane with an i7 mini, as I do, it’s a good question how much benefit one would get from a Radeon VII.
I agree, if that screen shot is real. If I have some time to kill, I might try a support chat with NVIDIA to see what they say.
EDIT: Had a few minutes to kill.......
I'm glad to see their responses are consistent. Just need to wait.
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The problem with X-Plane is that it still uses a single-threaded renderer, so it's arbitrarily bottlenecked and thus more sensitive to CPU frequencies and IPC. If they ever finish the Vulkan/Metal port this situation should improve significantly. The vast majority of first and third person AAA titles for the last several years, however, are more GPU limited, especially at higher resolutions and quality settings.
Lots of sighs of relief from people who purchased AMD RX 580, 590, Vega 56 and Vega 64 cards in the last two or three months, many of them also thinking to themselves “Are there really people who are willing to pay $700 for a video card?”
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