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PowerMike G5

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 22, 2005
556
245
New York, NY
I was fortunate to get my hands on an AMD Radeon RX 580 for a night, which I ran several benchmarks on, to compare how well it would do against my current Nvidia GTX Titan X (Maxwell). I didn't have much time, but I did some quick tests pertinent to some of my main workflows, primarily 4K video editing, grading and transcoding using Adobe Premiere Pro. All on my 5,1 cMP with latest 10.13.3.

Here are attached benchmarks comparing the latest versions of Geekbench and LuxMark. Furthermore, I ran an optimize test using NeatVideo to see how well the GPUs faired in my system.

Of note, even though the synthetic tests scored similar between the cards in GB, my render and transcode tests showed a fairly wide performance difference between using CUDA on the Titan and OpenCL on the RX580 (although I recognize the cards are not direct competitors). Hopefully this helps someone somewhat looking between Nvidia and AMD cards currently for video work. It gave me a general idea of where some of these AMD cards land at least.

Test clip in Premiere Pro: 4K DCI ProRes (HQ), 30 sec TRT with the following applied:
• Rec 709 LUT applied
• Lumetri Color filter applied
• Gaussian Blur with optical tracking applied to whole clip
• Secondary Colorista grade applied
• basic crop filter applied

I did a timeline render test first. Then wiped out the renders and did a 4K to 2K H.264 transcode, which utilizes the GPU 100%.


GTX Titan X (Maxwell)
CUDA rendering
Timeline Render: 01:45
4K to 2K H.264 transcode: 00:26

AMD RX580
OpenCL rendering
Timeline Render: 02:25
4K to 2K H.264 transcode: 01:15

GB_TITANX.png

GB_RX580.png
LuxMark_TITANX.png
LuxMark_RX580.png
NeatVideo_TITANX.png
NeatVideo_RX580.png
 

bsbeamer

macrumors 601
Sep 19, 2012
4,313
2,713
Thanks for sharing these results. Adobe has been improved with NVIDIA cards for awhile. Have a GTX 1080 FE and now using 12-core 3.46Ghz on an authentic 5,1. If you can post your project file, will try to run the Adobe tests in the next week on my machine so you can have a comparison for another NVIDIA GPU.

Maybe with the CC 2018.5 or CC 2019 updates the AMD support will improve? A lot of that will depend on what really happens with eGPU and what the Mac Pro 7,1 actually looks like. I'm sure they're working to improve support and performance with the iMacPro by then. For now, if you're with FCPX AMD looks to be the best. If you're with Adobe, stick NVIDIA (generally) is better.

If NVIDIA cards will be supported by eGPU, maybe we'll be buying an "Adobe Bundle" for new Macs to utilize optimized GPU acceleration?
 

Supermacguy

macrumors 6502
Jan 3, 2008
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I'm a FCPX user and would be interested to know the difference in running something similar, or BruceX test.
 

PowerMike G5

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 22, 2005
556
245
New York, NY
Thanks for sharing these results. Adobe has been improved with NVIDIA cards for awhile. Have a GTX 1080 FE and now using 12-core 3.46Ghz on an authentic 5,1. If you can post your project file, will try to run the Adobe tests in the next week on my machine so you can have a comparison for another NVIDIA GPU.

Maybe with the CC 2018.5 or CC 2019 updates the AMD support will improve? A lot of that will depend on what really happens with eGPU and what the Mac Pro 7,1 actually looks like. I'm sure they're working to improve support and performance with the iMacPro by then. For now, if you're with FCPX AMD looks to be the best. If you're with Adobe, stick NVIDIA (generally) is better.

If NVIDIA cards will be supported by eGPU, maybe we'll be buying an "Adobe Bundle" for new Macs to utilize optimized GPU acceleration?

I actually had acquired a 1080Ti about a year ago and actually did a round of tests then. Interestingly enough, the results were practically the same between the 1080Ti and the Titan X I own, with a variance of 1 second. This was both rendering on the timeline as well as a 4K to 2K H.264 transcode with un-rendered filters.

OpenCl and CUDA on the same cards yielded the same results.

Synthetic benchmarks showed the far greater score of the 1080Ti.
 

jhero

macrumors 6502
Jan 10, 2005
356
8
Not near an Apple Store
Thanks for these tests PowerMike G5! How do/did you find stability between the two cards (580 and Titan/1080ti) in OS 10.13.3? I'm noticing some render errors using OpenCL or Metal as export in Premiere Pro recently using RX580…
 

PowerMike G5

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 22, 2005
556
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New York, NY
Well I can't speak to the 580 since I had it for one night. But I have been using the Titan X for over a year and a half with no issues. I've done some extremely heavy post projects with it and it has worked flawlessly and fast in the cMP. All completely stable!

Hoping it stays that way :)
 

Dr. Stealth

macrumors 6502a
Sep 14, 2004
814
740
SoCal-Surf City USA
Well I can't speak to the 580 since I had it for one night. But I have been using the Titan X for over a year and a half with no issues. I've done some extremely heavy post projects with it and it has worked flawlessly and fast in the cMP. All completely stable!

Hoping it stays that way :)


Great info and thanks for posting this.

WOW, just saw your signature specs and it looks like we have twins that were separated at birth!

"5,1 Mac Pro, 12-core 3.46Ghz Xeon x5690, 96GB RAM, 4x512GB Samsung SM951 M.2 SSDs on Amfeltec Squid card".

You have an awesome workstation, I know because I run the same set-up.
 
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bsbeamer

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Sep 19, 2012
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Do you find running 96GB RAM is faster than 128GB RAM in 12-Core Dual 3.46Ghz X5690 in MacPro 5,1?
 

Flint Ironstag

macrumors 65816
Dec 1, 2013
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Houston, TX USA
I actually had acquired a 1080Ti about a year ago and actually did a round of tests then. Interestingly enough, the results were practically the same between the 1080Ti and the Titan X I own, with a variance of 1 second. This was both rendering on the timeline as well as a 4K to 2K H.264 transcode with un-rendered filters.

OpenCl and CUDA on the same cards yielded the same results.

Synthetic benchmarks showed the far greater score of the 1080Ti.
Some point within the last year (I think!) Nvidia released drivers that specifically boosted Titan performance (significantly) in pro apps. Looks like it was done to appease Titan buyers regarding performance of 1080Ti, and to make Vega benchmarks look more humble in comparison.

I'm saying make sure your Titan drivers are current. Although the updates may not affect your apps.
 

PowerMike G5

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 22, 2005
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New York, NY
Do you find running 96GB RAM is faster than 128GB RAM in 12-Core Dual 3.46Ghz X5690 in MacPro 5,1?

I can't speak to this as I haven't installed 128GB RAM. But all the research I've done pointed to the fastest speeds when occupying 6 of the 8 slots of RAM. So I went with the fastest possible configuration within those specs.

I do still utilize the full 96GB with large 4K projects and have seen RAM page outs, so I guess the more RAM you can have, the better!
[doublepost=1520959222][/doublepost]
Some point within the last year (I think!) Nvidia released drivers that specifically boosted Titan performance (significantly) in pro apps. Looks like it was done to appease Titan buyers regarding performance of 1080Ti, and to make Vega benchmarks look more humble in comparison.

I'm saying make sure your Titan drivers are current. Although the updates may not affect your apps.

I am running the latest web driver. But are you referring to drivers specific to the card that I'd have to load using Windows?

For what its worth, the performance has been great on MacOs. But I will always entertain advice for increasing performance if someone has it :)
 

Dr. Stealth

macrumors 6502a
Sep 14, 2004
814
740
SoCal-Surf City USA
Do you find running 96GB RAM is faster than 128GB RAM in 12-Core Dual 3.46Ghz X5690 in MacPro 5,1?

Pretty much what PowerMike G5 said. If you are running out of RAM at 96GB then 128GB would faster as it hopefully wouldn't be paging out.

Geekbench scores are quite a bit higher with only 6 slots populated (1-3 & 5-7). Real world speed is probably negligible.
 

bsbeamer

macrumors 601
Sep 19, 2012
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Thanks. Just upgraded a 5,1 to 12-core dual 3.46Ghz and was cheaper to pickup 128GB RAM. Already have seen AE CC 2018 use more than 80% of the 128GB, so it's probably worth keeping setup that way for now.
 

kohlson

macrumors 68020
Apr 23, 2010
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I do still utilize the full 96GB with large 4K projects and have seen RAM page outs, so I guess the more RAM you can have, the better!
Years ago I did technical marketing for a server maker, working with Intel. There were long discussions about how much to talk about wrt filling all the RAM slots versus maximizing RAM performance. In the end the server maker didn't want to talk about it. It was too detailed, and for the maker's market, the servers were configured for specific tasks. Plus, as the product manager explained to me, the improvement was not too great (about 5-7%) especially against running out of RAM. My own testing, at least with Geekbench, shows that there is a 7% improvement with 24GB RAM compared to 32GB.
 

Dr. Stealth

macrumors 6502a
Sep 14, 2004
814
740
SoCal-Surf City USA
Dual 1080Tis! :)

Yes my mantra is anything worth doing is worth over-doing!! My CUDA renders are screaming fast...,
[doublepost=1520988541][/doublepost]
Thanks. Just upgraded a 5,1 to 12-core dual 3.46Ghz and was cheaper to pickup 128GB RAM. Already have seen AE CC 2018 use more than 80% of the 128GB, so it's probably worth keeping setup that way for now.

Yea, if you want to boast about Geekbench scores pull two sticks and get your scores then pop them back in...
 

itdk92

macrumors 6502a
Nov 14, 2016
504
180
Copenhagen, Denmark
I can't speak to this as I haven't installed 128GB RAM. But all the research I've done pointed to the fastest speeds when occupying 6 of the 8 slots of RAM. So I went with the fastest possible configuration within those specs.

I do still utilize the full 96GB with large 4K projects and have seen RAM page outs, so I guess the more RAM you can have, the better!
[doublepost=1520959222][/doublepost]

I am running the latest web driver. But are you referring to drivers specific to the card that I'd have to load using Windows?

For what its worth, the performance has been great on MacOs. But I will always entertain advice for increasing performance if someone has it :)

Could upgrade to 32GB RAM blocks :p
 
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