macOS 10.14 Mojave and eGPU. My experience so far.

[mmomega]

The point of this thread is for those interested in eGPU and performance improvements or deterioration of performance from each build throughout the beta over the next few months and then into public release.

I will just make it an ongoing thread based specifically on 10.14 to try and keep the information as controlled as possible.
I plan on doing specific macOS testing at first and possibly Windows if time allows.

Current hardware available to test with:

eGPU enclosures
Sonnet Breakaway Box 350 with Corsair SF600 Power Supply
Akitio Node

GPUs
Radeon Vega 64 Liquid Cooled
GeForce GTX1080Ti Founders Edition Water Cooled (maybe. nvidia cards are more difficult at the moment)

Computers
2016 MacBook Pro 13" TouchBar i5 w/ 4 Thunderbolt ports w/ Intel Iris 550
2015 iMac 5K 27" i7
2014 Mac Mini base model
2013 Mac Pro 6c w/ D500

Benchmarks and Apps
Geekbench 4 Version 4.2.3 (401111)
Luxmark 3.1
Final Cut Pro X BruceX
GFXBench Metal 3.1.6
CineBench
Unigine Valley
Unigine Heaven
Lightroom
Photoshop
Premiere Pro


Results at the moment: more info coming
With the MacBook Pro, Breakaway Box and Vega64 LC = plug and play for the most part.
Immediately upon connecting the thunderbolt cable the GPU is detected and installed right away without logging out or restarting.

After a restart the system shows the Vega64 as the main GPU.

Accelerating the internal display is a little more involved and will be covered but this week I will focus on results with external monitors. 2 - LG 34" UltraWide 3440x1440

GeekBench Compute Results
140414 OpenCL
165903 Metal

LuxMark
31,028 (this surprised me. I ran the test 3 separate times. 1st 30,968. 2nd 30,600. 3rd time 31,028)



*****Edit, updated info 06/20/18 : Beta 2*****

Mojave 10.14 Beta (18A314h)
Test Bench is 2016 13" MacBook Pro (4 TBports) i5 2.9Ghz, 8GB RAM
Sonnet Breakaway Box 350, switch PSU with Corsair SF600
Gigabyte RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled
2m Thunderbolt3 cable

My external monitor today is my TV.
Sony X900F 65" 4K so my resolution is set at 4K, 3840x2160

The system can't be too much more plug and play.
I just set the eGPU on the dresser in front of the TV, connected to the wall, connected HDMI cable from eGPU to TV. Connected TB3 cable to laptop and the TV came on.

I made the TV the primary display and started running a few benchmarks.
I tried keeping the benchmarks as simple as possible. Launch the program, start the benchmark, so not really any specific settings to get higher numbers.

1st up LuxMark 30,656


Cinebench OpenGL 66.22fps


GFXBench Metal


GeekBench 4 Compute OpenCL 144,367 Metal 172,363



BruceX, Heaven and Valley Benches coming along with power usage during idle and benching.
I am testing with a KillaWatt power meter.

******
A few new tests in.
I'll figure a way to get the information better suited for reading through soon.

Latest testing done with 2013 Mac Pro still in the same eGPU Sonnet 350 BreakAway w/ Radeon 64 LC on Mojave b2(build#placeholder) this is with Thunderbolt 2 cable and a Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter.



LuxMark 3.1
30,431 (two runs back to back)

GeekBench 4 Compute (much higher than on MP3 and
Metal : 189,893
OpenCL : 165,370

CinebenchR15 OpenGL
56.80fps

FinalCut Pro X - BruceX
18.54 seconds

While running any program I can immediately see if/when it is utilizing the eGPU vs internal GPU's with Activity Monitor. From Activity Monitor -> Window -> GPU History

 

[lJoSquaredl]

From what I understand, in High Sierra AMD cards work in plug and play fashion under MacOS, Nvidia cards work in plug and play fashion under Windows bootcamp, and there's still no support for certain things in FCPX? Really hoping they allow for at least AMD cards to run plug and play on both operating systems cuz I don't wanna have to switch out cards to do things depending on which one I'm in. OBS for example, my internal video card in my MBP doesn't show up as an option for rendering or streaming, but it does in Windows bootcamp.

Excited to see results tho, hopefully Mojave irons out all these issues and works smoothly with both brands in both operating systems...so I can finally get rid of this Windows PC.

 

[mmomega]

From what I understand, in High Sierra AMD cards work in plug and play fashion under MacOS, Nvidia cards work in plug and play fashion under Windows bootcamp, and there's still no support for certain things in FCPX? Really hoping they allow for at least AMD cards to run plug and play on both operating systems cuz I don't wanna have to switch out cards to do things depending on which one I'm in. OBS for example, my internal video card in my MBP doesn't show up as an option for rendering or streaming, but it does in Windows bootcamp.

Excited to see results tho, hopefully Mojave irons out all these issues and works smoothly with both brands in both operating systems...so I can finally get rid of this Windows PC.

In High Sierra you can get nVidia cards to perform beautifully, there is just some work you have to put in before that happens.
Even then if an OS update comes out, that can easily break your setup until you figure out where the break happened. It could be a 5 minute fix or a several day fix.

In Windows like you mentioned things are much more forgiving. Install some drivers and most of the time you're off to the races.

 

[mmomega]

07/01/2018 added a few more results near the end using my 2013 Mac Pro over Thunderbolt 2. Interesting.

 

[yellowscreen]

thank you very much for your insight. is accelerating the internal display even possible?

 

[lJoSquaredl]

thank you very much for your insight. is accelerating the internal display even possible?

Seems to be an option with this terminal command, tho it's still in Pre Alpha so backup data just in case.

 

[thingstoponder]

thank you very much for your insight. is accelerating the internal display even possible?

Would this be laggy? You would have to go from the computer to the gpu and then back to the computer to display it. Compute would be the same I think, but display could be tricky.

 

[foliage]

Any progress with eGPU performance especially in FCPX (including export and timeline performance) regarding the latest round of software updates Mojave’s 10.14.4 and FCPX 10.4.4?

Mojave now allows internal display acceleration and FCPX now has a ‘prefer external GPU’ option.

 

[Hessel89]

How is the UI animation? is this accelerated too?