You made your Mac GPU render for Iray. What are your specs?
byzigns
Posts: 15
in The Commons
I'm suggesting this thread for alle mac users as I have my challanges to find the right answer anywhere.
I have a:
Mac book pro 2012 with Intel GPU built in and a NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M.
I downloaded CUDA driver for this GPU, but Daz can't see it, so I still render on GPU.
Result: NOT WORKING
Any solutions, and what did YOU do to GPU render om your mac?
(Don't suggest I'll by a PC, that's never going to happen! 
)
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Comments
Good luck with finding working solution for that.
I have experience with many Macs at work, including the latest Mac book pros,
which only have AMD graphic card at best, besides Intel integrated graphics from the processor itself.
If you will have stationary Mac Pro, may be the options will look better, but the drivers can be another issue.
i Artini. That's what I think, too.
I can see that some people actually buy an external Graphic card, but so far, not enough information about how it works. I just think that the real experts might be here, not 'out there'.
I have a Mac Pro with a GTX 980 Ti. It works somehow, but as mentioned before, I have troubles with the drivers. That was what came out after really long communication with the very kind support of Daz.
Due to the driver problems a lot of items force the GPU to skip and pass the render directly to the CPU. Finally I got so frustrated, that I bought a Windows machine for the first time in my life. Now I am frustrated because of Windows, but at least I can render everything I like without investigating, which item or texture in the scene cause the render to perform on CPU and not GPU.
I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014), which has an NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB.
I'd always assumed that Iray was using the NVIDIA to render, but this made me check, and I see that in the "Advanced" panel under "Photoreal devices" it only lists "CPU". Oops.
I assume that either I don't have the right drivers, or that 2048MB of memory doesn't cut it for DAZ Studio.
Please not the current lineup of 2015-2016 mac computers no longer have a 4GB Nvida GPU available. Apple does not allow customization of the 2015-16 macs so any card outside of their offerings will need to be purchased outside Apple, it may require a custom flash from the vendor, it may require an external power source (often the price of a mid level 4GB card) and it is NOT supported by Apple.
please see this link for supported Nvidia products on Mac computers for the CUDA tools
note some of these drivers require a specific OS in which to work and will not work without the required upgrade.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/mac-driver-archive.html
please note Apple provides GPU drivers for their current lineup of systems eligible for whatever upgrade is available from them. Currently only 10.11.4 is legally available to anyone who has not already upgraded to OS 10.11. Drivers are included in base installs (or inclusive installs) of OS X and updated drivers are sometimes bundled in incremental OS upgrades, which Apple does not always note in the upgrade notes. The exception to this rule are the drivers here, please note these only work on the models listed with the hardware listed and should not be installed on any mac other than what is listed by Nvidia
http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/78853/en-us
no previous OS's can be obtained from Apple with the exception of OS 10.6 and 10.7
10.7 is the minimum requirement for DS 4.9 64 bit, OS 10.6 is the minimum requirement of DS 4.9 32 bit, however neither of these OS's support the Nvidia Cuda toolset installers from Nvidia posted above.
http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MC573Z/A/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard
http://www.apple.com/shop/product/D6106Z/A/os-x-lion
OS 10.6.8 is the minimum OS to be in place to upgrade to OS 10.11. To see if your computer is eligible for a free upgrade to OS 10.11 see this link
http://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/
before upgrading it is highly suggested to back up your mac
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250
please note Apples assessment that OS 10.11 will run on a system with 2GB RAM is a generalization that has repeatedly been found to be erroneous in everyday use. The system will boot to the OS but when using applications performance suffers greatly, there is some improvement with 4GB RAM but realistically for graphic art production on a Mac running OS 10.11 there should be at the very least 8GB RAM to accommodate the needs of the computer and the user for optimal response.
please note 3rd party cleaning utilities, network utilities and mac anti-virus have been cited on multiple mac forums (e.g support.apple.com) for causing system incompatibility, crashes, kernel panics and other issues. http://www.thesafemac.com/mmg-antivirus/
The 650M in your macbook is not going to have enough VRAM to be of any use for Iray. Unless the VRAM is 4GB or greater, the GPU will be disabled by default.
Kendall
I am able to use iRay on my late 2013 iMac running on a Nivida GeForce GTX 780. It's quite fast and enjoyable to use this machine with iRay, however it does crash occasionally after a heavy rendering session. I have the CUDA driver installed on this mac too. I’m not sure if that driver is required, but I have it installed and everything works as it should.
I have a late 2014 iMac on OS 10.10 and DS does not recognize my graphic card and is rendering solely on my CPU -- which is fine... I can even use Photoshop and all other programs while it's rendering. I have no idea how long Iray is actually supposed to take to render, but it does take a while. I sometimes have to set the render time way past the two hours to get rid of graininess. But I'm finding for the photoreal renders, I actually like a little graininess, especially on skin. For quickie renders I use Poser, I never learned 3Delight because I just started with DS in March... So now I'm going back and forth.. Poser for V4/M4 and quick pin-ups, DS for the Genesises and bigger scenes, although I just got Reality for Poser which is an overnight thing.... I am going to try 3Delight on the toons though. I think I need like 10 computers, set up a scene on each and let them render LOL...
There's a workaround for this on Macs with aftermarket cards running Nvidia's webdrivers:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/97496/mac-gpu-acceleration-crashes-and-workaround#latest
Can anyone confirm gpu acceleration works with Apple's native drivers when using textures in, e.g., the translucency weight channel?
Regarding the original discussion question, here are my rigs:
MacPro 3,1 Nvidia 970 using latest CUDA (7.5.30) and nvidia webdrivers (346.03.10f02)
MacPro 5,1 Nvidia Titan X using latest CUDA and nvidia webdrivers.
Both are running El Capitain 10.11.5
Everying works perfectly, except for the issue I noted in the comment just before this one.
I think many of the problems folks are having with drivers are with the Apple native drivers. Try the webdrivers:
http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/103826/en-us
They're "beta" for most Macs, but they are regularly updated by nvidia, unlike Apple's native drivers.
I have iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), 3.4 GHZ i7 with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M with 4GB of GDDR5 memory
Nemesis, are you using the webdrivers or the Apple native drivers?
What I did was get a Mac Pro (early 2009) from http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Apple-Systems/Used/Mac-Pro and this vid card http://www.macvidcards.com/store/p42/Nvidia_GTX_980_4_GB.html. I had an old monitor from a G4 still around so that is what I am using. There was no way I could ever deal with a PC. I could have upped the speed and all that but I was on a budget. It works fairly well.
Mac Pro 5,1 running 10.11.5, GTX 980. Occasional driver weirdness, but generally works well. Building an external Thunderbolt chassis to work with my laptop. Aiming to get it done this weekend. I'll let you know how it goes.
Nividia drivers
dumb question : how does one know if the graphic card is recognized by DAZ?