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Mac - High Sierra & eGPUs for Rendering

Rod Wise DriggoRod Wise Driggo Posts: 2,331
in The Commons

Using an MacBook Pro for running DAZ studio I can only look with envy at windows users with capable notebooks not to mention from big towers with several GPUs inside. On the other side I don't want to change my setup, actually not even to an iMac where I would loose portability to some extend. That said I wonder whether the announcements from Apple yesterday might change this situation on the long run. If I understand it right, the new High Sierra shall support eGPUs with for example the Sonnet breakaway box. Now Apple only mentioned VR and their developer kit does only include an ATI card (see https://developer.apple.com/development-kit/external-graphics/). On the other hand should such a setup not also work with a nVidia card used for offloading rendering tasks? Or would that also make an external screen necessary? Don't fully understand this as the notebooks display does not have to be accelerated but the render window - or maybe even the viewport for iRay preview - probably does?

Comments

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715

     

    It will likely need a kidney. :)

    kidney.jpg
    1024 x 576 - 48K
  • Milo_471560Milo_471560 Posts: 511

    hopefully we can get to the open standards that support a range of vendor cards, its out there.  Lux (reality) uses one, there are some others.

  • Jack of SpadesJack of Spades Posts: 89
    edited June 2017

    It's possible to hack something together on Sierra now, so this can't make things worse. Once High Sierra ships I'm likely to upgrade to a new MacBook Pro and an external nVidia card.

    Post edited by Jack of Spades on
  • JOdelJOdel Posts: 6,322
    edited June 2017

    Just watched the Keynote. It's a powerful system all right. Not a flexible one. But then, Apple's never are.

    In the Keynote it said that the base configuration for the iMac Pro started at $4999. But then I went onto the page and did a configuration of the current 27-inch iMac with maxed out processor and RAM and it was about $1K less. Did NOT have the option of an 18-core CPU, and maxed out at half the RAM. But those are not going to be inexpensive add-ons. (Wonder whether the 18-core CPU would make up part of the difference of no access to Nvidia for rendering in Iray?)

    I *was* pleased to see that they now have a wireless keyboard with a numerical keypad though. That I probably will consider picking up before my current iMac dies on me.

    Post edited by JOdel on
  • AlienRendersAlienRenders Posts: 798

    So those new iMac's will have AMD's Vega GPU in it? I hope AMD releases ProRender. I hear that the Vega GPU's will no longer be limited by on-board memory (you can use system memory) and will come with 16GB of HBM2 RAM anyways for Vega 64. For rendering, that seems like a dream come true. Unfortunately, it does nothing for rendering in DAZ Studio.

  • Nyghtfall3DNyghtfall3D Posts: 813

    For a starting price of $5k, it had better be able to... satisfy... other needs, as well...

  • ScavengerScavenger Posts: 2,674

    I've been researching this topic for a bit.

    Right now, you can set up a working eGPU and it works fine.. You need to use some hacked scripts and tricks, but it'll work.

    I don't know how the new announcements change things, though.

     

  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,587

    For the price of a kidney, I want screamingly fast Iray renders out of the box. Right now it falls into the "maybe after my second lotto jackpot win" category, cos I don't really know what I'd do with it.

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