Jump to content

Using eGPU to render Adobe apps on OSX


LukeHero

Recommended Posts

Hey all,

Is anybody able to point me in the right direction in getting my eGPU to use CUDA to render in apps such as Adobe Media Encoder CC 2014.

I used the automated installer in this thread and got my GPU recognised in OS X (10.10.4).

I added my GPU to the supported cards list in my adobe apps. (When I go on After Effects > Preferences > Previews and click on GPU information my GTX 970 is recognised)

But whenever I render it always just uses my GT650M. Is there a way to force it to use my GTX 970 instead?

I've tried on internal display, I've tried hooking up an external display to see if that works but nothing seems to want to use my 970.

Hardware details:

Mid 2012 Retina Macbook Pro

Intel HD 4000

Nvidia GT650M

eGPU - MSI Gaming 4G GTX 970

OS X Yosemite 10.10.4

Adobe After Effects CC 2014

Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2014

Adobe Media Encoder CC 2014

Is there a way to force the Adobe apps to use the GTX 970 and is there a way to force OS X in general to use it?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Did you install the latest CUDA driver?

I've tried on internal display, I've tried hooking up an external display to see if that works but nothing seems to want to use my 970.

Did you set the external to be main display? Did you connect the display directly to the I/O of the eGPU?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Did you install the latest CUDA driver?

Did you set the external to be main display? Did you connect the display directly to the I/O of the eGPU?

Yes to all three questions. Still can't get my Mac to use the eGPU over the inbuilt discrete card

EDIT: Nevermind, even though my Mac was telling me under 'Displays' that my GT650M was powering the display, it was not. I ran an emulator which displays my GPU at startup and it did in fact display 'GTX 970' :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

EDIT: Nevermind, even though my Mac was telling me under 'Displays' that my GT650M was powering the display, it was not. I ran an emulator which displays my GPU at startup and it did in fact display 'GTX 970' :)

Thanks for the info!

Although I’m currently using mostly Photoshop CC / Lightroom CC I was planning to use Premiere Pro & After Effects as well in the near future.

With PS / LR I already knew that I could use my eGPU, now I will benefit even more when using the other Adobe CC Apps as well.

Have you made a test how much the performance will increase with the GTX 970 compared to the GT650M?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

I'm have a similar issue. I have a maxed out Late 2013 Macbook Proand GTX 980 TI w/ 850 EVGA Power Supply. My main use in Davinci Resolve and Adobe Premiere (I've also used Adobe Media Encoder) and it seems as though it's not working. Can I change the supported cards lists in CC 2015? I can see it in After Effects when I turn on allow unsupported cards but still not Premiere Pro.

post-40985-14495001284437_thumb.jpg

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm have a similar issue. I have a maxed out Late 2013 Macbook Proand GTX 980 TI w/ 850 EVGA Power Supply. My main use in Davinci Resolve and Adobe Premiere (I've also used Adobe Media Encoder) and it seems as though it's not working. Can I change the supported cards lists in CC 2015? I can see it in After Effects when I turn on allow unsupported cards but still not Premiere Pro.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]16661[/ATTACH]

Hi, does it work with DaVinci though?

Marco

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yea but now maybe I'm thinking it could be how my Akitio is powered. Do my stats look right for my 980 Ti in Cuda-Z?

CUDA-Z Report

=============

Version: 0.10.251 64 bit CUDA-Z

OS Version: Mac OS X 10.10.5 14F1021

Driver Version: 10.4.2 310.41.35f01

Driver Dll Version: 7.50

Runtime Dll Version: 6.50

Core Information

----------------

Name: GeForce GTX 980 Ti

Compute Capability: 5.2

Clock Rate: 1190 MHz

PCI Location: 0:10:0

Multiprocessors: 22 (2816 Cores)

Threads Per Multiproc.: 2048

Warp Size: 32

Regs Per Block: 65536

Threads Per Block: 1024

Threads Dimensions: 1024 x 1024 x 64

Grid Dimensions: 2147483647 x 65535 x 65535

Watchdog Enabled: Yes

Integrated GPU: No

Concurrent Kernels: Yes

Compute Mode: Default

Stream Priorities: Yes

Memory Information

------------------

Total Global: 6143.81 MiB

Bus Width: 384 bits

Clock Rate: 3505 MHz

Error Correction: No

L2 Cache Size: 48 KiB

Shared Per Block: 48 KiB

Pitch: 2048 MiB

Total Constant: 64 KiB

Texture Alignment: 512 B

Texture 1D Size: 65536

Texture 2D Size: 65536 x 65536

Texture 3D Size: 4096 x 4096 x 4096

GPU Overlap: Yes

Map Host Memory: Yes

Unified Addressing: Yes

Async Engine: Yes, Bidirectional

Performance Information

-----------------------

Memory Copy

Host Pinned to Device: 1275.66 MiB/s

Host Pageable to Device: 1250.38 MiB/s

Device to Host Pinned: 1379.6 MiB/s

Device to Host Pageable: 1355.51 MiB/s

Device to Device: 108.758 GiB/s

GPU Core Performance

Single-precision Float: 7083.75 Gflop/s

Double-precision Float: 233.783 Gflop/s

64-bit Integer: 485.834 Giop/s

32-bit Integer: 2430.57 Giop/s

24-bit Integer: 1631.03 Giop/s

Generated: Tue Nov 24 12:14:16 2015

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Got a similar problem here. As i understand (i.e.) Premiere Pro uses all cuda resources for rendering and exporting. But in playback it only utilizes 1 gpu. In my case it uses the discrete 750m. I experience a huge performance jump in rendering in mediaencoder for example but not during playback in Premiere. So the question stays actual, how can i force Premiere pro CC 2015 to use eGPU for playback?

 

The old trick by hacking this text file is not working because there is no text file anymore. GPU is localized by premieres gpu sniffer app automatically.  

 

SysSpecs:

Macbook Pro 11,3 (late 2013) 15" Retina

Intel Core i7 2,3 GHz

16GB Ram

Intel Iris Pro + nVidia GeForce GT 750m

eGPU/akitio thunderbolt box tb2/nVidia GTX 970

 

runs stable and reliable

Edited by frohsinn
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was trying to test sth similar for someone who asked my on Youtube. But I don't know how to test or even work with the Adobe products.

Did you run the GPU sniffer? Have installed CUDA driver?

GPU sniffer was detecting my eGPU. Would be interessting to know if there would be a difference between your MacBook and mine with Intel Iris only.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

GPU sniffer detects all cuda gpu's. In my case gt750m and gtx970(eGPU). The problem is that premiere only addresses 1 gpu during playback. So in your case it is possibly simple because there is only one gpu offering cuda - your eGPU. Here it is different. As i read somewhere premiere has to choose only one device for playback, because Adobe found it to be to difficult to sync render output of multiple devices in realtime for playback. So they decided to only go on with one device for playback. The choice in your case is clear - your eGPU. In my case there are two cuda devices - 750m and gtx970. The process how the app chooses the gpu seems to be a blackbox.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Hi everyone, 

first off: shout outs and many thanks to @goalque + @Dschijn and everyone else here. 
Without you I would not have been able to set up my current build.

Which is:
1) MBPr 2012 in Clamshell-mode
2) Akitio Thunder2
3) Original Apple TB-Cable
4) GTX 750TI
5) 120W Power supply
6) external Monitor – directly hooked up to the Graphics Card, NOT via TB

Driver + OSX-specs:
see attachment

ADOBE CC 2015
Everything seems to go well – but unfortunately NONE of my Adobe-products are working!
Not even the GPU-sniffer or CUDA-Z are working:

GPU-SNIFFER
Tester="Photoshop"
snifferStart="2016-01-22_18:37:36"
AIFCoreInitialized=1
AIFOGLInitialized=1
caught signal 14, exit 4


done.

CUDA-Z
simply freezes

GRAPHICS-GLITCH
FYI: my MacBook has this technical glitch you might have heard of:
http://www.macrumors.com/2015/02/19/2011-macbook-pro-repair-program-apple/

Unfortunately Apple won't repair my MacBook for free since my warranty has expired. 
So that was the reason why I got the eGPU in the first place: I'd rather spent X$ and double my GPU-performance instead of paying Y$ and get the same old MacBook.

Did I fool myself here cause I should have made the repairs anyways?
Or did I make the right choice... but I am just missing something in my setup/build?

Any help, hints and pointers much appreciated!

So long,
Bazzinga

 

Screen Shot 2016-01-22 at 18.34.31.png

Screen Shot 2016-01-22 at 18.41.01.png

Screen Shot 2016-01-22 at 18.41.28.png

Screen Shot 2016-01-22 at 18.48.04.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Hi guys, i'm using MacBook Pro 15" retina mid2014 (intel iris only) with a gtx970 g1 gigabyte and akitio thunder2. I use adobe premiere and davinci resolve. In the first month I installed eGPU (november 2015) i tried editing and rendering in premiere and a quick test of colour grading in davinci. Both was running very faster. Davinci wasn't telling me that i couldn't use CUDA (I always got that alert message before installing eGPU)  while in premiere i wasn't able to find any information but i'm sure, it was a lot faster in rendering. In the next months I didn't work on heavy video editing and I was always using my mac without eGPU plugged in. But in these days I'm doing again a lot of editing and i need my eGPU performance.  Today I was using premiere and i noticed that it was very slow also in the viewer while i was working in the timeline, i couldn't get a good "real time" view. So i tried a rendering with and without the eGPU and it took the same time. But i also seen that when I plug eGPU in the thunderbolt port I can choose the "mercury engine CUDA", while without plugging the eGPU i can select only "mercury software only" or "mercury OpenGL". So it's like Premiere it's using GTX970 but it doesn't make any difference in the "speed" of the program. I've also seen in after effects that i can select GTX970 CUDA for raytracing instead of the integrated intel (but with the alert message that 970 isn't tested by adobe). In Davinci i can see that the used GPU is the 970 and not the integrated intel. I didn't test rendering/workflow speed in After Effects and Davinci. Tomorrow i'll try with and without eGPU plugged in. I don't know what to do with premiere... Months ago it was working fine! 

 

EDIT: now I noticed that i have to update CUDA drivers to a new version, maybe that's the problem, but i can't understand why having the old one means that it couldn't work like always before, only because there's a new one. I don't think it will change the situation, but i'm not an expert... 

Edited by Schecter
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Schecter I've also tried my GTX970 with Premiere 2015.2 on a 2013 Mac Pro. Yes, I can choose CUDA for rendering but it doesn't seem like it's doing anything though. 

 

I tried to open up a project I was working on and every time I opened it with the eGPU plugged in, it crashed. Turns out it was because of the full screen playback setup which got confused and just crashed the program. I then restarted, unplugged the eGPU, opened up the project, turned off the mercury playback engine, restarted, plugged in eGPU, opened up project, it worked. Didn't feel like I was getting any better playback performance. This is something that Adobe needs to fix within the software. But how do we get them to fix that?

 

Tried After Effects rendering with the untested Raytracer - it just doesn't render. 

 

DaVinci shows the card in there but it's not using it for computing. It's using the internal D300 instead.

 

I had a GTX660 in my previous PC and I was getting way better playback performance than the D300 with openCL. Huge difference. I could even send a file to AE, do something there and then go back to Premiere and play that in real time without even rendering. OpenCL can't do that.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe the problem is that 970 isn't in the official list of adobe tested/compatible GPUs. But i know that one of my friends has a windows pc with a gtx 980 working very well with premiere, afterfx and davinci resolve. And also 980 isn't a compatible GPU looking at the adobe GPUs list. So i can't understand why 970 isn't working with editing software in my osx system also if the mac can detect it and use it to output signal to external monitors. I think that if I use 970 like external gpu on the mac but using windows on external hdd I'll be able to get it working correctly with adobe and davinci. And i think also that i can get the same results by using it in a "normal" windows pc, like the 980 i was talking about. But at the same time, I don't know how to fix this osx problem. That's so annoying. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, if it's true, that's a terrible news. I bought my eGPU setup also for gaming in windows, ok, but the main reason was "I need to work faster in video editing". I think i'll sell my akitio and my rocketstore thunderbolt docking station and build something different in order to get better performance in OSX. I don't like to work in Windows T.T

 

EDIT: I just found on the web that some gtx970 had problems with Adobe software also in windows. Some people said that a solution could be the bios update of the GPU. In order to do that, we need the file and an nVidia flashing tool. This tool is only available for windows or linux. Can i update the bios of the 970 in windows and then use the card on the mac with it's updated bios? Or this "information" for the card is like a driver which is saved only in the hdd used by the current operating system (windows)? In this case, trying the update will be useless. 

Edited by Schecter
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, I'm feeling the same man. Adobe is pretty bad at coming up to date, especially with the software itself and its problems. I mean Premiere CC has several critical bugs that are fucking up the workflow of any professional filmmaker. Adobe hasn't resolved most of the critical issues that were there for several years, but instead they're coming up with tiny glittery new functions like h265.

 

This while not fixing the problems that are making people choose Avid over Premiere.

 

Had a project this summer and I was strongly thinking to switch back to Avid due to their stupid little bugs. 

 

So basically I won't be expecting this fix anytime soon, mainly because they came up with an update for their apps to work with El Capitan, long after the OS was launched. I think 4 months after that. I was really stoked about the Metal API which was saying that would speed up Adobe apps (Premiere included) or AE rendering by 8x. So many people updated and guess what, they had to roll back.

 

I was also thinking about getting rid of the mac pro and getting a PC to make a hackintosh. Actually my hackintosh that I had before was giving me better performance than this guy. Mainly because of CUDA. OpenCL is terrible in Premiere. The only inconvenience of the PC was the lack of thunderbolt and a more stable OSX. And a big case as well.

 

I don't think I'm going to sell this. I'm just going to wait a little more. I think in 6 months this will not be a problem anymore.

 

 

Let's all go on and submit a bug request to Adobe. If they get more requests, they will probably take care of it in the next update.

 

Here's the link :  http://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html

 

Let's ask for eGPU support in OSX.

 

 

Cheers!

 

 

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.