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Macbook Pro 2018 2.9 560X vs EGPU Vega 64

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2018 11:08 am
by DavidDoyle
I'm considering purchasing a Vega 64 and Razer Core enclosure to help speed up FCPX and Neatvideo, and wanted a view on ROI.

Running Neatbench on my machine elicits the following:

Detecting the best combination of performance settings:
running the test data set on up to 12 CPU cores and on up to 1 GPU
AMD Radeon Pro 560X Compute Engine: 4096 MB currently available, using up to 100%

CPU only (1 core): 2.05 frames/sec
CPU only (2 cores): 3.92 frames/sec
CPU only (3 cores): 5.65 frames/sec
CPU only (4 cores): 7.87 frames/sec
CPU only (5 cores): 9.43 frames/sec
CPU only (6 cores): 10.8 frames/sec
CPU only (7 cores): 8.13 frames/sec
CPU only (8 cores): 8.85 frames/sec
CPU only (9 cores): 8.93 frames/sec
CPU only (10 cores): 9.43 frames/sec
CPU only (11 cores): 8.85 frames/sec
CPU only (12 cores): 8.55 frames/sec
GPU only (AMD Radeon Pro 560X Compute Engine): 5.05 frames/sec
CPU (1 core) and GPU (AMD Radeon Pro 560X Compute Engine): 4.41 frames/sec
CPU (2 cores) and GPU (AMD Radeon Pro 560X Compute Engine): 5.35 frames/sec
CPU (3 cores) and GPU (AMD Radeon Pro 560X Compute Engine): 6.8 frames/sec
CPU (4 cores) and GPU (AMD Radeon Pro 560X Compute Engine): 9.01 frames/sec
CPU (5 cores) and GPU (AMD Radeon Pro 560X Compute Engine): 9.35 frames/sec
CPU (6 cores) and GPU (AMD Radeon Pro 560X Compute Engine): 8.55 frames/sec
CPU (7 cores) and GPU (AMD Radeon Pro 560X Compute Engine): 10.9 frames/sec
CPU (8 cores) and GPU (AMD Radeon Pro 560X Compute Engine): 10.8 frames/sec
CPU (9 cores) and GPU (AMD Radeon Pro 560X Compute Engine): 10.6 frames/sec
CPU (10 cores) and GPU (AMD Radeon Pro 560X Compute Engine): 10.2 frames/sec
CPU (11 cores) and GPU (AMD Radeon Pro 560X Compute Engine): 10.1 frames/sec
CPU (12 cores) and GPU (AMD Radeon Pro 560X Compute Engine): 9.35 frames/sec

Best combination: CPU (7 cores) and GPU (AMD Radeon Pro 560X Compute Engine)


The 560X is 2056 Gflops, 4GB VRAM and 81 GB/s memory bandwidth.

I'm looking at Radeon RX Vega 64, with 10215 Gflops, 8GB HBM VRAM and 484 GB/s.

The blog page https://blog.neatvideo.com/post/gpu-for-noise-reduction shows that under Mac such a card would only achieve 11.6 frames/second, which doesn't feel right when comparing specs to the inbuilt 560X.

2 questions:

1) Would I see a reasonable increase from the use of a Vega 64 in an EGPU configuration (i.e. slight loss of bandwidth compared to native PCI)
2) Would NeatVideo use both the internal 560X and EGPU to increase processing speed?

Thanks,

David.

Re: Macbook Pro 2018 2.9 560X vs EGPU Vega 64

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2018 1:03 pm
by NVTeam
> 1) Would I see a reasonable increase from the use of a Vega 64 in an EGPU configuration (i.e. slight loss of bandwidth compared to native PCI)

The difference between eGPU and internal connection may be significant or not depending on the speed of the external connection.
eGPU is always slower than an internal GPU of the same model, the only question is how much slower. This usually depends on the speed
of the connection the particular Mac supports. The best way to check the actual performance is to visit a store where such a eGPU is offered,
connect it to the Mac and run NeatBench to measure the speed directly. It is very difficult to predict that without direct measurement.

> 2) Would NeatVideo use both the internal 560X and EGPU to increase processing speed?

Neat Video can use two or more GPUs at the same time. Whether this will result in better overall performance
(than for example using just the faster GPU) will become known when Optimize Settings test is used or if you run Neat Bench (which again can be done in the store, before you commit to buying the eGPU).

Considering the lower performance of Vegas under Mac OS (as compared with Windows), it may be a good idea to also consider a 1080 Ti option.

Vlad

Re: Macbook Pro 2018 2.9 560X vs EGPU Vega 64

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2018 1:10 pm
by DavidDoyle
Thanks for the info. There's a good option for purchasing a Vega 64 at £399 at the moment so it felt like an opportune moment.

I would rule out the 1080 Ti as I'd want improvement across the board in FCPX and not just for Neatvideo. Things like stabilisation, adding effects etc and export would all benefit from an AMD EGPU.