Level 1

19 points

Proof FCPX 10.4.7 is slower than 10.4.6 and eGPU use worse

Here is proof that the latest update to FCPX is slower than the previous 10.4.6 on my Mac Book Pro with both rendering and playback and shows how the eGPU use is less utilised and slower than in 10.4.6.

My specs:

Macbook Pro 15 Inch Late 2016, 2.9Quad i7, 16GB ram, 2TB SSD, Catalina

eGPU: Radeon vii in Razor Core X

I ran exactly the same test on 10.4.6 and 10.4.7 both with and without eGPU connected

[Playback: 1st playback playing through same rendered & unrended clips

2nd playback down after the first run playing through same rendered & unrended again]

Render two clips from Canon 5DM4 4K:

(1) 10.4.6 without eGPU 3:10min [1st Playback both no lag, 2nd both small lag]

(2) 10.4.6 with eGPU 3:50min [1st both no lag, 2nd no lag]

(3) 10.4.7 with eGPU 4min [1st rendered smooth, un-ren. laggy, 2nd both laggy]

(4) 10.4.7 without eGPU 4min [both no lag, 2nd both laggy]

Render two clips from RED Raw R3d 5K:

(5) 10.4.6 without eGPU 2:55min [1st rendered smooth, un-ren. laggy, 2nd both laggy]

(6) 10.4.6 with eGPU 2:50min [1st rendered smooth, un-ren. laggy, 2nd rendered no lag, un-ren lag]

(7) 10.4.7 with eGPU 3:58min [1st both laggy, 2nd both laggy]

(8) 10.4.7 with eGPU 3:05min [1st rendered smooth, un-ren. laggy, 2nd both laggy]

Findings are clear that FCPX 10.4.6 is faster in both rendering and playback than 10.4.7 and its better WITHOUT an eGPU on both compressed and uncompressed video. The best setup overall was 10.4.6 and no eGPU.

Most interesting is (3) which happens to be the worst overall, which I had expected to be the best. A very powerful eGPU with the latest update of FCP 10.4.7. It doesn't even use the eGPU at all barely!!? I read on this 10.4.7 update how they were advertising improved eGPU use?

If wish this information was available before I bought Final Cut Pro X as I moved from Premiere Pro and bought the eGPU for this specific purpose. So hopefully this helps those considering buying an eGPU to use with their Macbook Pro and FCPX. Final Cut is faster and smoother in playback than Preimere Pro in both compressed video [Canon] and especially with RED footage. Just don't bother with an eGPU at this stage.

Would love for others input and ideas as I'm not much of a tech person, I just needed to know for myself if I had wasted all this money or not on an eGPU. For me the most important thing is playback and secondarily rendering. I don't really care for export as I can always do that overnight if needed. I wanted to be able to edit on MacBook Pro and just plug in eGPU when needed without buying a whole new system. I've read on these forums people saying that playback is more CPU than GPU but my main argument was that 10.4.6 was faster than the old one with playback, and now this proves it with my system.

Please let me know if I've got anything wrong or there or other ways I can speed playback up, or if there is going to be something done in the future to improve this. My guess is that 10.4.7 is built to be faster on the new Mac Pro etc and I'm sure it will be, this information is for those using current systems.

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Oct 14, 2019 8:15 PM

49 replies

andyfromnz Author

Level 1

19 points

Oct 15, 2019 3:30 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

I haven't been really able to find any information that proves using an egpu is faster but also in comparison to 10.4.6. I'm interested mainly in how FCP was advertised as huge improvements with eGPU capabilities and so far there isn't much real world proof of that. Sure there are situations where you can get it to use the eGPU but it's not necessarily faster than without.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Aa9q5ToJ7w

There may be improvements with an iMac Pro but I was hoping with the new 10.4.7 and an eGPU I could get much better performance. And this stage I'm going to have to sell my eGPU as its useless. The opposite of what 10.4.7 advertised.

andyfromnz Author

Level 1

19 points

Oct 15, 2019 3:33 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

Once again that's export. I get export has some improvements. I mentioned I'm interested in playback and rendering, as these effect editing speed and experience in real time. I'm not so worried about export times. I guess this post is more about how an eGPU is actually useless with FCP in terms of increased performance over an internal card.

vh78

Level 1

8 points

Oct 15, 2019 4:15 PM in response to andyfromnz

I happily upgraded to Catalina + 10.4.7 reading about how its great for eGPU but it's killed my FCPX, playback is all stutter, used to be smooth as butter in 4.6. Basically unusable. Though the geekbench shows my eGPU has gone from 126k score to 134K, too bad FCPX has screwed it up so bad with it...

Oct 22, 2019 9:49 AM in response to coldsweat

Yes I have that selected. I also know about how the ⌘ I feature that you used to select to make sure the eGPU was used is gone. But amazingly in every other program that allowed me to use that feature the checkbox is still there.

Nov 4, 2019 3:28 AM in response to Gilles9999

You can have 10.4.6 and 10.4.7, but as you realized, you can't use the same libraries with both.

If you need to share material with other machines, you may want to consider using XML.

Consolidate the media to a location outside the library, and you can share the media and XML to an older version (as long as it is not too old). Export XML version 1.7 for greater compatibility.

If the media is replicated in different machines you can just e-mail the XML files back and forth. They are just small text files.

Nov 9, 2019 4:17 PM in response to coldsweat

First off thank you for everyone’s input. This was very informative. Unfortunately I’m having somewhat of a similar issue.

Im running the latest version of FCPX on Catalina. I have a 2019 iMac i9 Vega 48 setup. I just bought a Radeon VII and a razor core x chroma. I’m seeing slower render times with the egpu.

With egpu off, rendering, my cpu is using about 75 percent and the Vega 48 about 50 percent.

With egpu on I get very inconsistent test. My first render it used egpu 100 percent memory 0 processing. On the same render my Vega 48 was active as well. The second render it didn’t even utilize the external.

Not sure what’s going on here. I don’t have anything hooked up to the egpu. I’m editing only with the native iMac 27 displays no external monitor.

Any input would be greatly appreciated. I’m going to see if I completely wasted my money and try the external with after Effects. Thanks, guys!

Dec 6, 2019 10:29 AM in response to andyfromnz

Has anyone heard or submitted feedback to Apple and that anyone at Apple has figured out a workaround for this issue yet? Luckily I have just gotten my hands on the brand new 16" MBP and maxed it out with everything (except the HD which is the smallest 1TB size). I am blazing through things on here with the new computer but still want to use the eGPU with my 2017 iMac and I was considering hooking it up to the 16" also to see how each run. I'm curious to what might be in the mix coming up in regards to our eGPU and FCP X issues!

Ross

Dec 11, 2019 6:57 PM in response to andyfromnz

10.4.8 FCPX and iMovie are still chronic (unusable) on Catalina 10.15.2, i9 8-core MacBook pro. Truly unbelievably bad performance, like minutes of SBODs for small (few GB) video files, it'd be faster to hand sketch them. Another set of untested products from Apple (or tested & they do not care about customers so long as they get their stock options).

Jan 24, 2020 12:55 PM in response to andyfromnz

The thing you have to realize is that Apple has suggested using these external eGPU's also for any application besides just gaming. They have a whole page dedicated to which ones work and which graphics cards are supported. I purchased a Radeon Vega 56 and the OWC Mercury Helios FX 650 to hook into my 2017 iMac and it performed very nicely up until 10.4.6. I just purchased the brand new 16" MBP with everything but the HD maxed out (2.4 8-Core, 64GB RAM, Radeon Pro 5500M 8GB card) and the thing screams speed. I haven't tested benchmarks yet between this graphics card and the Vega 56 or 64. But my feeling is that Apple will fix what ever is the problem but who knows when is the main issue.

abjacobs

Level 1

19 points

Feb 17, 2020 11:45 AM in response to Interceptor121

Apple sold the Mac Mini to be used with egpu's, now all of that info has dissapeared (conveniently) from Apple's site but it's there, use Time Machine.

Also look at the plethora of video's showing how much an egpu increases the render times on a Mac Mini.......2 Such as:

https://youtu.be/LyM-NtjiRKU?t=187

https://youtu.be/bBMt2EfZ7sU?t=326

Nov 2, 2019 8:53 AM in response to Cedric Robertson

This has unfortunately not worked for me. I did this and even tried totally disconnecting the external monitor but it seems FCP won't make use of my VEGA 56 eGPU at all on 10.4.7.

Jan 24, 2020 12:38 PM in response to da silva

On which basis did you buy an eGPU? Were you experiencing poor performance or what else?

Jan 25, 2020 4:27 PM in response to Interceptor121

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208544

This is the physical apple support page about eGPU's and their usages with Thunderbolt 3 Mac computers.

Jan 25, 2020 4:34 PM in response to vh78

Which "commenter" are you speaking about?

vh78

Level 1

8 points

Jan 31, 2020 4:34 PM in response to andyfromnz

Helllooo any updates from anyone talking to Apple??? or are we all moving to Resolve?? crickets...

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Proof FCPX 10.4.7 is slower than 10.4.6 and eGPU use worse