I am using a Sonnet EGPU with a Radeon RX570, connected with Thunderbolt 3 on a 2018 Mac Mini. In Mojave I could select "Prefer External GPU" in the iMovie info box. Since upgrading to Catalina that option is gone for iMovie. It is still available for other apps. My drivers appear to be up to date. Does iMovie no longer support EGPU? Thanks...
Hi,
Catalina supports eGPU as you have found. Your Radeon RX570 is one of the recommended cards. So I would think that if eGPU was available to iMovie when running Mojave that it would still be available with Catalina.
You might check out the following: Your eGPU needs to be connected before the eGPU option displays as available. Also, the app needs to be closed and not being opened from an alias. (The Get Info needs to be accessed from the original icon of the app.) Finally, update to Catalina 15.1 if you haven't already. Now see if you get the eGPU option.
Here's Apple's latest work on eGPU:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208544
-- Rich
Thank you for the suggestions Rich. Catalina 15.1 did not make a difference. The eGPU is on, and two monitors connected directly to the eGPU. There is no monitor connected to the Mac Mini directly. I access the iMovie icon from within the Applications finder folder, not a shortcut. Since nothing was working, I reverted to MacOS Mojave, and to my disappointment, the option to select "Prefer External GPU" is no longer there either. It was available before I upgraded, and my hardware setup has not changed. In the screenshots below I am showing my hardware info and that some applications still have the option to prefer an external GPU, just not iMovie. Thank you.
You can do it with your time machine backup. Restore it to a date just before your current update. However, projects that have been updated with the new version may not open if you revert back. This is not something that I have personally done, so just wanted you to be aware.
— Rich
You may need to restore your previous iMovie library version as well. As I say, I haven’t done this myself, so I can’t be sure of the results.
Hopefully someone on this forum who has done this will chime in.
— Rich
You might want to consider posting a new question asking whether anyone has reverted to their previous versions of iMovie and Mojave after the recent Catalina upgrade and iMovie updates — how they did it and whether their iMovie projects were still playable.
— Rich
Hmmmm. Maybe restoring back to iMovie 10.1.12 would cure it.
— Rich
Thanks... I didn’t know I could do that but I will try it.
Missing option to prefer external gpu
