EGPU DOES NOT WORK WITH NEW FCPX 10.4 UPDATE

Success.

As of MacOS 10.13.3 and FCPX 10.4, eGPU use is back up for me.

15” MacBook Pro mid 2015

NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti | BizonBox 2S (Thunderbolt 2)

WebDriver 387.10.10.10.25.156 | CUDA 378.128

Note: Compressor 4.4 still seems to be CPU only.

Please don't write in all caps. It is virtual shouting and unpleasant.

Can you give more details, please? What is your machine, and your EGPU? How is it connected?

What OS version? EGPU as I understand it have yet limited support, and only over TB3 and on High Sierra.

Nevertheless, since it was working before, I'd expect it to also work on the most recent version.

I downgraded to FCPX 10.3.4 and it wouldn't work for me. High Sierra, MacBook 2016 touchbar, Thunderbolt 3, Sonett Box with RX580. Davinci, on the other hand works great using the eGPU. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? Thanks!

Thanks mate. I did all that. What I am finding is that it 4x quicker for optical flow on ProRes Media. Stabilize is the same or slightly slower. Render is slower than MacBook UNLESS I add some grading and sharpening. Then the eGPU pulls ahead by about 50%. Playback on timeline with some FCPX effects added is the same 40 frames per second. So, it is seeing the card. I have istat menu to monitor it and I can see the card working. Optical flow makes it work really hard. The rest, not so much. Not sure if that this is worth it. I was hoping for my old Mac Pro 2013 speeds for stabilizing and rendering. Any input is SO much appreciated.

Thanks for your reply. I completely agree. BruceX was wicked fast with the eGPU, but on everyday task on the timeline, it is not utilized. My workflow consists on making short highlight reels or short films (3 min) and I rely heavily on grabbing 10 second clips into the timeline, stabilizing them, optical flowing them, rendering each clip on the timeline before exporting to see how it looks. So eGPU only helps in the optical flow area of that task. A shame it won't pick up the pace for the other tasks in my work flow. Unless I am doing something wrong. Playback is the same and importing Canon's awful Photo Jpeg codec and converting it to ProRes is all the same time. CPU tasks I guess. Do you think I might be doing something wrong? Thanks so much!

I just packed up my Sonnet with RX580 and its sitting in the garage to be sent back because I was not hugely impressed. So, when you say it is 'up' what do you mean? Render times, stabilize times? Wondering whether I should unwrap it and give it one more try. Thanks. Any elaboration is much appreciated.

Here is what works: eGPU-accelerated playback, rendering, and exporting from within FCPX (but Compressor seems to still be CPU only).

On MacOs 10.13.2 and FCPX 10.4 it was only playback and Optical Flow rendering that were eGPU accelerated. Like a lot of us, I was disappointed. FCPX 10.3 seemed to allow eGPU rendering just fine. With MacOS 10.13.3, I guess they ‘allowed it’ once again? That’s the only thing I can think of. Hope that helps.

Update to 26/27 Jan 18 posts: eGPU acceleration is still not fully working. FCPX seems to rely on internal GPU and CPU for overall rendering.

However, the following processes do seem to still make use of eGPU rendering: playback, Optical Flow, and Neat Video Denoiser (via CUDA).

Is anyone else having better luck?

Any further testing results? I've got a 2013 nMP and wondering if I would get improved FCPX performance. Results seem all over the place. Am also thinking of getting a 2017 full spec 1Mac 5K. Would a Radeo Vega eGPU give me better performance on FCPX?

Using iStat Menu, I noticed eGPU is used for playback and Optical Flow; however, eGPU is not used for rendering in 10.4 (or updated Compressor for that matter). Feels like a step back in time.