Installing a Radeon Vega Frontier Edition in a 2010 Mac Pro

So I did some more real world tests, but first I should mention something I forgot in my original post, which is that the retail Vega Frontier does not give you boot screen or verbose mode, but recovery and safe mode both work.

On to the tests. I just did a big video wall project, and I used the Premiere timeline from that to test how the Vega compared to my old R9 290x in Premiere rendering and AME encoding. Now for some AE tests from that same project. These tests will not be comparing against my old card, but rather the two top end 2013 Mac Pros I rented for render nodes (12-core, 2x D700, 64 GB).

Also, I'm an idiot and have lots of background apps running, which I kept running for the sake of real-world testing. The 2013 Mac Pros only had a clean install of High Sierra, AE, AME and the plugins I needed

1st test: 3D scene in Video Copilot Element 3D in AE. Big slowdown here was all the lighting. Rendered at 1080p60 with MB and DOF blur.

2013 Mac Pro: 197 min

2010 Mac Pro Vega: 150 min

2nd test: 3D motion track on 11 short shots, with lots of layers composited on top. Lots of basic effects (drop shadow, glow, etc) on the layers. MB and DOF blur on. 1080p30

2013 Mac Pro: 32 min

2010 Mac Pro Vega: 30 min

3rd test: 3D scene in Element 3D again, except the big slowdown here was the 63 video textures bombing the VRAM. MB and DOF blur on, 1080p30. Here I had to estimate the time of the 2010's time from an overnight 7 hr render.

2013 Mac Pro: 106 hrs

2010 Mac Pro Vega: 98 hrs (est)

So the performance of my rig is at least as good as a top-end 2013 Mac Pro now

Final note here is that I discovered my first driver glitch. Not a show stopper, but I still don't like it. I have my Mac set to not sleep, but dim the monitors (BenQ SW2700s) after 10 min of inactivity. When I wake up the monitors, my secondary monitor looks like this:

Forcing any redraw on the screen, like moving a window over to that desktop, brings the picture back. This makes me wonder if there's a wake-from-sleep issue hiding in here that I'm not seeing because I don't use sleep. To be clear, this seems to only be with the AE renders.

Anyway, pretty happy about the upgrade

New strange glitch, that seems to have disappeared right away.

I opened up Photoshop (not for the first time since the upgrade), and I was greeted by this:

Checking Prefs->Performance I found this

Quick restart of Photoshop and the problem was gone

Anyway, I'll post if it pops up again

Shecky Lovejoy wrote:

Final note here is that I discovered my first driver glitch. Not a show stopper, but I still don't like it. I have my Mac set to not sleep, but dim the monitors (BenQ SW2700s) after 10 min of inactivity. When I wake up the monitors, my secondary monitor looks like this:

Forcing any redraw on the screen, like moving a window over to that desktop, brings the picture back. This makes me wonder if there's a wake-from-sleep issue hiding in here that I'm not seeing because I don't use sleep. To be clear, this seems to only be with the AE renders.

Anyway, pretty happy about the upgrade

So last night I had a kernel panic that I believe is related to the monitor wake-from-sleep issue I posted about on 2/13, quoted above. Yesterday I was just using Safari and Pages heavily, and I got a lot of the screen redraw issue I detailed in that that 2/13 post, the first time it happened not during a long AE render. Last night, after I hadn't used for a few hrs, I came back to shut down and found it panicked.

Panic Report excerpt

*** Panic Report ***

panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff7f93fa4cf8): /BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/GPUDriversAMD/GPUDriversAMD-1.6 0.26/Common/IONDRV/ATI/IOFramebuffer/ATIFramebuffer/Controller/Sources/Vega10/Ve ga10DisplayEngineClock.cpp:1077 Assertion failed: 0 == m_reg->readReg( DPREFCLK_CNTL, DPREFCLK_SRC_SEL)

Backtrace (CPU 0), Frame : Return Address

0xffffffa76bf7b3b0 : 0xffffff801084f606

0xffffffa76bf7b400 : 0xffffff801097c654

0xffffffa76bf7b440 : 0xffffff801096e149

0xffffffa76bf7b4c0 : 0xffffff8010801120

0xffffffa76bf7b4e0 : 0xffffff801084f03c

0xffffffa76bf7b610 : 0xffffff801084edbc

0xffffffa76bf7b670 : 0xffffff7f93fa4cf8

0xffffffa76bf7b6e0 : 0xffffff7f93fa17fd

0xffffffa76bf7b710 : 0xffffff7f93fa1631

0xffffffa76bf7b760 : 0xffffff7f932e363b

0xffffffa76bf7b800 : 0xffffff7f932f5247

0xffffffa76bf7b850 : 0xffffff7f932f4ec2

0xffffffa76bf7b8e0 : 0xffffff7f94ffd1ee

0xffffffa76bf7b960 : 0xffffff7f94ffd112

0xffffffa76bf7b9a0 : 0xffffff7f94ff59e4

0xffffffa76bf7bbd0 : 0xffffff7f94ff68ca

0xffffffa76bf7be00 : 0xffffff7f9209fa4e

0xffffffa76bf7be50 : 0xffffff7f9209f7b6

0xffffffa76bf7be80 : 0xffffff7f920a5feb

0xffffffa76bf7bed0 : 0xffffff8010e90925

0xffffffa76bf7bf30 : 0xffffff8010e8f132

0xffffffa76bf7bf70 : 0xffffff8010e8e76c

0xffffffa76bf7bfa0 : 0xffffff80108004f7

Kernel Extensions in backtrace:

com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(517.22)[2AEA02BF-2A38-3674-A187-E5F610FD65B7]@ 0xffffff7f92095000->0xffffff7f920dbfff

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.9)[8E6C654E-4A8F-3C6B-BBFE-BA8A68C9C146]@0xffffff 7f911fd000

com.apple.kext.AMDSupport(1.6)[AFD497DB-C7E3-3167-91D3-6D1A09A67C1C]@0xffffff7f 932d2000->0xffffff7f934acfff

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOACPIFamily(1.4)[8794C760-FDD9-3664-ADED-4A9BBEC6E517]@0xfffff f7f91238000

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.9)[8E6C654E-4A8F-3C6B-BBFE-BA8A68C9C146]@0xffffff 7f911fd000

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(517.22)[2AEA02BF-2A38-3674-A187-E5F610FD65B7]@ 0xffffff7f92095000

dependency: com.apple.AppleGraphicsDeviceControl(3.16.21)[F8503E88-24EF-3DBA-A4D6-FA1CE4C47 427]@0xffffff7f93057000

com.apple.kext.AMD10000Controller(1.6)[677B2081-B067-3589-855C-3BF517052138]@0x ffffff7f93f63000->0xffffff7f94093fff

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOACPIFamily(1.4)[8794C760-FDD9-3664-ADED-4A9BBEC6E517]@0xfffff f7f91238000

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.9)[8E6C654E-4A8F-3C6B-BBFE-BA8A68C9C146]@0xffffff 7f911fd000

dependency: com.apple.kext.AMDSupport(1.6.0)[AFD497DB-C7E3-3167-91D3-6D1A09A67C1C]@0xffffff 7f932d2000

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(517.22)[2AEA02BF-2A38-3674-A187-E5F610FD65B7]@ 0xffffff7f92095000

dependency: com.apple.AppleGraphicsDeviceControl(3.16.21)[F8503E88-24EF-3DBA-A4D6-FA1CE4C47 427]@0xffffff7f93057000

com.apple.kext.AMDFramebuffer(1.6)[D41B619A-D800-312D-A05D-E62A07C712D4]@0xffff ff7f94fec000->0xffffff7f95013fff

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOACPIFamily(1.4)[8794C760-FDD9-3664-ADED-4A9BBEC6E517]@0xfffff f7f91238000

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.9)[8E6C654E-4A8F-3C6B-BBFE-BA8A68C9C146]@0xffffff 7f911fd000

dependency: com.apple.kext.AMDSupport(1.6.0)[AFD497DB-C7E3-3167-91D3-6D1A09A67C1C]@0xffffff 7f932d2000

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(517.22)[2AEA02BF-2A38-3674-A187-E5F610FD65B7]@ 0xffffff7f92095000

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: kernel_task

Boot args: kext-dev-mode=1 nvda_drv=1

Mac OS version:

17D102

Kernel version:

Darwin Kernel Version 17.4.0: Sun Dec 17 09:19:54 PST 2017; root:xnu-4570.41.2~1/RELEASE_X86_64

Kernel UUID: 18D901F1-4A03-3FF1-AE34-C26B2732F13C

Kernel slide: 0x0000000010400000

Kernel text base: 0xffffff8010600000

__HIB text base: 0xffffff8010500000

System model name: MacPro5,1 (Mac-F221BEC8)

Hi Apple, when you edited this post without telling me why, you messed up the formatting and I can no longer edit to make it right. My bullet list is all screwed up, but most notably the landscape orientation photos are now squished into a square aspect. Please fix. Thank you

The took down the About this Mac screen, I guess because I left the startup drive name in there, tho not the SN. But anyway, too many spaces in the bullets, and the landscape photos are squished horizontally on my browser. It makes me look like an idiot video editor who doesn't know how to properly format text and images.

I had a 980 Ti and I found the driver thing to be too much of a pain in the ***, so I switched back to the R9 290x and now the Vega. I have a Mac so I don't have to mess around with these things, but the 980 was undoubtedly fast, probably in the same range as the new Vega. I would imagine the 1080 is even faster. Having to hold back on important security updates was the final straw for me, YMMV

FYI, the Vega 64s and 56s seem to be back in stock

Yeah, I started as an Avid editor in the 90s and I still keep a license and use it a couple of times a year, but what you describe was one of my many problems with Avid that chased me from their iron grip when FCP 2.0 and the first BlackMagic Decklink SDI card came out around 2001 (uncompressed SD to my graphite G4 for $1k -- a miracle!). Switched to Premiere after the X debacle, and I've been largely happy with it. It remains buggy, and Adobe makes certain software design choices that confuse me, but since the CC subscriptions started, they are very aggressive with updates, and support for new macOS updates (for example, early Metal support). Also, I love me some After Effects, and after using Automatic Duck for 10 years, I love the tight integration with Premiere.

FWIW, multicam stuff works well in Premiere, at least in my recent experience with a music video where I had 14 sync performance takes. Here 'tis:

Andra Day - Stand Up For Something feat. Common [Official Music Video] - YouTube

Looks like the Vega 64 smokes the Frontier (tho mostly in games). Interested in Adobe tests

My sympathies to anyone who deals with Avid/Digidesign as their vendors. They're much better than they used to be, but they retain some of their arrogance from when they were monopolies.