280X 6GB freezing the system. 280X 3GB works fine!!?

[rwillett]

Thank you Rob for your reply!

I'm using multibeast. My 280X (both 3GB and 6GB) lead to garbled text if I disable integrated graphics. I can boot with both of them just fine and use the system If I have integrated graphics enabled and have IGFX set as boot gpu. With my 280X plugged in it's black until I get to the login page and then the computer switches over the the 280X from integrated graphics.

The 280X 3GB shows up at 7xxx 3GB and everything works great. The 6GB shows up as 7xxx 6GB and everything works other than OpenCL applications such as FCX.

I followed the guide to create a EFI partition but didn't see any diffrence. Maybe I didn't do it correctly, I am currently downloading El Capitan to try that. I asked you on the other thread if you're using Clover or the updated multi-beast for El Capitan. Do you have your IGFX disabled for your setup that gets 11 seconds Bruce X?

My 2x 3GB 280X's are XFX and the 6GB is a MSI. If Sapphire has better results I would not mind purchasing Saphire cards and sending these 2 back to Amazon.

Thank you so much for you time replying to me and helping others. I REALLY appreciate it!

I use Clover and it just worked. Never configured a thing in Clover to date, never even opened it up to look at the options. I had a lot of issues with Multibeast with a Gigabyte Z97X and a Gigabyte Z87X but Clover was easy. After saying that I never had garbled text with my 280X.

I have the IGFX disabled as that is the only way to get FCPX to work properly. if the IGFX is enabled FCPX *may* or *may* not choose to use the internal graphics card over your far faster 280X. If you want to use FCPX you have to disable the internal graphics.

The EFI partition mod is to enable booting with the 280X cards. AFAIK it has nothing to do with the garbled text. Its pretty simple as a mod, a lot easier than installed Yosemite and if you can boot afterwards without the USB key its working.

Your next problem is that you have two mismatched 280X cards. I do not know but strongly suspect that you cannot combine the XFX and the MSI cards in FCPX to get faster speed. AFAIK they have to be identical. I have read of lots of niggles with the XFX card and the MSI card, but since I have not used the cards I can't say there are problems. When I was looking to buy my cards, my research showed too many niggles with MSI and XFX so I went with Sapphire.

I can state that the Sapphire card I use here in the UK works out of the box, the only config flag I used to install Yosemite was --maxmem=8192 for the motherboard. I installed with the dual 280X's in place and with the internal graphics turned off on the motherboard. El Capitan was an in-place upgrade.

My personal suggestion is to send both the cards back and get two Sapphire cards instead. I don't do much 4K footage so can't comment on maxing VRAM memory out. I did a test for somebody a few weeks ago which was 4K and never noticed any problems but there wasn't a lot happening in his clip. If you send me via dropbox or similar some 4K footage as an FCPX project, I'll load it and render it and see what it looks like.

And in answer to your next question, my dual 280X Sapphire cards are

Vapor-X R9 280X 3G GDDR5 PCI-E DVI-O/DVI-D/HDMI/DP TRI-X OC WITH BOOST (UEFI)
SKU 11221-12-20G

These are UK models and I know are no longer made, but there are more recent alternatives. I'd get the same model but the updated version. Mine run very quiet and am very happy with them. I drive two HD monitors from one and a single monitor from another. I'd run four HD monitors but simply do not have the desk space.

Rob

 

[rwillett]

If I remember correctly, I think some of the Mac Pro guys also reported having issues with the 6GB 280x cards over at Mac Rumors.


I use this 3GB Sapphire 280x in my machine:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RXA5G5O/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Yep thats the one I use. The price is high though! I got mine for $230 or something and thats in the UK. I wonder if I'm pushing the price up with my recommendations

Also thats a UK spec card not a US spec card. The SKU is UK specific, I know as I checked for somebody some months ago. Interesting.

I've no doubt it will work though.

Rob

 

[MaxYuryev]

Your next problem is that you have two mismatched 280X cards. I do not know but strongly suspect that you cannot combine the XFX and the MSI cards in FCPX to get faster speed. AFAIK they have to be identical. I have read of lots of niggles with the XFX card and the MSI card, but since I have not used the cards I can't say there are problems. When I was looking to buy my cards, my research showed too many niggles with MSI and XFX so I went with Sapphire.

Rob

Thanks for the Reply Rob. I actually have 2 XFX 3GB 280X's , and 1 MSI 280X 6GB. I got the 2x XFX cards running together but the speeds were actually slower than a single card (probably because integrated graphics enabled), so I decided to buy a 6GB single card and use that instead.

I'm going to do a bit more tests, Try it with El Capitan, If I get similar results I'll return the XFX's and buy 2 Sapphires.

 

[rwillett]

Thanks for the Reply Rob. I actually have 2 XFX 3GB 280X's , and 1 MSI 280X 6GB. I got the 2x XFX cards running together but the speeds were actually slower than a single card (probably because integrated graphics enabled), so I decided to buy a 6GB single card and use that instead.

I'm going to do a bit more tests, Try it with El Capitan, If I get similar results I'll return the XFX's and buy 2 Sapphires.

Ah! Misunderstood. The slowness of FCP X is probably due to the internal graphics being used for some of the FCPX work. A single 6GB card shouldn't be faster than two 3GB cards as the rendering is done using the onboard GPU's. Whilst the extra memory will help, I'd expect the GPU's to be faster in parallel.

Do you know that the XFX cards actually work at all in El Capitan? Anybody report any successes?

Rob

 

[MaxYuryev]

Ah! Misunderstood. The slowness of FCP X is probably due to the internal graphics being used for some of the FCPX work. A single 6GB card shouldn't be faster than two 3GB cards as the rendering is done using the onboard GPU's. Whilst the extra memory will help, I'd expect the GPU's to be faster in parallel.

Do you know that the XFX cards actually work at all in El Capitan? Anybody report any successes?

Rob

With IGFX enabled, and a single XFX 280X 3GB gpu the speeds were awesome! and single pass encoding using intel Quicksync h.264 was working as well. (about 2-3x faster h.264 encoding compared to CPU encoding) So I figured dual 280X would work as well but I guess FCX doesn't like it. Smoother/faster editing is much more important than faster h.264 encoding so I don't need to use quicksync.

From tests comparing the GTX 960 2GB version and GTX 960 4GB the 4GB was faster with 4k and I'm guessing because the 2GB was maxed out (you can see mem usage in iStat menu) and with 4GB it had about 3.5GB used. I figured the 6GB may have a similar advantage.

I'm not sure if XFX will work under El Capitan but I should know in a few hours. USB is finished!
If not I have 2 Sapphire Vapor-X 3GB waiting in my Amazon cart with 2 day shipping ready to order.

 

[rwillett]

With IGFX enabled, and a single XFX 280X 3GB gpu the speeds were awesome! and single pass encoding using intel Quicksync h.264 was working as well. (about 2-3x faster h.264 encoding compared to CPU encoding) So I figured dual 280X would work as well but I guess FCX doesn't like it. Smoother/faster editing is much more important than faster h.264 encoding so I don't need to use quicksync.

From tests comparing the GTX 960 2GB version and GTX 960 4GB the 4GB was faster with 4k and I'm guessing because the 2GB was maxed out (you can see mem usage in iStat menu) and with 4GB it had about 3.5GB used. I figured the 6GB may have a similar advantage.

I'm not sure if XFX will work under El Capitan but I should know in a few hours. USB is finished!

Good to know that XFX works BUT in your case it is with the Internal Graphics enabled. FCPX can get confused between which graphics system to use for rendering, I did a lot of benchmarks on my Z97X board with and without the internal graphics enabled. In all of *my* situations, having the internal graphics enabled made FCPX run significantly slower than using the 280X cards. Significantly means 2-3x slower. Other people have reported similar times. I have a rubbish onboard graphics system so this is no surprise. I do not use Quicksync H264 so cannot comment. It may allow the onboard GPU to work faster as its Intel.

FCPX does like dual graphics cards, it is designed to work better with dual and even triple GPUs. You are incorrect to say that FCPX doesn't like it. It may not like dual XFX cards though for some reason. Look at the new Mac Pro towers, I also benchmarked dual AMD 5770's in a genuine Mac Pro and that worked faster with dual 5770's than without. For FCPX work, dual 5770's are a very cheap way to get excellent performance. The 5770 is not a great card for anything else, but FCPX flies with it.

Almost without exception the nVidia cards do not work anywhere near as fast as the AMD cards for FCPX work. This is not to knock the nVidia cards, just that for this particular use case, nVidia is not top dog.

Please report back on the XFX under El Capitan as it would be good to know.

Thanks,

Rob

 

[MaxYuryev]

FCPX does like dual graphics cards, it is designed to work better with dual and even triple GPUs. You are incorrect to say that FCPX doesn't like it. It may not like dual XFX cards though for some reason. Look at the new Mac Pro towers,

I should have been more specific. I meant to say that in my testing, with my installation with FCX and IGFX enabled FCX was slower with Dual GPU's than Single (280x 3GB). I do know its faster with dual GPU's. I owned a 6core dual D700 nMP. That's why in my other thread I'm asking how to get dual GPU's to work properly with my system, to get the benefits of dual GPU's like others have gotten. This thread is just about issues with a single MSI 6GB 280X.

I will get try to get to the bottom of both issues report my finding for future users!

 

[MaxYuryev]

To finish off this thread I want to say that I upgraded to El Capitan using mulibeast+Clover and its definitely an improvement. My Dual 3GB XFX 280X's work awesome with integrated graphics disabled, and a single card works well with integrated graphic enabled which allows quick sync in FCX for fast h.264 encoding. Dual 280X's with Integrated graphics enabled give slow result.

The 6GB MSI 280X is still having issues, won't boot with integrated graphics enabled or disabled. I'm sending the 6GB MSI 280X back and keeping the dual 280X's.

 

[rwillett]

To finish off this thread I want to say that I upgraded to El Capitan using mulibeast+Clover and its definitely an improvement. My Dual 3GB XFX 280X's work awesome with integrated graphics disabled, and a single card works well with integrated graphic enabled which allows quick sync in FCX for fast h.264 encoding. Dual 280X's with Integrated graphics enabled give slow result.

The 6GB MSI 280X is still having issues, won't boot with integrated graphics enabled or disabled. I'm sending the 6GB MSI 280X back and keeping the dual 280X's.

Thats good to know that the 3GB MSI's work well, Can you send me the exact model including SKU so I can add it to the thread of 280X cards that work with FCPX please.

Rob

 

[MaxYuryev]

---

MY 3GB cards are actually XFX's not MSI (the 6GB that doesn't work is MSI)

This is the exact card that I bought 2 of http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FSC5N66/?tag=tonymacx86com-20