AMD Radeon Pro W5700 (Natively supported and used in Mac Pro) Discussion

[anannyo]

what apps do you use mostly? what is your pipeline (input formats, output formats?)

I use Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere, lots of adobe apps and DaVinci Resolve for graphics and video editing purpose so far. I want to give a shot at Final Cut Pro for video editing as well.

 

[qbe]

I use Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere, lots of adobe apps and DaVinci Resolve for graphics and video editing purpose so far. I want to give a shot at Final Cut Pro for video editing as well.

ok, here comes the answer you didnt ask for

if you use adobe/davinci combo, go windows and buy nvidia (2070/2080 or if enough cash Titan RTX with lots of memory. Davinci is going to benefit a lot from more memory, for adobe 2070/2080 is the sweetspot). You save money, you save on hackintosh tinkering and most importantly you save TIME.

for fcpx its macOS and AMD. best bang for buck is regular 2x580 or preferably Radeon VII (mem/core). Davinci also likes Radeon VII a lot (memory). You have to live with the noise or tinker. 5700xt possible, but its not running to full potential or RDNA architecture not as good in fcpx?

if you want to do adobe in macOS, you sacrifice time/money twice, amd architecture and not good enough metal optimization (adobe/apple)

you didnt mention input formats so I assume no RED footage etc, just regular h.264/265 and Prores mix

Radeon VII is actually not "more gaming focused card", but as AMD had nothing for that segment at that time they decided to take this workstation/server part and sell it as gaming card. Its pretty powerfull.
Radeon Pro W5700 seems more like slowed down version of 5700XT, but with double memory. Complex projects like more memory, but its slower overall. i would say its the same performance. your decision if its worth the money difference for you for some reason

Im running 5700xt for fcpx just fine, although 2x580 seems to have similar speed results (i have 5700xt instead of 2x580 only because windows 4k gaming). If i was willing to give that kind of cash I would go VII. I dont really see any other rational choices.

 

[anannyo]

ok, here comes the answer you didnt ask for

if you use adobe/davinci combo, go windows and buy nvidia (2070/2080 or if enough cash Titan RTX with lots of memory. Davinci is going to benefit a lot from more memory, for adobe 2070/2080 is the sweetspot). You save money, you save on hackintosh tinkering and most importantly you save TIME.

for fcpx its macOS and AMD. best bang for buck is regular 2x580 or preferably Radeon VII (mem/core). Davinci also likes Radeon VII a lot (memory). You have to live with the noise or tinker. 5700xt possible, but its not running to full potential or RDNA architecture not as good in fcpx?

if you want to do adobe in macOS, you sacrifice time/money twice, amd architecture and not good enough metal optimization (adobe/apple)

you didnt mention input formats so I assume no RED footage etc, just regular h.264/265 and Prores mix

Radeon VII is actually not "more gaming focused card", but as AMD had nothing for that segment at that time they decided to take this workstation/server part and sell it as gaming card. Its pretty powerfull.
Radeon Pro W5700 seems more like slowed down version of 5700XT, but with double memory. Complex projects like more memory, but its slower overall. i would say its the same performance. your decision if its worth the money difference for you for some reason

Im running 5700xt for fcpx just fine, although 2x580 seems to have similar speed results (i have 5700xt instead of 2x580 only because windows 4k gaming). If i was willing to give that kind of cash I would go VII. I dont really see any other rational choices.

I understand your points and truth to be told I knew and told these many times and it is hard not to be tempted to go for it too. And I actually crossed off Radeon Pro W5700 long time ago after researching and comparing it with Radeon VII head to head.

But I am a Mac guy and I had lots of frustrations with Windows when I bought a AMD setup for same tempting and lots of core reasons 5 years ago and it is now sitting in a corner, getting dusts without being used at all!! Although AMD CPUs have come long way now and are better than Intel at the moment; I still prefer Mac and so I need to go with Intel anyway. The positive experience about Hackintosh is that I had made a hackintosh with my younger brother's 1st gen i3 intel gaming cpu 2 years ago using High Sierra MacOS and it is still running perfectly without any issue till date. So, given the time and efforts into making a hackintosh still worth it at this moment. So yeah, I am still tempted to get a Threadripper, but my preference for MacOS is the reason I am still gonna make hackintosh with Intel CPU.

 

[celtsune01]

Note that if your doing 3d rendering you will more than likely need a Vega/Navi card. RX 580 for example is NOT supported in Octane X for rendering. So be aware..

 

[Michael]

@anannyo,

Just be aware of the codec transcoding limitations that I wrote about above, a more powerful dGPU will not necessarily speed up your workflow unless you do a lot of effects work, no point spending a boot load of cash on a powerful dGPU if your workflow will not utilise it.

Cheers
Jay

I have purchased the Radeon Pro W5700 and installed it in the Mac Pro 2019 without any difficulties. However, the card does not seem to be turned on. Does it require power? (I thought the Pac Pro supplied the power through the slots.) HELP!

 

[Fauna]

I'd also like to hear thoughts about the Radeon Pro VII, which is similar to the Radeon Pro Vega II in Mac Pros.

Same. Does anyone have any info or success with this card for Mojave?

 

[trs96]

Same. Does anyone have any info or success with this card for Mojave?

Not supported by Mojave only Catalina or newer.