Contribute
Register

Buying advice GPU Vega 56 vs GTX 1080 and Thunderbolt 3 for editing/color grading workstation

Status
Not open for further replies.
eatmorechocolate

eatmorechocolate

Joined
Mar 17, 2018
Messages
1
Hello there,
I enjoy reading this site and I am thankful for the community here sharing there knowledge. I am on my way to build my first hackintosh. I am an Apple user for over 15 years. I left windows to have a computer for working without having problems with the computer. That really has worked out for me. I have never had a major problem with any of the Apple computers. That is also the reason I have big respect and some doubt to build a hackintosh. It seems that a system where a lot of things are natively supported by MacOS are less complicate to build. Is this right?

So, I read that having an AMD GPU is smoother and easier to integrate than a NVIDIA GPU(the recommendations at the buyer´s guide talks a different language. So I am a little confused.)

So my main aim is to build a budget system for occasional UHD/4K editing (Adobe Premie Pro) and color grading with Davinci Resolve (no Video RAW, but up to Apple ProRes 4444 and/ Avid DNxHR HQX.)

As I am right the NVIDIAs are faster and better supported by the software I use. On the other hand it seems that the AMD GPUs are supported by the OS themselves. I am interested in a the GPUs that has less trouble and would accept little less performance. Which GPU do you recommend?

My CPU should be a i7 8700K. I also need Thunderbolt 3. Is there a mainboard that is predestinated for thunderbolt 3?
Thanks in advance!
 
eatmorechocolate said:
My CPU should be a i7 8700K. I also need Thunderbolt 3. Is there a mainboard that is predestinated for thunderbolt 3?
Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

You want a 8700K? As far as I know there is only one motherboard with Thunderbolt 3 onboard that supports the 8700K, an ASRock Z370 ITX board.

If you don't want ITX and want Thunderbolt 3, you have to make sure the motherboard has a Thunderbolt header, and you will have to purchase in addition a Thunderbolt 3 add in card like the Gigabyte GC Alpine Ridge or Asus ThunderboltEX 3.

Check the Coffee Lake Buyer's Guide for motherboard choices. Personally I recommend Gigabyte or Asus boards.
 
I'm running my third Hackintosh built with a similar intent as you: Premiere/After Effects/Davinci Resolve up to UHD.

The current iteration of X99 motherboard/Haswell Xeon CPU/64GB RAM/twin GTX 970 GPUs has been excellent for editing with 1080p proxy files (I often offline edit on my 13" MacBook Pro so use proxies to work on both). And 1080p/UHD compositing in After Effects has been a breeze.

However Davinci Resolve has been an unbearable mess, which I lay at the door of the pair of GTX 970 GPUs I have.

The GTX 970 cards ran ok in my previous Hackintosh (Z77 motherboard with 3770k CPU), although sometimes I would get random reboots during heavy rendering, particularly in Resolve. However in my current build in High Sierra (10.13.2 - 10.13.4), I can't use CUDA or even have it installed (incessant system reboots) and can't use Metal in Davinci Resolve (system freezes which take ten minutes to reboot from). That leaves me running a single card in OpenCL mode, which isn't good for getting work done.

I'm at the point of ditching NVIDIA for AMD now. Since 10.13.4 loads of AMD ranging from the RX 470 to Vega 64 are now officially supported without the need for third party drivers: see here, and that seems very tempting.

As for Thunderbolt 3, look very carefully in your motherboard and CPU selection at how many PCIe lanes you get with Coffee Lake builds. The 8700k only supports 16 lanes, which a single GPU will max out, before you've added any more cards in. I think you get more lanes from the motherboard, but how fast these run, I don't know. It's one of the reasons I went with the X99 chipset, which does have Thunderbolt 3 and loads of lanes. There are guides here for the newer X299 chipset which also have sufficient PCIe lanes for multiple GPUs/playout cards/etc, and Thunderbolt 3 options.

TLDR: I've gone off Nvidia in a big way, make sure you have enough PCIe lanes in your build.

EDIT: I've now ordered an AMD Vega 56 card to replace the pair of GTX 970 cards that have caused me to so much headache. Before putting them on eBay, I ran them both through a Furmark stress test in Windows 10. One of them ran no problems for a half hour, but the other crapped out very quickly both times I tried to test it. So it looks like my problems were hardware related, not driver/hackintosh related.
 
Last edited:
eatmorechocolate said:
Hello there,
I enjoy reading this site and I am thankful for the community here sharing there knowledge. I am on my way to build my first hackintosh. I am an Apple user for over 15 years. I left windows to have a computer for working without having problems with the computer. That really has worked out for me. I have never had a major problem with any of the Apple computers. That is also the reason I have big respect and some doubt to build a hackintosh. It seems that a system where a lot of things are natively supported by MacOS are less complicate to build. Is this right?

So, I read that having an AMD GPU is smoother and easier to integrate than a NVIDIA GPU(the recommendations at the buyer´s guide talks a different language. So I am a little confused.)

So my main aim is to build a budget system for occasional UHD/4K editing (Adobe Premie Pro) and color grading with Davinci Resolve (no Video RAW, but up to Apple ProRes 4444 and/ Avid DNxHR HQX.)

As I am right the NVIDIAs are faster and better supported by the software I use. On the other hand it seems that the AMD GPUs are supported by the OS themselves. I am interested in a the GPUs that has less trouble and would accept little less performance. Which GPU do you recommend?

My CPU should be a i7 8700K. I also need Thunderbolt 3. Is there a mainboard that is predestinated for thunderbolt 3?
Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
I have a similar question. I see the build list under the Mac Pro, however there are two cards list at first. It also says see all cards here. My question is are all the card under "all cards" usable for the MacPro build or only the two on the first list?
 
All the cards listed in the Buyer's Guide are recommended for a Customac Pro. Those two you're looking at are actually not the most "Pro" ones in the list anymore, anyway.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Copyright © 2010 - 2024 tonymacx86 LLC
Back
Top