Problem with poor Vega 64 Performance on Mojave 10.14.5

arvinsim · Oct 15, 2019

How is the support for Vega 64 on 10.14.6? Are the bugs(like the fan issues) ironed out?

jaymonkey · Oct 18, 2019

arvinsim said:
How is the support for Vega 64 on 10.14.6? Are the bugs(like the fan issues) ironed out?

@arvinsim,

Yes 10.14.6 pretty much sorted out the power and fan issue's with OEM Vega cards.

kentval said:
FWIW, with today's update to FCPX 10.4.7, I'm getting a BruceX of 12 seconds. I'm gonna quit worrying about it.

@kentval

I got around to updating FCPX to 10.4.7 this afternoon ....
Like you i've seen a big improvement in rendering times with this update.

CPU = i7 4790K / 16GB RAM
GPU = Sapphire Vega 64 LC + Headless HD 4600 IGPU
MacOS = Mojave 10.14.6 (18G95)
SMBIOS = iMac15,1
FCPX Version = 10.4.7

BruceX 5K -> Apple ProRes 422 = 10.8 seconds (was ~22 seconds with FCPX 10.4.6 on the same system/MacOS version)
BruceX 5K -> Apple Pro Res 422 LT = 10.4 seconds
BruceX 8K -> Apple ProRes 422 = 45.4 seconds (was 1min 12 Seconds)

The FCPX 10.4.7 update feature list states that FCPX now uses Apple's Metal API for rendering :-

This was sort of expected with Apples big push on the new Mac Pro but I can't help but think that this is Apple playing the forced/planned obsolescence card again, previous to when this issue first started when I was running MacOS 10.14.4 and FCPX 10.4.3 my render time for BruceX 5K -> ProRes 422 was around 12 seconds. Then all of sudden we all saw our render times drop significantly. Now Apple proudly states that they have a new Metal rendering engine and our render times are back to what they where before (slightly faster for me) .... call me a sceptic if you like but to me this either points to Apple doing it deliberately so that they can shout about how much better it is to the previous version (20% Faster on MBP, 35% on iMac Pro) or just very poor software testing / QA.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of FCPX and have been a user for many years, but one has to question Apple over this lack of rendering performance for the for last five months or so .... whatever the reason its a poor show for software that costs £300 and Apple trouts as a market leading "Pro" video editing solution.

Note to other FCPX users: After installing the FCPX 10.4.7 update, the first time you run FCPX it will update your video library's to a new format/structure which can not be converted back to the 10.4.6 library structure (although FCPX does make a backup first) ... so those of you who share video work make sure everyone installs the update.

Bonus Feature: If you have more than one dGPU you can also now (finally) choose which GPU to render on :-

Playback preferences in Final Cut Pro

In Final Cut Pro, use the Playback preference pane to change playback and rendering settings. Choose an external A/V output device.

support.apple.com

Cheers
Jay

demonknight9 · Oct 19, 2019

BruceX 5K -> Apple ProRes 422 LT = 8 seconds WOW that is an improvement!

HawkTron · Oct 19, 2019

BruceX 5K ProRes 422= 10.15 sec.
Running Mojave 10.14.6 (18G103)
System def 17,1
FCP X 10.4.7
Sapphire Vega 64 Nitro+

alexjibcam · Oct 20, 2019

Just want to chime in here.

I have been using fcpx for years with a variety of setup and today have installed the new 10.4.7.

I have noticed an improvement in render and export times. I was suffering since the OSX update of 10.14.4 but this metal update seems to have given my Vega 56 pulse a new lease of life. Also my graphics card use to roar when exporting now it's close to silent.

Could this be to do with the new Metal engine. Does using the new metal engine forego iGPU entirly? I've noticed my h.264 exports have dramatically sped up also.

Cheers.

boogieman77 · Oct 29, 2019

alexjibcam said:
Just want to chime in here.

I have been using fcpx for years with a variety of setup and today have installed the new 10.4.7.

I have noticed an improvement in render and export times. I was suffering since the OSX update of 10.14.4 but this metal update seems to have given my Vega 56 pulse a new lease of life. Also my graphics card use to roar when exporting now it's close to silent.

Could this be to do with the new Metal engine. Does using the new metal engine forego iGPU entirly? I've noticed my h.264 exports have dramatically sped up also.

Cheers.

I am also seeing the same results using dual Vega 64’s. They are pretty much silent now. But the times are so much faster on long videos.

smak · Jan 1, 2020

I’m still trying to grapple with this performance loss. On high Sierra and Windows10 with geek bench 4/5 I get that same compute scores. But on Mojave 10.14.6 I drop from 200000+ to 146000 and 75000 to 500000.

I’ve tried Vega 64 frontier edition aml in patched folder. Lilu, whatevergeen, VegaTab_Fe. In many variations both in clover/Kext/extensions, and library extensions. All with the same gb and overall video editing cap happening.

I don’t have NVMe installed, and the fact that high Sierra and win10 match up there is some apple driver crippling the cards .

Has anyone had success with dual Vegas ? I’ve tried VGtab and bumping the memory up a bit, both in Kext and device property injection into clover. It works but the default settings for VEGA FE doesn’t seem the change things.

Is there a way for me to install 10.14.4 over my install of 10.14.6?

Happy new year everybody!

jaymonkey · Jan 1, 2020

movolans said:
If anyone on here with a similar Vega 64 setup on 10.14.5 and has current times for the FCPX BruceX test I’d love to hear them.

@movolans,

I too was seeing BruceX export times in FCPX of around 21 seconds on Mojave 10.14.6 with a similar spec'd system (see White Knight build in my signature). Nothing I did would improve it, quite a few other Vega 64 users where also reporting the same slow export speed at that time.

Once I updated to FCPX 10.4.7 the export time went down to around 10.5 seconds.

See this post for before and after BruceX results :-