Radeon Compatibility Guide - ATI/AMD Graphics Cards

[pastrychef]

Here are some tests and hope this helps and gives you some extra information. As mentioned, my system is X299 and does not have an iGPU so I don't have anything else to test. I guess I can cross reference on my MacBook Pro (2018, 6core)?

I believe the lack of HEVC hardware encoding has something to do with the T2 chip (which has its own H264/HEVC encoder/decoder and it's own basic OS), especially on the iMac Pro 1,1 SMBIOS when iGPU is disabled. macOS does different things to different SMBIOses behind the scenes. If it doesn't see a T2 chip, it just fallbacks to CPU perhaps? In the compressor preferences there is a setting to use multiple instances of the processor cores, and you can max out all the CPU during exporting, which will increase speeds.

It's more surprising to me that the Radeon VII isn't taken advantage of even by Adobe Media Encoder, because it's such a good computational card. If Apple supports eGPU's natively (and officially), then I am not sure why performance isn't pushed to the limit on these cards.

I think what happened was Apple had tapped into the Intel QuickSync tech for a while adn got tired of it so when they developed their own T2 chip, they threw hardware encoder/decoders in there so in the future when all Macs have a T2 chip, they don't have to rely on AMD/NVIDIA/Intel for H264/HEVC decoding/compression. This means more control to them and less reliance on external companies...and also an easier transition to the ARM architecture? But I am just guessing here, because the AMD Radeon VII and the other recent cards like NAVI ones have great onboard HEVC/H264 encoder/decoders...Applications such as Davinci Resolve do take advantage of these other GPUs.

Hope this helps.


Latest FCPX shows Radeon VII:
View attachment 435602

FCPX H264 export uses GPU (but not at 100%, and it is not loading the CPU):
View attachment 435603



FCPX HEVC 8Bit export doesn't seem to use GPU, but uses CPU instead:
View attachment 435605

FCPX HEVC 10Bit export (through compressor, with GPU enabled) doesn't seem to use GPU, but uses CPU instead:
View attachment 435606

Adobe Media Encoder CC2019 for H264 (with hardware enabled in settings, and OpenCL, since Metal is slower) uses GPU (but not at 100%):
View attachment 435607

Adobe Media Encoder CC2019 for HEVC (with hardware enabled in settings, and OpenCL, since Metal is slower) uses GPU (but not at 100%):
View attachment 435608

QuickTime Player H264 exporter uses GPU but at a very low amount:
View attachment 435609

QuickTime Player HEVC exporter uses GPU but at a very low amount:
View attachment 435610

VideoProc sees both H264 and HEVC:
View attachment 435611

Ah yes!! I completely forgot about how the T2 factors in... That makes perfect sense! Thank you!

 

[izo1]

Ah yes!! I completely forgot about how the T2 factors in... That makes perfect sense! Thank you!

No problem!

I edited the post and added Davinci Resolve 16 results, and it's definitely using the AMD HEVC/H264 engine to almost it's full potential.

So the culprits here are:

• Lack of T2 chip
• Lack of iGPU (in my system, or when disabled)
• Hardware-tied applications like FCPX (ie it looks for T2/Intel QuickSync and ignores AMD)
• Lack of performance improvements for Adobe (they suck!)

What IS interesting is, for example in FCPX, when I enabled stabilization on a 1 minute clip, the GPU usage shot up to 100% on the Radeon VII! So it is indeed using the GPU, just not for HEVC exports (H264 it uses it, but not at 100%). Which makes sense.

 

[pastrychef]

No problem!

I edited the post and added Davinci Resolve 16 results, and it's definitely using the AMD HEVC/H264 engine to almost it's full potential.

So the culprits here are:

• Lack of T2 chip
• Lack of iGPU (in my system, or when disabled)
• Hardware-tied applications like FCPX (ie it looks for T2/Intel QuickSync and ignores AMD)
• Lack of performance improvements for Adobe (they suck!)

What IS interesting is, for example in FCPX, when I enabled stabilization on a 1 minute clip, the GPU usage shot up to 100% on the Radeon VII! So it is indeed using the GPU, just not for HEVC exports (H264 it uses it, but not at 100%). Which makes sense.

I know you are on X299, but the original poster reported that by using iMacPro1,1 system definition and ENABLING IGPU in BIOS, he got accelerated HEVC exports in FCPX. So it seems that FCPX itself will use T2 if available and, if not, it will look for QuickSync but it will not use dGPU for HEVC encode.

 

[izo1]

I know you are on X299, but the original poster reported that by using iMacPro1,1 system definition and ENABLING IGPU in BIOS, he got accelerated HEVC exports in FCPX. So it seems that FCPX itself will use T2 if available and, if not, it will look for QuickSync but it will not use dGPU for HEVC encode.

Yeah, I think it falls back to iGPU when it doesn't see a T2 chip for HEVC...so it goes in this order:

T2 > iGPU > CPU

I just don't get why it uses AMD for H264 (even if it's only 30%?)...really weird and messy.

Eventually T2 (or whatever new name they'll use) will be included in all Macs. macOS Catalina still supports non T2 supported Macs, so I assume Apple is just keeping iGPU support until they don't have to. Maybe they will even dump Intel QuickSync support when they all supported Macs have T2 chips.

 

[pastrychef]

Yeah, I think it falls back to iGPU when it doesn't see a T2 chip for HEVC...so it goes in this order:

T2 > iGPU > CPU

I just don't get why it uses AMD for H264 (even if it's only 30%?)...really weird and messy.

Eventually T2 (or whatever new name they'll use) will be included in all Macs. macOS Catalina still supports non T2 supported Macs, so I assume Apple is just keeping iGPU support until they don't have to. Maybe they will even dump Intel QuickSync support when they all supported Macs have T2 chips.

I need to try enabling IGPU with iMacPro1,1 to see how DRM content works out with this configuration...

 

[izo1]

I need to try enabling IGPU with iMacPro1,1 to see how DRM content works out with this configuration...

Is there a reason why you're not using iMac 19,1 instead with iGPU enabled? Seems like a better choice for your config. I know it might be due to the Radeon VII you stuck with iMac Pro 1,1.

DRM on my end works perfectly on Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc. both in Chrome and Safari, fwiw.

 

[pastrychef]

Is there a reason why you're not using iMac 19,1 instead with iGPU enabled? Seems like a better choice for your config. I know it might be due to the Radeon VII you stuck with iMac Pro 1,1.

DRM on my end works perfectly on Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc. both in Chrome and Safari, fwiw.

There were multiple reason...

• It seemed like there were no compromises when using iMacPro1,1.
• None of the iMac17,x-19,x system definitions had consistent, working DRM.
• Booting was easier with IGPU disabled on my Z390. (issue related to lack of NVRAM on Z390 which has improved drastically.)

I am currently booted in with iMacPro1,1 system definition and IGPU enabled. I can confirm that:

• DRM continues to work. (Apple TV app streaming, Amazon Prime streaming in Safari)
• IGPU is indeed enabled and seen with IORegistryExplorer. (self configured ig-platform-id is 3E91003)
• VideoProc shows H.264 and HEVC available and working.

 

[remington]

I am currently booted in with iMacPro1,1 system definition and IGPU enabled. I can confirm that:

• DRM continues to work. (Apple TV app streaming, Amazon Prime streaming in Safari)
• IGPU is indeed enabled and seen with IORegistryExplorer. (self configured ig-platform-id is 3E91003)
• VideoProc shows H.264 and HEVC available and working.

I already tested iMacPro1,1 with iGPU enabled before and everything worked fine including TV+ app. Anyway, I disabled iGPU to see if iMacPro1,1 will use the RX 580 encoder to encode 300MB video and here are the results. I used Handbrake to encode the video.

h.264 encoder (VideoToolbox):
- Time from 8:24:42 to 8:27:10
- 2 minutes 38 seconds to complete
- GPU is 10% and CPU is 45-50%

h.264 encoder
- Time from 8:30:53 to 8:36:56
- 6 minutes 3 seconds to complete
- GPU is negligible while CPU is at 95%

The left graph is GPU and the right graph is CPU.

Is there anyway to get encoder to use full RX power?

 

[glofter1]

here you are.
Z390 - 9900K - RX580 - SMBIOS 19.1

 

[jaymonkey]

Is there anyway to get encoder to use full RX power?

@remington,

The latest version of FCPX (10.4.7) allows you to select which GPU you want to use for rendering.
Adobe CC2020 Apps also now allow you to select both GPU and API to use for rendering.

Apps such as VideoProc and Handbrake use the Apple VideoTool box API and in most cases will attempt to use IQS or T2.

Cheers
Jay