So I finally decided to bite and bought a Razor Core X + Vega 56 for some more adventurous Mac development. Whilst the new in-built Radeon Pro series is good enough in a lot of scenario’s when aiming towards BOTD level it struggles averaging 17 - 20 FPS.
Now, due to inherent bandwidth losses when considering TB3 vs. PCI-E it might seem pertinent to curb one’s enthusiasm. Benchmarking w/ GL initially showed some rather dire performance results, netting on average a 50% loss compared to it’s PC / Windows equivalent (with external display).
It’s not until you use Metal API the GPU shine’s and then you can obviously see benefits. On average the Vega 56 is 4 - 5X faster in Unity than it’s Radeon Pro 560 counterpart. Which is actually better than some PC windows (DX11) benchmarks in comparison. Inside the editor @ 1080P / max BOTD benchmarked on average 85 - 100 FPS / 5.5 - 8 ms RThread.
That’s impressive, even at 1440P I was returning on average 60FPS / 15 - 17 msec. The only downside I’ve seen so far is stability, 2019 would constantly crash for some reason or another, 2018.4 LTS was a little pot luck. The odd occasional stagger and I crashed the editor by changing the PIE resolution size.
Still for a bit of gaming and heavier Mac development the benefits are better than expected and with Apple getting behind the gaming scene I’d highly recommend it. I’m sure in time all the niggles will be rectified.
I use a Mac Mini w/ an external RX 480, and it’s what enabled me to work with the BOTD environment easily, as well. I’m super happy with it, especially coming at the end of last year when Mac prosumers were in a particularly piqued state of existential crisis.
I don’t believe so, it’s not on their supported GPU list. It wouldn’t of mattered anyway for me, the standard 5700 over here is $130.00 more expensive than the current price of the Vega 56 (they’re dropping through the floor). With only a 15% gain in performance.
I wouldn’t mind if Nvidia got on board with Mac, I have a spare 1080TI I use for my Windows / Linux testbed.
There was a window of about 4 months where I worked on Windows (no pun intended) after an old Mac failed and before I got the new one. My productivity shot way back up after it ended. It’s totally personal, of course, but I came to rely on too many UI affordances that I couldn’t reproduce (Miller columns in separate windows, respectful app focus, USB overdrive, quickly moving files in the file system, the quit concept, etc). I don’t begrudge anyone who feels differently, but I sure was glad to have my wings back!
yh me too i don’t think i’d ever go back to windows, but when i was weighing up the options, the bottlenecks of using an egpu (processor and throughput) along with the incredibly high prices put me off the idea. it is interesting to know though.
I’m considering picking one up for builds and testing, but I’m waiting for them to swap out the butterfly switches for the new scissor switches. I’ve heard entirely too many reviewers complaining about them to take any chances. Especially when you have to buy all the specs you feel you will need upfront thanks to everything being soldered.
That said it’s just one of many systems on my list. I need at least two systems (most likely budget gaming laptops) for testing low- and mid-range gaming scenarios, and my desktop will be getting upgraded to run Linux with Windows VMs.
When using metal I’m hardly noticing a difference, the GPU I picked up was cheap for the performance it gives. The real cost stems from having to buy an enclosure, the Razer core was £280.00 alone.
I got the Sonnet box with Radeon 580 last year, and saw some improvement over the 560 in my 2017 MBP, but it still lags far behind the same 580 in my Windows computer. In the Unity player settings, Auto Graphics API for Mac is enabled, which I assume would use Metal…is there something else I should do to benefit from Metal?
Sure, for me it did take a little bit of setting up:
First make sure your editor is using metal:
Also make sure the editor is using the correct GPU by going to Unity > Preferences > General:
If for some reason it isn’t using Metal, you need to go to editor preferences and make sure under “player” Metal API is added and Metal Editor support is enabled.
Thanks! But my editor does say in the title bar, and has the eGPU selected (that was problematic a year ago but fixed in some Unity update). Darn. I was hoping this was the reason for not-so-great performance from the Radeon 580…
Are you running in non-native resolution for your monitor? I found that the performance is degrades quite a bit if if the display settings are anything other than default. One of my monitors is 5k, but only 30in, so the text was a little hard to read. But if I reduce the resolution, the performance noticeably degrades. Even with games.
Hmm, no – running at native resolution (2560x1440).
Part of the problem is that my game has a lot of vegetation, and Mac Metal doesn’t support Instanced Indirect, so that hurts quite a bit, but still doesn’t explain (I don’t think) the mediocre performance of the Radeon – basically half the FPS as the same card on Windows.
Thunderbolt 3 has one quarter the bandwidth of an internal graphics card slot. Between sending the data and the draw commands to the GPU there is a performance drop of around 20%, and then if the output is being brought back across there is yet another performance drop.
It will be a bit slower than a similarly equipped internal one, but shouldn’t be that noticeable. Also make sure you are using a very short cable from your MBP to your egpu (<.5m) and of good quality.