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Nvidia and New Mac Pros
Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 2:14 pm
by pjmc377
We are a Mac based Studio and will upgrade to the new Mac Pro We are still using the old Mac Pro towers because of the Nvidia cards and support.. However, the new Mac Pro's and any recent Mac OS doesn't support NVIDIA or CUDA. Where does that leave us with Maxwell 5 ?
Re: Nvidia and New Mac Pros
Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 2:47 pm
by Forum Moderator
Hello,
Since Apple has restricted even more any possible hack, or option to add an external Nvidia GPU, I guess for the moment, your only alternative to speed up the renders is using Maxwell Cloud (
https://nextlimitsupport.atlassian.net/ ... well+Cloud). Currently, we are only using CPUs in the cloud, but the idea is to also have GPU machines at some point, which will set the GPU power free for Mac users.
If you are Mac lovers, I'd also suggest you pressing Apple to include Nvidia cards among the options when customizing your new Mac Pro towers, but I guess they have some restrictive contract of some kind restricting it.
Kind regards,
Fernando
Re: Nvidia and New Mac Pros
Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 4:42 pm
by Q2
I do have the same problem and am thinking about buying PC's and abandon OSX and Apple.
But I still hope that they eventually will support Nvidia's in the future, but to be honest, I believe that when building my own custom PC, I will pay way less money for much more power and speed. Hard to make the switch but I guess there's no way arround it.
GPU rendering with multiple cards is just the way the industry goes and Apple is on their way out of this segment.
Bummer...
Q!
Re: Nvidia and New Mac Pros
Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 5:04 pm
by dmeyer
Having made the switch myself when the Trash Can was released, its really not bad these days with Windows 10, and the speed makes it worth it, imho.
If you want the turnkey workstation experience, get a Precision workstation from Dell, with 5 year on-site service. Or HP, BOXX, etc.
Re: Nvidia and New Mac Pros
Posted: Fri Nov 01, 2019 3:19 pm
by pjmc377
OctaneRender requires a CUDA-enabled NVIDIA video card to render. Work is ongoing to assimilate GPUs from AMD and Intel for future versions of OctaneRender. and allow these to be used with OctaneRender.
It would help your whole Mac userbase if you could also look for a way to embrace other cards. As it seems, no new macs will support Nvidia
Re: Nvidia and New Mac Pros
Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2019 1:55 pm
by fv
From what I have read Apple is moving away from Cuda and OpenCL towards Metal.
Interesting article here on what to expect from Apple and Microsoft :
https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10 ... ith-nvidia
If you are using Mac's and wish to keep doing so you are probably going to use Redshift, Corona, Octane or other engines that are either Metal or CPU based.
For PC's, the new AMD 3rd generation threadrippers available since november make me feel that CPU rendering is not a dead end at all.
Re: Nvidia and New Mac Pros
Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2019 4:36 pm
by pjmc377
Otoy is supporting Metal and seem very enthusiastic about it.
https://twitter.com/OTOY/status/1135629961841086464
Re: Nvidia and New Mac Pros
Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2019 8:23 pm
by dmeyer
For Octane user's sake i hope so, but they said the same thing about OpenCL. The proof will be when and if it ships.
Re: Nvidia and New Mac Pros
Posted: Tue Nov 05, 2019 8:20 am
by Q2
Well, after long consideration I am going to switch to a custom build threadripper 64 core system with 4 GPU's.
I guess that I will have the best for both worlds: Fast CPU speed and enough power for GPU rendering.
Only drawback is that I have to abandon OSX...
Ah... What da heck. If my renders pop up faster I am happy with WIN X.
