Anyone use Mac + eGPU

Topaz Video AI General
1

I’m looking at Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box 550 or AKiTiO Node Titan Do anyone you guys have any experience using these and what results you seen?

2

I’m using:

  • Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box with 650W Power Supply
  • XFX Force Radeon RX 5700 XT THICC III Ultra Graphics Card

I had some issues at first with some of the Topaz tools, lots of reinstalling and rebooting, but it all worked out after a bit of that sort of troubleshooting. When I used it with my Macbook Pro the performance difference was around 10%. But using it with my newer iMac it’s been 50% faster than on the Macbook. Something that was to take 10 hours on the Macbook with eGPU is taking 5 on the iMac with eGPU. Notice I’m comparing Macbook to iMac though…

I never ran a test with ONLY the iMac and then iMac + eGPU.

But if you’re only wondering “does it work and are their performance increases” I can say “yes, for me”.

3

Thats some awesome feedback, what year is your macbook pro and imac?

4

2018 Macbook Pro? And 2019 iMac.

5

I got a 2018 MacBook Pro and a Razer Core X Chroma with a Radeon RX 5700 XT.

I can confirm the supported models are running vastly faster on the eGPU. Setup was easy.

Sadly the Gaia model is still CPU only, would love to see how this one performs.

Uh… ask me anything?

6

I ordered AKiTiO Node Titan
eGPU Enclosure with Radeon RX 580 GPU Bundle

I should have it in the next week or so, I will use this with my MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) 2.4 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9 / AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8 GB

I will post results once I have them

7

Current version definitely works even with questionably supported hardware. I am using a late 2013 retina macbook pro with Aktio Node 3 eGPU with a radeon rx-570, which requires the use of purge-wrangler as its a TB 2.0 machine, and it works fine - certainly faster than the CPU or the nvidia GTX-750m built in. It doesn’t hold a candle to my pc with an RTX 3070 which is roughly 10-12x faster. Haven’t yet tried running the RTX in my egpu but might give it a shot at some point - not sure if it’ll work given lack of official VEAI support for nvidia egpu on macs.

8

Have you seen any results? I’m a n00b to this app and have a 2013 Mac Pro. I’m running tests on the on-board GPU. I’ve set 1 of the GPUs to be dedicated to Topaz. Gaia-HD is running about 2-3 seconds per frame on average across various input media types.

9

How does the XFX fit in the Sonnet box ? Their compatibility chart says it’s too big

10

It is too big. I wish i had seen that chart before i bought it.

BUT, i took the box completely apart and back together and it fits and works great. 100% snug though.

11

How is the noise level ?

12

Very low.

Answering a month later so for future people I’m guessing. It’s under my desk three feet away, but I can’t hear it over my imac when it’s idle or low use. When it’s really working hard (Video Enhance or Denoise for a batch) I can hear it spin up for a second, but barely audible for the most part.

13

Hello everyone! Glad there’s a topic about it.
I have an 27" iMac with 8GB Vega GPU but after reading about eGPU capabilities, I decided to get one to not strain my internal gpu and have faster renders. So I got an AMD RX6800 XT 16gb with a Chrome X enclosure.
Overall the computer graphics run faster and all is good, but when using Topaz, the main reason I got this setup, the software just keeps on Crashing! My computer freezes sometimes immediately, sometimes it renders for 10-20 minutes and my computer just reboots.
I did lower the Memory usage 50, 20, 10% and while it held up a bit longer, eventually it just crashes (30 min is the max time for now).
Wondering if this is a Topaz issue that can’t handle the power/data/gpu efficiency, or is it my USB ports that are faulty…

If someone has any recommendations as to what to do, I’d appreciate it! The only thing that I haven’t done so far is to “update the GPU drivers”, but I don’t have a Windows computer but also thinking, is it necessary? as the drivers are related to the OS, not the card itself (unless there’s a firmware update?)

I’m starting to thinking if I should just return this all and maybe get those new M2 Pro computers…

Thanks!