Mac mini 2018 + eGPU???

[Sharkey]

All I have read about the titled set up has been reference 'gaming'. I do not game.

So is there a set up that has qualities that would be of benefit to me?

Affinity Photo. Thats it.

If I put a 27/30+" display on a new Mac mini is there any point in running an eGPU. Speed of export/rendering editing in general. Even longevity of the MacMini itself (less GPU strain).

My Mac Pro (late 2013 base model) struggles with photo editing on a 4K display - I now run my old Eizo (better colour & less stress) and find little or no difference worth reference.

My wife 2018 Mac mini runs my old 31" LG 4K with ease (photo but no video editing).

It concerns that Serif stuff does, at the moment' not require the GPU power other software seems to and that the Mac mini is therefor perfect for AP usage. At any time a change to (metal/ open closed whatever) may change all that in a stroke and I will be back where I am now; struggling!!

Thoughts please - not TOO MUCH  jargon - thank you.

[v_kyr]

Not sure where your problem is, from Apple there is actually a clear number of desktop computers in partly different configurations available (iMacs, iMacs Pro, Mac Pro and the new Mac mini). If you tend to like and prefer a Mac mini as a desktop computer then fine just take one and work with that. - Generally hardware and software always changes over time, get's modernized and more up to date, so is not carved in stone.

The Affinity software products actually don't make much or any use of GPU power, so using an eGPU just for these seems to be superfluous at the moment. And as far as you don't do heavy video editing or 3D rendering etc. or other GPU intensive tasks, beside using Affinity Photo, I don't see any reason to buy or use an eGPU yet. - Instead you can buy and add an eGPU later anytime when you really have a use and need for it!

 

 

[R C-R]

From this beta forum topic in the Changes Since 1.6 Release section there is this:

Quote

 

Performance

- The core processing engine in Affinity Photo has been rewritten to take advantage of the powerful discrete AMD GPUs in modern Mac hardware. It will now automatically use any compatible discrete GPU, alongside the Intel GPU support present in 1.6. Typically this improves compositing / editing performance by at least 1000%. Performance when using integrated Intel GPUs has also been massively improved.

- External GPUs (eGPU) are also supported - including hot-plug-and-unplug support.

- Multiple GPUs are supported - if you have more than 1 GPU (ie. Intel + AMD in MacBook Pro, or Intel + eGPU in other Macs) Photo will use them all, at the same time, to improve performance. There is no limit to the number of GPUs which can be used.

 

 

So yes, it is reasonable to assume a 2018 Mac Mini + eGPU setup will perform some things much faster in the 1.7 version of Photo, but at least for now that is an expensive purchase that you might want to postpone until the 1.7 version is out of beta & reports of the real world improvements begin to trickle in.

[thomasp]

If you have a Mac Pro 2013 - you can try running an eGPU with that as well! There's a community for this at https://egpu.io/

Several cylinder macs listed as working configurations. Also interestingly there are benchmarks posted over there that make it seem as if TB1, TB2 and TB3 are pretty close together in terms of performance for at least the tested resolution (1080p, it's mostly a gamer oriented site after all). Not at all like what you can read elsewhere where it sounds as TB3 is the only way.

Personally I think if you are not afraid of cracking open your Mac Pro you might as well look into installing a more competent CPU first - The 8-core Xeon 2667 is pretty cheap to get - well, at least in my area.

And I'm generally not sure if an eGPU solution is rock solid enough (yet) to be used as a production setup. I've seen enough complaints that kinda point to the opposite.

[Sharkey]

"RAW files now load much more quickly - especially if you have a compatible GPU".

Would be good to know that my Twin D300s where compatible??

I have mostly found it very difficult to get any definitive answers to compatibility/setup/preferences for my machine to get the best out of AP.

Probably just me but the answers are usually one of two types - non existent or just beyond my technical vocabulary

Thank you for the responses thus far.

The eGPU set ups for my machine are way out of my league (if if aint plug & play - forget it), so it looks like a wait and see job.  Frustrating isn't it?

The 1.7 does however look very promising and if I stick with a smallish display I may need to do nothing at all . Unusually!

Might even take a few pictures this year 

[R C-R]

34 minutes ago, Sharkey said:

Probably just me but the answers are usually one of two types - non existent or just beyond my technical vocabulary

It isn't just you. Finding any info is hard enough, & most of it that is at all useful relies on a lot of technical jargon to explain what various GPUs can support, & why. Plus, for GPUs like the dual AMD FirePro D300s in 2013 Mac Pros, it does not help that they are special Apple-only variants (probably) derived from the AMD FirePro W7000, as mentioned here.

Regarding the compatibility of your D300s in particular, digging around on the web I found this article. Like the others, it is full of technical jargon but there are a few interesting tidbits that are not too difficult to understand. The most relevant one is that there is no system-wide support for automatically splitting the computational workload between the two cards -- the Mac Pro normally uses one of the GPUs only to drive the display & the other one only for GPU computations. The article says apps have to be written specifically to split driving the display between the two cards, which would be important for game apps, but it isn't clear if that is also true going the other way (to split the computational workload between them), which I suppose would be important to maximize RAW performance & such in Affinity Photo.

From what the staff have said about the 1.7 optimizations, it seems likely that even if only one of your D300s drives the display & the other one only does the computational stuff, you should still get a substantial performance boost, but maybe not as much as if Affinity Photo handled the split.

Either way, there isn't anything you can do that would make a difference, so since it is not "plug & play" (because there is nothing external to plug in), why not just try out the 1.7 beta & compare the results with the 1.6 version?

[Sharkey]

RC-R, thank you for that. I have done my best to get the gist of the referenced articles and it does seem to me that my original choice of machinery (apart from limited display output) has proven quite affective. Makes a change

We (trashcan owners club), also might get a bit of a bonus with AP in that from replies ;limited; even if the Apple coding for the GPUs is restrictive what capacity that is not utilised in the GPU driving the display may (via AP core) be available ????? All Computational and Graphical hardware will be used. Encouraging - right or wrong. The fact that third party software writers

are finally seeing the whole machine as available for use is long overdue, I think?

Just one other question.

Your Avatar? Why?

Regards

 

[thomasp]

For completeness sake here's a comparison of CPU options available for your machine:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-Xeon-E5-2667-v2-vs-Intel-Xeon-E5-1650-v2-vs-Intel-Xeon-E5-1620-v2/2154vs2066vs2047

From left to right: 8-core after-market CPU widely reported as compatible vs 6-core Mac Pro current base vs your 4-core original base model. For multi core applications according to that chart that puts it above the new Mac mini. Question is how much that benefits AP in operation.

 

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, Sharkey said:

Just one other question.
Your Avatar? Why?

Why not?