What's the deal with Radeon Pro Duo (vs Nvidia 1080) for Resolve, RED 8K, and VR

[Michael Hastings]

Wondering where this new card fits for working with 8K Epic-W footage.

Performance vs Nvidia 1080Ti?

Can it be used in external box for working with MacBook Pro?

Supposedly there is a second card available with a built in SSD that has direct connection to the graphics card which bypasses the CPU for direct transfer of data to and from the GPU. Does this provide significant benefits for us? Are there eGPU boxes that would support both cards?


Press release (partial):

NAB SHOW 2017, LAS VEGAS, Nev. 4/24/2017
​Today AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) announced the world’s first dual-GPU graphics card designed for professionals: the Polaris-architecture-based Radeon™ Pro Duo. Built on the capabilities of the Radeon™ Pro WX 7100, the Radeon Pro Duo professional graphics card is designed to excel at media and entertainment, broadcast, and design and manufacturing workflows, delivering outstanding performance and superior flexibility that today’s creative professionals demand.

....

Radeon Pro at NAB 2017

Along with the launch of the Radeon Pro Duo at NAB 2017, AMD is showing off a wide range of innovations for media and entertainment professionals:

Professional color correction using BlackMagic Resolve powered by the new Radeon Pro Duo
Incredible real-time 360 video stitching and real-time VR preview using Radeon™ Loom and the HTC Vive, and powered by the new Radeon Pro Duo
Accelerated rendering performance in Blender using Radeon ProRender and “Out of Core” technology to access system memory for increased frame buffer capacity powered by the Radeon Pro Duo
VR content creation using Radeon Pro Duo
Real-time rendering at 4K resolution in Radeon ProRender powered by AMD's next-generation Radeon™ Pro SSG
8K video post-processing in Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017 enabled by AMD's next-generation Radeon™ Pro SSG
Stunning VR experiences from Rewind and The Foundry's Nuke running on Radeon™ Pro WX 7100



Full press release:

http://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/the-new-radeon-2017apr24.aspx

 

[Michael Hastings]

any thoughts?

 

[L. Langer]

What you saw at NAB won't be available for some time. The video card will launch sometime in the next few months and the SSD storage is only available to devs to...well...dev shit, so people can use it some time in the future. It likely won't get a wide release until next year cause it's at the point where software has not caught up with the hardware and various applications have to be redesigned/developed to take advantage of it.

 

[Chad Lancaster]

1080Ti can be used as a eGPU but requires some scripting to get it to work on the new macbook pro. Most people have made it work super easily and some times it takes some work. Nvidia has drivers for mac now so it's just the eGPU script. Windows is no problem.

my sponsor at AKiTiO has the NODE which is a TB3 eGPU enclosure. We will have a group buy for it any day, just waiting on them to give me the go ahead.

Also does AMD work over thunderbolt since its an intel product? not sure on that one

 

[Phil Holland]

A single Radeon Duo Pro was indeed driving the Dell 8K display at NAB while editing on an 8K timeline, though at 1/2 or 1/4. Have to check the photo.

I've been 100% Nvidia based for a long while, but this card is interesting. It is coming this year from what I understand. Might have one here to test June. Price point is about 3-4X 1080 Ti.

Lots of interesting stuff coming down the pipe shortly from Nvidia too. Crazy times with GPUs popping out faster than you'd expect.

 

[Remington Chase]

AMD took a 30% stock hit last week and NVDA is going up up up...... the worlds most powerful pro computer...... less then 30 days

 

[Frank Glencairn]

The stock price doesn't help me editing, so who cares?

 

[Michael Hastings]

A single Radeon Duo Pro was indeed driving the Dell 8K display at NAB while editing on an 8K timeline, though at 1/2 or 1/4. Have to check the photo.

I've been 100% Nvidia based for a long while, but this card is interesting. It is coming this year from what I understand. Might have one here to test June. Price point is about 3-4X 1080 Ti.

Lots of interesting stuff coming down the pipe shortly from Nvidia too. Crazy times with GPUs popping out faster than you'd expect.

Press release says price is $999:

"The Radeon Pro Duo’s planned availability is the end of May at an expected SEP of US$999."


so only $200 more than 1080Ti.

 

[L. Langer]

I highly doubt it's coming out at the end of the month. The way AMD works in regards to their professional products is that Enterprise/HPC OEMs get their CPUs/APUs/GPUs ahead of everyone else, so they can be plopped into workstation/servers/business desktops and laptops. Within several months, the parts hit the open market. There's not a single pre-order for the 2017 Radeon Pro Duo anywhere and sellers are trying to clear out the previous version right now. A more likely release date would be July-August-September, with August-September being more likely. Also, AMD's lack of HBM on this new card makes it somewhat questionable when Nvidia is releasing their upcoming high-end Volta-based Quadro cards with HBM.

 

[Ben McCarthy]

what's with the release of this card when Vega is being released soon "we’re looking at 8GB Of HBM2 (High-Bandwidth Memory) with a super-wide 2048-bit bus."

 

[L. Langer]

what's with the release of this card when Vega is being released soon.

AMD is cooking up different products for different markets and the Radeon Pro Duo is intended for visual applications and not HPC, so it uses older tech and no HBM. The first Vega Pro GPU card - Radeon Vega Frontier Edition - has been announced, but it's for HPC use and not media stuff, so it won't be the choice of anyone here and it will be priced accordingly. We'll likely get some more info about upcoming Radeon Pro cards with Vega at Computex.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Funny, how do they expect to deal with the high end visual market by releasing a low end card ,(relatively speaking, for it). 8k-16k+ might be the end of 2D, but 16k is only the beginning of holographic. They need to get their act together. :smiley:

 

[Serge Polevitzky]

All -- This is a Titan Xp + Akitio Node + nMP (2013) Mac Pro + 10.12.5 update (sorta).


First, you'll need to get and execute the "curl script" on 9to5mac.com and elsewhere:

To get & install eGPU driver:

curl -o ~/Desktop/automate-eGPU.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/goalque/automate-eGPU/master/automate-eGPU.sh && chmod +x ~/Desktop/automate-eGPU.sh && cd ~/Desktop && sudo ./automate-eGPU.sh

https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/19/akitio-node-gtx-1080-ti-gpu-macbook-pro-gaming-egpu/


OK, you're ready to start.

(1) Two (2) Akitio Nodes plugged into TB2 via Apple's TB3-to-TB2 adapters. Titan Xps in each Node. 10.12.5 on nMP 8-core with 2 D700s + 64MB.
YOU MUST FOLLOW THE FOLLOWING: turn off the Nodes. Boot up into Single User mode. (You may be able to skip the next step) .. run fsck -f [this
is meant to add a bit more time for things to load in the background .. and checking your boot disk is probably a good thing to do anyway]. NOW turn
on the Node(s). exit or ^D to finish Single User mode. Enjoy ... but beware:

(2) Resolve 14beta 2 seems to be eGPU friendly. I find that I get about 5 frames/sec processed out of Resolve 14Beta2 [6144 by 3160 by 29.97 by 4444XQ.

(3) After Effects looks as if some features are eGPU-aware, but not all. I've see a few AE freezes, so I've stuck with Resolve. AE (IIRC) lets you select
between OpenCL, CUDA, and Metal. I picked CUDA.

Apple's Compressor [4.3.2 under 10.12.5] seems to know about the Titan Xps, but Compressor is more reliable (doesn't exit with failed compression) if its run when booted with the Nodes off at boot time & KEPT OFF.

FCP X [10.3.3 under 10.12.5] quits unexpectedly when I try to import a clip.


I'm looking to upgrade the Nodes (they are running the firmware that they came with) to the version dated April 6, 2017. You can only do the upgrade with Windows10. (ugh !).
And, of course, Akitio says that the Node is not supported on the Mac.

Let us know if anyone has better info/ideas, or workarounds (especially the you-can-only-upgrade-the-Node-firmware-under-Win10 PITA)

Tx,
Serge