Mac Pro GPU Dual AMD FirePro D700 with Premiere

[jordanedit]

Does Mercury Engine work with the new Mac Pro Dual AMD FirePro D700?

[Jim_Simon]

[Moved to Hardware forum.]

[ECBowen]

If you have CC then yes it should work fine. CC no longer requires a supported GPU for the GPU acceleration to initialize by default.

Eric

ADK

[jordanedit]

Perfect, i plan to move to CC from CS 6. i do understand their is a Hack to make it work in CS6

[ECBowen]

Yes but 10.9 hasnt been so friendly to CS6 from the forum threads I see

Eric

ADK

[jasonvp]

jordanedit wrote:

Does Mercury Engine work with the new Mac Pro Dual AMD FirePro D700?

A few  things are at play here.

1.  AMD GPUs are only good for OpenCL, which requires Pr CS6 or greater.

2.  If you want to use both GPUs, then you need to be running Pr CC.  Anything prior to that will only support using one of the GPUs. 

3.  As of the latest Pr 7.2, the AMD GPUs on the new Mac Pro are not listed in the proper text file.  Pr will still use them, but AME will not.  In order to make AME use the cards, you'll need to delete the file or add the GPUs to it (I've always found deleting the file to be easier).

[jordanedit]

Thanks for the details from everyone. It helps with my equipment purchase.

[RedDirt]

By the way, I just spoke to Adobe, and apparently Premiere Pro CC 2014 does NOT yet work correctly with the AMD700 dual graphics cards in the new Mac Pro.  It's a known issue.  I highly recommend ALL users of the New Mac Pro contact Adobe to make sure they prioritize addressing this issue.  Apparently, Premiere will only take advantage of 2GB of the 12GB of VRAM on the AMD700's.... or something to that effect.

I noticed this issue because of very long export times -- particularly the longer my sequence.  A 10-minute sequence (4K Red) would take about 12 minutes to export to H264.  But a 1-hour sequence would take 3 hours.  Makes no sense -- but in light of the graphics card issue, kinda does.

Adobe -- PLEASE PRIORITIZE this fix for those of us who not only spent more than $5K on a MacPro, but are continuing to spend $50/month for Premiere that does not work properly with our graphics cards.

[jordanedit]

I posted this in August before I made the big purchase. I bought three mac pros for a company. We also installed AJA io4K boxes,  they only work with CC, my company has many copies of CS6 and kicked and screamed about CC. It was painful.

I only received the computers a few weeks ago. Your comments may explain the poor playback of Panasonic codecs with a key... must play at 1/2 resolution. I did do a test of transcoding to ProRes with Prelude and Premiere plays much better.

Thanks for the GPU update.

All in all adobe is an amazing creative tool. It is great to dynamic link to After Effects, Speed Grade (my new favorite way to color correct) and Audition. I am very greatful for this system.

[Robotfist]

Any updates on this?  Does Adobe Premiere utilize the dual graphics card of the Mac Pros yet?

[jordanedit]

Edit trainer Larry Jordan (no relation) with access to Adobe personal says Adobe has a goal to make open CL just as effective as the cuda Nvidea system. Certainly the GUP is improving performance on my system. I had IT add a performance monitor app to my computer, my interpretation is the graphic cards could do a lot more work.

In my mind it may be time for Premiere to give up on the concept that it can perform with different codecs in real-time without rendering. 4k is on the way… it may be good to have a auto render like FPC7 when the edit system is at rest.

I don’t mean to be negative about the Adobe system. It is my tool of choice because of its intuitive way to create media stories. I am fortunate and grateful to work with this Adobe system. On the other hand I want to push for the best system possible. Improving GPU is one step.

Because we are talking Mac I will talk about the last update 2014 fall. I am new to the cloud and felt I should pull the trigger when it came available, hoping to improve GPU assistance. I use AJA Io4k for my in out box. AJA had great conflicts with premiere after the update. I am currently running a beta version of AJA software to reduce crashing. I did say reduce crashing, it is much better now, crashing twice a day instead of every 10 minutes. It is important to note this is a third party problem, not Adobe.

[jasonvp]

Robot Fist wrote:

Any updates on this?  Does Adobe Premiere utilize the dual graphics card of the Mac Pros yet?

RedDirt's post was incorrect (regardless of who he talked to at Adobe).  The D700s are fully supported and work fine with Pr, and have since the Macs were released.  There were OS issues with a couple of the 10.9 dot-releases that Apple screwed up, but that had nothing to do with Adobe.

[thevideoguru]

It's 2016 and this is still not the case. Adobe rep confirmed this has been a known issue for the last 3-6 months.

[jmshrrsn]

Hear hear.

I have submitted a bug report.  But Final Cut Pro is waiting in the wings to take over... the situation with Adobe's PP 2014.1 not working with Apple's latest MacPros is disappointing to say the least, and at worst, threatens my ability to earn the money I need to pay Creative Cloud's £47 monthly subscription.

[ECBowen]

I would not expect FCPX to make much headway in the trust category right now or anytime in the  near future.  They burned that bridge. However Davinci's evolution is very, very interesting and now Fusion is in the mix. If you want to know where the future is going watch those 2 very carefully. Davinci is the most advanced GPU acceleration application out right now.

Eric
ADK

[scottauerbach]

Update: As of the end of May, 2015 (NINE MONTHS after RedDirt's post) Adobe STILL has not fixed this problem.  Unfortunately, I was unaware of the problem when I bought my MacPro, and have spent MONTHS trying to debug the system, on and off (luckily I'm doing very little editing at the moment).  Multiple posts to the Premiere user forum have gone unanswered by anyone at Adobe, despite the fact that this is a "known issue."  Apparently it's not even well "known" among its own support techs, since I just spent nearly 2 hours on the phone with one before he finally found the D700 issue in his knowledge base.

Had this been more public, I would have bought the D500 model, which is supposedly far more stable.

Steam pouring out my ears. 

[RoninEdits]

im not sure of all the problems caused with the D700 and premiere, however reading on other forums for other software i use, they have issues with the D700's as well. they make it sound like its an overheating issue, and the D500's don't run as hot, making them stable.

[ECBowen]

No there are many editors I read constantly using D700's with their nMPro's who don't have issues but the applications are different. The load that Adobe put's on the GPU's is often not that significant until you get to 4K+ with debayered elements or rendering Debayered material. Then the GPU load skyrockets with CC and GPU acceleration. Many people are using Redcine X Pro and not having issues with the D700's and RedcineX Pro also puts a significant load on the GPU's. This is not a heat issue.

[RoninEdits]

just reporting what i read on other forums, i'm sure its not every system or there would be more widespread reporting of this. the overheating issue may be separate from other software issues between premiere, osx, and amd drivers. what i've seen is they get corrupt display, showing at the desktop level and in the applications program monitor and an export. they have to turn off the computer and let it cool down, then turn it back on and it works normal again, until it overheats again. some had apple replace the D700 multiple times or switch to the D500 before getting a stable system.

[ECBowen]

Turning off the system discharges the ram and clears out the caching. I suspect that versus heat. Heat could be an issue for a production run of GPU's for example if there was a mistake in the tooling. However I am just not seeing evidence of it. The distortion on the display happens if the ram buffers are getting corrupted and those are effecting the frame buffers. I still suspect memory management here.

Eric

ADK

[em7srv]

Having issues with a new Mac Pro in Adobe PPCC with the dual AMD D700's.  Horizontal lines in rendered video - tried reducing heat which was unsuccessful.  In regard to the memory question, do settings in Adobe PPCC memory management (allotted ram/optimized for memory vs performance) have any relation to problems with the OpenCL with the D700's ?

Thanks

mark

[RoninEdits]

Apple quietly launches Mac Pro (Late 2013) Repair Program for graphics card/video issues | 9to5Mac​

anyone having distortion/corruption problems outside of premiere, like say with davinci resolve too, might want to look into getting it repaired.

i've heard there are known issues with premiere and mac, but im not sure if its related to the bad hardware or not. its just as likely to be bad software from adobe, given their track record.

[samr32495144]

Hi Mark!

Did you ever get to the bottom of your horizontal lines? I've sent my Mac Pro with Dual D700's into Apple to get the graphics cards replaced and they've told me there are no issues with my graphics cards and even if there were they won't replace for free because my manufacture date falls 20 days before the stated timeframe.

Sam

[mcx#5000]

Hi Sam,

Not sure if you are still dealing with this same problem... I have been for quite a few months.

I sent my Mac in twice and they eventually replaced both graphics cards. Unfortunately, it didn't fix the problem. Adobe says the older D700 driver (pre sierra?) might work, but I haven't found that yet. If you've found a solution/work-around, I'd love to hear it.

-Jim

[samr32495144]

Hi Jim,

Like others here I installed Mac Fan Control and basically blast the fans at all times whether I'm emailing or rendering, I guess it's using more electricity but it's fixed the render issue for me so far. Still renders slower than an old Nvideo carded Mac I have though. So maybe it's not even utilizing OpenCL.

Hope this helps,

Sam