I needed a portable solution that could also serve as my video editing station so I had to decide if a quad core with a dGPU is that important in my workflow. I did a small test with proxy generation in FCPX across MBP 15", MBP 13" & MB 12". It was with 3 XAVC-S 4K files with a total of 10min duration, located on an external USB3 hard drive:
MBP 15" 2.7 455 2016 ~ 3.5 min
MBP 13" 3.3 2016 ~ 4.5 min
MB 12" m7 2016 ~ 15.5 min
I knew the 12" throttled but after the test I realized how much it can affect performance. I was very impressed with the performance of the 13", it was much closer to the 15” than expected for a supposedly CPU heavy task. The 13” would be a problem for Resolve though because it lacks a dGPU, but the eGPU solution looked promising so I got an AKiTiO Node to try with my GTX titan & the MacBook 13 3.3 2016 . It was a breeze to set up with instructions from this very useful forum: https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/automate-egpu-sh-is-reborn-with-amd-polaris-fiji-support-for-macos/paged/1/. I tried 3 NLEs with my typical workflow plus two standard tests for Resolve (Candle) and FCPX (BruceX):
Davinci Resolve
Resolve does most of its processing on the GPU. CPU is only used for encoding/decoding and for general UI control. Since davinci resolve relies heavily on the GPU, an eGPU easily gets you to high end desktop performance. It can outperform most “latest” MacPro configurations if you look at the candle test which reflects well the general performance of Resolve.
Premiere Pro
With eGPU & accelerated effects, you will see great performance improvements (~10x with the Titan X J ). Unfortunately encoding/decoding & stabilization depend only on CPU so you will not see a difference there. For the stabilization results I extrapolated from the 5% of the task, so while it could be faster than 2 hours it is still dog slow.
FCPX
Even though FCPX is very well optimized for the mac hardware, you can still observe significant improvements when using an eGPU. eGPU acceleration for stabilization works even without an external monitor but BruceX (or general rendering) works only when an external monitor is used. There are plenty reports that show FCPX is optimized for OpenCL but currently there is no way to make AMD GPUs work with the latest macs & thunderbold 3. If you are on an older mac or have a TB2 solution then I believe this does not affect you, and with an AMD card you will have even better results.
Conclusions
1. An eGPU solution makes sense with any of the three NLEs (if you are mostly editing on a desk) with either a PC or Mac and a thunderbold port.
2. Premiere is the only program that requires fast CPUs in addition to a single discrete GPU, so plan for a quad core.
3. Resolve really sings with the eGPU solution. It’s really a no-brainer for laptop users.
At the end I am really happy I didn't choose a 15" & that the 13" with the eGPU is giving me similar performance to my 8core desktop.
MBP 15" 2.7 455 2016 ~ 3.5 min
MBP 13" 3.3 2016 ~ 4.5 min
MB 12" m7 2016 ~ 15.5 min
I knew the 12" throttled but after the test I realized how much it can affect performance. I was very impressed with the performance of the 13", it was much closer to the 15” than expected for a supposedly CPU heavy task. The 13” would be a problem for Resolve though because it lacks a dGPU, but the eGPU solution looked promising so I got an AKiTiO Node to try with my GTX titan & the MacBook 13 3.3 2016 . It was a breeze to set up with instructions from this very useful forum: https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/automate-egpu-sh-is-reborn-with-amd-polaris-fiji-support-for-macos/paged/1/. I tried 3 NLEs with my typical workflow plus two standard tests for Resolve (Candle) and FCPX (BruceX):
Davinci Resolve
Resolve does most of its processing on the GPU. CPU is only used for encoding/decoding and for general UI control. Since davinci resolve relies heavily on the GPU, an eGPU easily gets you to high end desktop performance. It can outperform most “latest” MacPro configurations if you look at the candle test which reflects well the general performance of Resolve.
Premiere Pro
With eGPU & accelerated effects, you will see great performance improvements (~10x with the Titan X J ). Unfortunately encoding/decoding & stabilization depend only on CPU so you will not see a difference there. For the stabilization results I extrapolated from the 5% of the task, so while it could be faster than 2 hours it is still dog slow.
FCPX
Even though FCPX is very well optimized for the mac hardware, you can still observe significant improvements when using an eGPU. eGPU acceleration for stabilization works even without an external monitor but BruceX (or general rendering) works only when an external monitor is used. There are plenty reports that show FCPX is optimized for OpenCL but currently there is no way to make AMD GPUs work with the latest macs & thunderbold 3. If you are on an older mac or have a TB2 solution then I believe this does not affect you, and with an AMD card you will have even better results.
Conclusions
1. An eGPU solution makes sense with any of the three NLEs (if you are mostly editing on a desk) with either a PC or Mac and a thunderbold port.
2. Premiere is the only program that requires fast CPUs in addition to a single discrete GPU, so plan for a quad core.
3. Resolve really sings with the eGPU solution. It’s really a no-brainer for laptop users.
At the end I am really happy I didn't choose a 15" & that the 13" with the eGPU is giving me similar performance to my 8core desktop.
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