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MP 7,1 W6800x Duo benchmarks vs Vega ii duo, 2x w5700x, 2x 6900xt

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Casey P

macrumors member
Jan 16, 2020
43
12
I decided to compare my 6800Duo to the Radeon Vega Pro Duo for working on FCPX. My primary hope was that the 6800Duo would allow me to play my 4K 60p XFAVC files back without stuttering, but no such luck. It also isn't improving rendering times on my test footage, so it is obvious that the new GPU is not being used for speeding up H.264 or H.265 playback or rendering. The spec sheet for the W6800 says that the GPU has the encoders built in, but it appears that the Mac Pro isn't using them for my footage.

Also, one of my intake fans with the 6800Duo installed was consistently running at over 800 rpm vs the 500 rpm at idle for the Radeon Pro. What's strange is that it was intake 3 fan rather than the intake 1 fan where the card was located. During my Heaven tests, though, the 6800 Duo was running hotter than the Radeon Vega Duo.
 
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Kung gu

Suspended
Oct 20, 2018
1,379
2,434
profdraper said:
Like others have mentioned: I'd suggest to wait for Monterey GM & then some driver update action. Clearly, Apple already have bad form here. Whichever, the price is ridiculous and as always, prioritises spin & shareholders over customers. Greedy. I'm using a pair of Vega IIs, does the job well enough for Resolve Studio, but apart from the MP7.1, I do not use any other Apple products and stay well out of that 'walled garden' wherever possible.
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It's also clear that Apple's Mac team is focusing more on ARM Mac's and their OWN sillicon. Intel Mac's are on life support. The fact that M1 Macs don't support eGPU's shows that any OTHER drivers other than Apple's own GPU's is writing on the wall that Apple priorities lie and its with their own sillicon.
 
avkills

avkills

macrumors 65816
Jun 14, 2002
1,182
985
diamond.g said:
@Morgonaut said the 6800 duo wasn't worth it compared to the Vega 2 duo. I was just trying to understand why it is underperforming in comparison.
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The Vega II card is GCN and the W6800 is RDNA2; the VegaII also has more compute cores than the W6800, 64 vs. 60. The W6800X clocks higher which is why it runs hotter. It would not be out of line to suggest that Metal has not been optimized for the way RDNA2 does stuff compared to GCN. Metal may *never* be fully optimized for RDNA2, from Apple's perspective it makes more sense to optimize Metal for their home grown GPU architecture.

Based off what we know so far, if you already have Vega II, it seems much better to stick with what you have.

Afterburner cards are a complete waste of money unless your workflow consists of needing to playback lots of ProRes files at the same time.

I am not surprised that a Canon proprietary format based off of AVC-Intra does not playback well. And the spec sheet is very vague, 4k H264 Encoding/Decoding, AV1 Decode, H265/HEVC Encoding/Decoding...ok at what specific luma:color sampling, etc etc.
 
Storiestold

Storiestold

macrumors newbie
Aug 11, 2021
15
11
Has anyone tested this W6800X duo with Monterey? A new public beta was released yesterday.
 
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skippermonkey

macrumors 6502a
Jun 23, 2003
624
1,536
Bath, UK
I've ordered the W6800 Duo, solely for Octane rendering, so don't fear some of the benchmark results as much as others might. I have a pair of RX 5700XTs but the 8GB VRAM is useless for most scenes (C4D/OctaneX). If anyone falls out love with their Duo, let me know, I'd be happy to take it off your hands for a four-GPU setup.
 
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avkills

avkills

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Jun 14, 2002
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I will be holding off on Monterey until the software I need to run for work has been listed as working.
 
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triton100

macrumors 6502a
Dec 15, 2010
783
1,313
The moon
skippermonkey said:
I've ordered the W6800 Duo, solely for Octane rendering, so don't fear some of the benchmark results as much as others might. I have a pair of RX 5700XTs but the 8GB VRAM is useless for most scenes (C4D/OctaneX). If anyone falls out love with their Duo, let me know, I'd be happy to take it off your hands for a four-GPU setup.
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I’ve never understood what exactly octane is? Do you send your blender or c4d files to it and it renders more quickly than doing it natively or soenthing? I tried testing it out and couldn’t get it to really do anything
 
avkills

avkills

macrumors 65816
Jun 14, 2002
1,182
985
triton100 said:
I’ve never understood what exactly octane is? Do you send your blender or c4d files to it and it renders more quickly than doing it natively or soenthing? I tried testing it out and couldn’t get it to really do anything
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Most 3D apps will allow you to use external renderers instead of the rendering pipeline built in. Octane is way faster at rendering than native Lightwave 3D for instance. But there are caveats, like using Octane surfaces and materials, etc etc. I currently do not have the plugin for lightwave; but I may look into it. Still deciding on whether to ditch Lightwave or not. Lots of turmoil and uncertainty on the Lightwave front right now.
 
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skippermonkey

macrumors 6502a
Jun 23, 2003
624
1,536
Bath, UK
triton100 said:
I’ve never understood what exactly octane is? Do you send your blender or c4d files to it and it renders more quickly than doing it natively or soenthing? I tried testing it out and couldn’t get it to really do anything
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You can use Octane as a standalone app, but I use the plugin which is integrated inside Cinema4D (there are plugins for all major DCC apps like Maya, Houdini, Blender and so on). I find the standalone app really confusing to use, but in C4D it’s much more straightforward, and has things like naturalistic sunshine, rendering of OpenVDB files, instancing etc. With the right setup - hardware and render settings - it’s is blazingly quick and allows me to render scenes much faster (and more realistically) than the native renderer. I quite like the material setup too, which for PBR is pretty straightforward; Maxon’s own built in system is weird and slow. Ultimately, the best setup in a 2019 MP is twin 6800 Duos, until something more powerful comes along.
 
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rondocap

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 18, 2011
527
307
I've been using the W6800x Duo in more real world use instead of benchmarks lately:

In Final Cut Pro, 4 of them with Red 8k Raw work really well - in many cases they get really maxed out when doing advanced color grading.

Stuff feels really fast - like stabilization and even denoising. I have not put it as numbers/comparisons yet, but it feels fast.

I still think a single W6800x Duo is more cost effective though, the gains with a 2nd set isn't massive to justify for most people
 
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strangerthanlight

macrumors member
Mar 17, 2021
68
37
TG Pro updated. Everything looks normal now

Screen Shot 2021-09-08 at 9.59.48 PM.png
 
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skippermonkey

macrumors 6502a
Jun 23, 2003
624
1,536
Bath, UK
Hopefully mine will arrive next week (Mon - Weds). Already sold the 580X MPX, and will need to offload one of the RX 5700XTs. I just wish Apple would release a new monitor so I can ditch my old LCD with mini DisplayPort.
 
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strangerthanlight

macrumors member
Mar 17, 2021
68
37
rondocap said:
Nice, that's what I figured before, just a glitch. And the Duo versions of these gpus thermal throttle faster than the single versions since they share the one mpx slot and fan
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yep - still hotter than single cards (like W6900x), 6800x duo seems to idle around 60C for proximity sensors and 50-60 for GPU die 1 and die 2 (same as iStat readings). But at least no more annoying pop ups from TG pro
 
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kennyman

macrumors 6502
May 4, 2011
279
38
US
strangerthanlight said:
yep - still hotter than single cards (like W6900x), 6800x duo seems to idle around 60C for proximity sensors and 50-60 for GPU die 1 and die 2 (same as iStat readings). But at least no more annoying pop ups from TG pro
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Does it still overheat when you run Luxmark? Morgonaut`s second GPU card was overheating on almost all sensors and Luxmark score was around 99,000 to 100,000. It would be great if someone with the Radeon Pro Duo could confirm whether these dual GPUs cards are always idling around 60-70C.
 
avkills

avkills

macrumors 65816
Jun 14, 2002
1,182
985
rondocap said:
Nice, that's what I figured before, just a glitch. And the Duo versions of these gpus thermal throttle faster than the single versions since they share the one mpx slot and fan
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Looks like proximity sensor 7 is gone. Anyone get an email with the explanation?
 
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