Mac + eGPU

[garytyler]

I'm guessing I should just bump around on Tech Inferno, just wondering if anyone had a similar guide for 3.0

- Rich

Yeah, that's pretty much the spot. I have been curious about USB 3.0 support as well and pretty sure it's not doable but don't quote me on that. Thunderbolt is unique in how it ports directly to PCIe or something like that.

Tech Inferno is definitely the spot. Give this thread a shout with whatever you find out. It'd be nice to keep a convo going on the Octane forums about eGPUs.

[joeycamacho]

Hey guys, super excited to see this stuff on here. I've been nosing around the Tech Inferno site and while I thought it to be more of a gamer focused procedure – it looks to be a reliable solution to rendering on the go. Thanks for sharing!

My scenario is this...right now I have Titan Black from MacVidCards - running of an external PSU in my Mac Pro 5.1, along with a GTX 680 Mac Edition (for the monitors).

I'm looking for a way that I can use the Titan in one of these eGPU set ups with my 13" 2014 MacBook Pro. (swap it out of the Mac Pro) and use it alongside a second card, while leaving the 680 in the Mac Pro.

My questions are:
• Is it better to get a second Titan Black from MacVidz? I believe they are modded cards to work on the Mac Pro – or can I just purchase a regular version?
• Would you recommend a different set up? Based on cost effectiveness, ease of setting up, render times?
• Is it better to get a second Titan Black - or upgrade to a Titan Z?
• If you had my set up – what would you do and why?

Any and all suggestions are really appreciated!

[garytyler]

A little update on my latest setup. I decided to add a Titan Black instead of a Titan Z because I got a Black for $600 on eBay bran new. I've got a TITAN Black + a TITAN running on 2 Akitio enclosures daisy chained. I modified this case to hold the kit too. It's not a perfect modification but if anyone is interested, I can post some pics that show the process to modify it which was pretty simple. Here are some benchmarks as well. My tests reflect Jose's finding that daisy chaining doesn't seem to bottleneck rendering one bit. I think if I add another to this, it'll probably be a Titan Z because I'm sure 4 daisy chains would have an effect.

As for a Titan Black or a Titan Z, they both seem to work but the double GPUs can be a little more of a hassle to setup and seem to absolutely require a powered riser. I think the powered riser is a good idea anyhow. I get slightly better benchmarks with a powered riser than I do plugging straight into the Akitio. I don't understand what the cards from macvidcards.com have that others don't. I would just get a regular one if I was you.

Jose's LuxMark Sala benchmark with 2x Titan Zs was 4400. My benchmark with 1x TITAN Black + 1x Titan is 3000. This seems to basically reflect the performance of the cards though. The Titan Z seems to be equal to about 1.5 TITAN Blacks in most rendering situations. Price wise, it seems these cards have varying prices depending on where you buy and you'll wanna add $200 per card for the cost of the Akitio.

[garytyler]

Update:

Through some tests, I have discovered a nice surprise that seems to have been overlooked here. If you are using regular TITAN cards (not Black or Z) there is no need to install the Nvidia Web Drivers. In fact, the regular TITAN runs about 5% better on the OS X Default Graphics Drivers. This is a great help because it eliminates the need to modify the driver or wonder if you have the best one installed. This simplifies the process of using eGPUs. Also, this works with daisy chaining. To anyone running eGPU setups and having issues, I recommend ditching TITAN Blacks or TITAN Zs and just running regular TITANs on the default OS X drivers.

[p3taoctane]

Gary

http://giphy.com/gifs/reactiongifs-weir ... ZhLpNLxDoc

Truly man your research on this matter has saved my ass!! I'm using a straight Titan using your input and it is running great.

Look forward to your info on which ktext files need changing now and which ones we do not have to worry about.

Peter

[garytyler]

Gary

http://giphy.com/gifs/reactiongifs-weir ... ZhLpNLxDoc

Truly man your research on this matter has saved my ass!! I'm using a straight Titan using your input and it is running great.

Look forward to your info on which ktext files need changing now and which ones we do not have to worry about.

Peter

Glad to hear! It saved my ass too haha. Things were running pretty good before, but learning that we don't need the Nvidia driver seems to add some stability to the system, especially when daisy chaining more TITANs. As for kext files, I wasn't able to find a benefit in leaving any out but the one .kext where you add 3 mods only seems to benefit from the last mod. Everything functions fine without the first 2. I couldn't figure out why. That's out of my league and I'd rather be rendering.

Also, I did some playing around with different daisy chain configurations and oddly enough, daisy chaining is actually the best way to connect 2 TITAN eGPUs. If I run them parallel into each TB2 port, the benchmarks go down by about 7-8%. My estimate is that until you reach about 3.5 TITANS on a daisy chain, there is no bottleneck. Between my LuxMark scores and Jose's, it seems that about 4500 in the Sala scene is the bottleneck for LuxMark eGPU TB2 rendering. I think Jose's triple TITAN Z daisy chain was a bit much but 2x TITAN Zs would be efficient. This is all figured by using LuxMark so it's based on OpenCL, not CUDA but I think the two are very comparable in this context.

[garytyler]

Response to dotcommer's post in another thread:

Wow that is an awesome thread. Thank you for the suggestion. This has really helped me figure out what my next machine will be in the future. Right now i've put too much time and money into a 2012 mac pro tower with a Titan Black crammed into it, but in the future I may opt for a trashcan or even go back to the days of working on a laptop! Man, to be able to bring my entire Octane pipeline with me to other studios would be epic. Not enough adoption in the average mograph studio with octane yet unfortunately.

One question though, I don't understand the importance of the riser. What is that doing instead of plugging the card directly into the Akito?

Thanks again p3ta!

I'll explain but I'm going to do it in the thread we have if that's cool. I guess it might be incorrectly categorized but I feel like we have so much info there already and I like the idea of having all this info in one place for future Octane users who will want to build eGPUs.

I tried running a Titan Black along with a regular Titan and didn't have great results but hopefully you do. The issue was system freezes while rendering. It could happen anywhere from when I boot Octane to hours into working but it was pretty frequent. If you have this happen, sell your Titan Black, get a regular Titan and ditch the Nvidia drivers.

The riser doesn't do much. I think it made a big difference with the Titan Z because of all the power needed at the single PCIe slot. With smaller cards, it's basically just a way to power the Akitio straight from the PSU. I think I got slightly higher benchmarks from using a powered riser but whether the riser contributed to that is debatable. Molex to Barrel Plugs also work fine for powering the Akitio from the PSU. All in all, I don't think it makes much of a difference where you power it from though. Just make sure you plug your computer and the PSU and the Akitio all into the same power strip and you should be good to go. I have my setup in a case so the powered risers serve an architectural purpose.

[glimpse]

Molex to Barrel Plugs also work fine for powering the Akitio from the PSU.

wow, this is cool idea, Gary - never thought it's possible!!! =)
(building something & this is going to help to get rid of extra brick!)

[garytyler]

Molex to Barrel Plugs also work fine for powering the Akitio from the PSU.

wow, this is cool idea, Gary - never thought it's possible!!! =)
(building something & this is going to help to get rid of extra brick!)

You can pick up molex ends and the barrel plugs from any electronics store. No soldering required, just some small pliers and maybe a little electrical tape to make it solid.

[Jose]

Molex to Barrel Plugs also work fine for powering the Akitio from the PSU.

wow, this is cool idea, Gary - never thought it's possible!!! =)
(building something & this is going to help to get rid of extra brick!)

Akitio Molex to Barrel tutorial:

http://youtu.be/V4T1DADdKJI