naquaada Posted November 14, 2016 Share Posted November 14, 2016 Hello, I'm searching for my systems small graphics cards, one has to be just 1 slot wide (cooler/heatpipe on the back is possible). If dound two different Radeon HD 6670, they would be enough. A Radeon 6xxx series would also be nice because it's Snow Leopard compatible. But the HD 6670 has no Open CL support. Is it neccessary, f.e. if you are using software like QuarkXpress ? Greets, naquaada. EDIT: I read several times that the HD6670 has no OpenCL, now I checked the specs of the cards I can get and they have OpenCL. Maybe the comments are from Windows users, I think they have to install some drivers for OpenCL. Still, how important is OpenCL for OS X ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacNB Posted November 14, 2016 Share Posted November 14, 2016 Hello, I'm searching for my systems small graphics cards, one has to be just 1 slot wide (cooler/heatpipe on the back is possible). If dound two different Radeon HD 6670, they would be enough. A Radeon 6xxx series would also be nice because it's Snow Leopard compatible. But the HD 6670 has no Open CL support. Is it neccessary, f.e. if you are using software like QuarkXpress ? Greets, naquaada. EDIT: I read several times that the HD6670 has no OpenCL, now I checked the specs of the cards I can get and they have OpenCL. Maybe the comments are from Windows users, I think they have to install some drivers for OpenCL. Still, how important is OpenCL for OS X ? it all depends on what you want to do with the graphics. Nvidia implementation of OpenCL is not as good as AMD's. Especially for video editing. E.g. Final Cut Pro (FCP) works best off AMD cards whose OpenCL is more efficient than Nvidia. My G240 works OOB with OSX with any web drivers, etc but FCP does not take any advantage of it as rendering times are about the same as the IGPU if I take out the Gt240. Nvidia priority is CUDA not OpenCL. AMD card are a little problematic though with current OSX. They do not work OOB but will need an IGPU as the primary GPU in UEFI (or BIOS) and you will not see boot loading on the monitors attached to the AMD. And with the IGPU as the primary GPU, it's not obvious if FCP will prioritise IGPU over the discrete AMD GPU when it renders. If you use Adobe Premiere for video editing, then nvidia cards are your best best as Adobe does not use OpenCL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
naquaada Posted November 14, 2016 Author Share Posted November 14, 2016 The list shows that the Mid 2011 iMac has an Radeon HD6770M, so the desktop version will have OpenCL, too. Maybe it's just a Windows problem. I can get the 6770's for just a few Euro, and they're optimal, just 20 cm long, passive, one is two slots wide and one with the cooler on the back. Absolutely perfect. I have none problems with my Radeon cards you described. I've got an ATI HD2600XT, an HD4870 Vapor-X 2 GB and two HD6870. All have a boot screen and I don't need integrated graphics. This also wouldn't be possible because some boards have no IGFX. However, I'm always booting in Legacy mode and with MBR style, so a real classic setup. IGX is disabled in BIOS, however, in OSx86 it is still active. I have to remove all IntelHD4000* kexts, otherwise it's still shown in the System Profiler. The only problem is the speed: I'm using still Mavericks because the GUI is much faster: The Intel HD4000 has about 440, Yosemite has 70, Sierra only 19. And you'll notice this, the system reacts much slower! The problem doesn't depend on the graphics card, no matter or IGFX or one of my Radeon cards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mitch_de Posted November 21, 2016 Share Posted November 21, 2016 Mac OS uses OpenGL (and if available METAL) for GUI acceleration. But not OPENCL. OpenCL is, even Apple is one of the major "injectors" and it is now many years old normally not used. Only some special apps use OpenCL, and even than only in some subprocesses. So it speeds up a bit, but also 90%+ of speed depends on CPU/system speed and not OpenCL gpu speed. Heavy used OpenCL (or CUDA), so the openCL speed of the gpu does matter, is very rare with OS X Apps. Its a litte better situation with windows apps take advantage of OpenCL or CUDA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacNB Posted November 21, 2016 Share Posted November 21, 2016 "special" apps like Final Cut Pro and iMovie are almost unusable without OpenCL. Try using those apps with nvidia graphics and you will be unpleasantly surprised (my GTX 650Ti could not handle FCP). Old or not, Apple continues to use OpenCL for their Apps and the new revamped FCP 10.3 does not change. The CPU plays no part in rendering functions in FCP (but only for transcoding). AMD continues to enable & optimise OpenCL for Apple...like it or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liujianwei Posted January 2, 2017 Share Posted January 2, 2017 Radeon HD 6670 has OpenCL support http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/graphics/desktop/6000/6670 my computer 1 OpenCL platform found! [Platform 0] Name: Apple Vendor: Apple Version: OpenCL 1.1 (Aug 10 2012 19:59:48) Profile: FULL_PROFILE Extensions: cl_APPLE_SetMemObjectDestructor cl_APPLE_ContextLoggingFunctions cl_APPLE_clut cl_APPLE_query_kernel_names cl_APPLE_gl_sharing cl_khr_gl_event 2 OpenCL devices found! [Device 0] Name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3240 CPU @ 3.40GHz Vendor: Intel Type: CPU Device Version: OpenCL 1.1 Driver Version: 1.1 Compute Units: 4 Work Group Size: 1024 Clock: 3392 MHz Global Memory (Total): 8192 MB Global Memory (Host): 8192 MB Global Memory (PCIe): 0 MB Local Memory: 32 KB Cache Size: 0.0625 KB Cache Line Size: 3145728 Bytes Available: Yes Double-Precision: Yes Extensions: cl_APPLE_SetMemObjectDestructor cl_APPLE_ContextLoggingFunctions cl_APPLE_clut cl_APPLE_query_kernel_names cl_APPLE_gl_sharing cl_khr_gl_event cl_khr_fp64 cl_khr_global_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_global_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_byte_addressable_store cl_khr_int64_base_atomics cl_khr_int64_extended_atomics cl_khr_3d_image_writes cl_APPLE_fp64_basic_ops cl_APPLE_fixed_alpha_channel_orders [Device 1] Name: ATI Radeon Turks XT Prototype Vendor: AMD Type: GPU Device Version: OpenCL 1.1 Driver Version: 1.0 Compute Units: 6 Work Group Size: 1024 Clock: 800 MHz Global Memory: 1024 MB Local Memory: 32 KB Cache Size: 0 KB Cache Line Size: 0 Bytes Available: Yes Double-Precision: No Extensions: cl_APPLE_SetMemObjectDestructor cl_APPLE_ContextLoggingFunctions cl_APPLE_clut cl_APPLE_query_kernel_names cl_APPLE_gl_sharing cl_khr_gl_event cl_khr_global_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_global_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_extended_atomics Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MattsCreative Posted January 2, 2017 Share Posted January 2, 2017 Mac OS uses OpenGL (and if available METAL) for GUI acceleration. But not OPENCL. OpenCL is, even Apple is one of the major "injectors" and it is now many years old normally not used. Only some special apps use OpenCL, and even than only in some subprocesses. So it speeds up a bit, but also 90%+ of speed depends on CPU/system speed and not OpenCL gpu speed. Heavy used OpenCL (or CUDA), so the openCL speed of the gpu does matter, is very rare with OS X Apps. Its a litte better situation with windows apps take advantage of OpenCL or CUDA. just no! Opencl is used a ton in macos and matters a ton for rendering and even boosts in speed as opengl and metal make huge use of opencl in every task it does now and in apps like adobe pre pro or phototshop even maya or final cut pro opencl is used all the time to do pre render and the final render 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bor Posted January 3, 2017 Share Posted January 3, 2017 If you use Adobe Premiere for video editing, then nvidia cards are your best best as Adobe does not use OpenCL. It used to be like this, but it has changed about two years ago when Adobe started to officially support OpenCL in Premiere, and year later in After Effects. Since then those programs use OpenCL more and more with each release. Metal support was also added not long ago. Adobe seem to be really focused on accelerating as much as possible with GPUs lately, even work area in Illustrator got some love. So AMD gpu's are fine for all Adobe software, no matter if you do graphic design, DTP, video/animation or something else. I speak from experience, I do animation & graphics for a living and I relay heavily on GPU's in more than few tools. I got hackintosh with R9 380 and old macBook Pro with M6750. Both do amazing job at accelerating preview, filtering & rendering tasks. Comparing to CPU-only mode, the difference is often night and day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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