3 ms·

https://www.apple.com/imac-pro/specs/ https://www.apple.com/imac-pro/specs/ — released just a few months ago. The AMD Vega 64 has got to push a few hundred wat

https://www.apple.com/imac-pro/specs/ https://www.apple.com/imac-pro/specs/ — released just a few months ago. The AMD Vega 64 has got to push a few hundred watts. Microsoft has the Surface Book 2 with GTX 1060 and they must be looking at that as competition for the high end MacBook Pro.

Baeocystin 9y ago
I did a little poking around out of curiosity. According to: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11717/the-amd-radeon-rx-vega-64-and-56-review/20 https://www.anandtech.com/show/11717/the-amd-radeon-rx-vega-... Vega 64 has a board power rating of 295W. According to the imac pro tech specs from the link you provided, it has an idle draw of 64W, and a peak draw of 370W for the entire system. Unless I'm mistaken, that seems to imply that there has to be a good deal of throttling between the CPU & GPU to come in at that power budget. (The specs also note an additional 50W(!) of potential draw for fans alone if the imac is operated in a warm environment.) Am I mistaken? Not arguing, just hashing out my understanding. Your point regarding the Surface Book 2 and the 1060 makes sense. It does look like I was technically incorrect about them not engineering to a 200+ watt GPU, although I do wonder what sustained draw it can handle thermally compared to a full desktop part, and how much that would affect performance.
- chx 9y ago
  > Vega 64 has a board power rating of 295W. John from Mantiz reported 650W peak. Surely only for milliseconds but still. https://egpu.io/forums/implementation-guides/2014-mac-mini-vega-rx-64-akitio-node-apple-tb3-tb2-adapter-macoswin10-rolfl/#post-18787 https://egpu.io/forums/implementation-guides/2014-mac-mini-v... it is absolutely not in the interests of an eGPU chassis manufacturer to report figures which hinder their own sales so I believe him. Similarly, someone with an awful lot of AMD knowledge (AMD employee?) on the egpu.io forums pretty much begged people not to try the Vega 64 in a Sonnet 550 hinting at similar problems https://egpu.io/forums/thunderbolt-enclosures/sonnet-says-that-350550-will-not-support-vega/#post-22333 https://egpu.io/forums/thunderbolt-enclosures/sonnet-says-th... and saying a solution is in the works. Sonnet http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=524&expand=_a2&action=b914#b914 http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=524&expand=_... says the Vega 64 is only supported in the 650 box -- which was just released pretty much because of the necessity to support the Vega 64. Something is rotten in Denmark: 650W power supply supports up to 375W card (up to 8-pin + 8-pin power connectors) plus provides additional 100W of peak power.

Baeocystin 9y ago

I did a little poking around out of curiosity. According to: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11717/the-amd-radeon-rx-vega-64-and-56-review/20 https://www.anandtech.com/show/11717/the-amd-radeon-rx-vega-... Vega 64 has a board power rating of 295W. According to the imac pro tech specs from the link you provided, it has an idle draw of 64W, and a peak draw of 370W for the entire system. Unless I'm mistaken, that seems to imply that there has to be a good deal of throttling between the CPU & GPU to come in at that power budget. (The specs also note an additional 50W(!) of potential draw for fans alone if the imac is operated in a warm environment.) Am I mistaken? Not arguing, just hashing out my understanding. Your point regarding the Surface Book 2 and the 1060 makes sense. It does look like I was technically incorrect about them not engineering to a 200+ watt GPU, although I do wonder what sustained draw it can handle thermally compared to a full desktop part, and how much that would affect performance.

chx 9y ago
> Vega 64 has a board power rating of 295W. John from Mantiz reported 650W peak. Surely only for milliseconds but still. https://egpu.io/forums/implementation-guides/2014-mac-mini-vega-rx-64-akitio-node-apple-tb3-tb2-adapter-macoswin10-rolfl/#post-18787 https://egpu.io/forums/implementation-guides/2014-mac-mini-v... it is absolutely not in the interests of an eGPU chassis manufacturer to report figures which hinder their own sales so I believe him. Similarly, someone with an awful lot of AMD knowledge (AMD employee?) on the egpu.io forums pretty much begged people not to try the Vega 64 in a Sonnet 550 hinting at similar problems https://egpu.io/forums/thunderbolt-enclosures/sonnet-says-that-350550-will-not-support-vega/#post-22333 https://egpu.io/forums/thunderbolt-enclosures/sonnet-says-th... and saying a solution is in the works. Sonnet http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=524&expand=_a2&action=b914#b914 http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=524&expand=_... says the Vega 64 is only supported in the 650 box -- which was just released pretty much because of the necessity to support the Vega 64. Something is rotten in Denmark: 650W power supply supports up to 375W card (up to 8-pin + 8-pin power connectors) plus provides additional 100W of peak power.