A rock and a hard place... Radeon VII or 6900 XT for Valve Index and Resolve/Premiere?

I’m building a 9900K system in the Lian Li O11 Mini and initially was considering starting off with a Radeon VII and then upgrading to a 6900 XT down the line.

One major concern was the 3DMark VR blue room benchmark, which I assume is similar to Half Life Alyx Ultra Fidelity mode. That only hit 55fps average on a Radeon VII. Then I remembered the VII doesn’t support Variable Rate Shading. (Alyx doesn’t use VRS, but it would be nice)

Puget Systems benchmarks show in Premiere that the VII trails the RTX 2080, but is significantly ahead in Resolve.

I plan to install Opencore and Catalina on the system to play around with it, but the 6900 XT is only supported in Big Sur. The 6900 XT is worse than the VII in Resolve, but better in Premiere.

Anyone played Alyx on the Radeon VII able to offer a testimony? CPU won’t be the problem, it’s GPU. Do I need supersampling or not?

Anyone edited in Premiere using a 6900 XT AND a Radeon VII can give me a breakdown on how different it performs on an Intel system with QSV?

Any particular reason why not to go for Big Sur? If its privacy concerns with Apple’s system of vetting software that needs to call home to check for “known bad software”, i think i read somewhere online that its been going on since before Catalina.

I would go the 6900XT or even 6800XT which isn’t far off.

I’ve had Vega64 (which admittedly isn’t a Radeon VII, but is a decent percentage of the throughput) and the 6900XT just absolutely and totally obliterates its performance in everything but compute/mining.

I haven’t used either under macOS though - but in terms of 3d/vr throughput vs. vega, Big Navi is just in a totally different sport, never mind different league. Whereas Vega 64 struggled with 4k, the 6900XT runs that like its 1080p and runs some stuff in 8k (e.g. Superposition, Doom Eternal) at decent frame rate.

Plus you can get 6900XT in decent non-reference cooler forms. Radeon VII is AMD reference only, unless you plan to liquid cool it, but i’d suggest at this point unless compute is 100% your concern you’d just be throwing good money after bad.

You’ll need to do your own research re: macOS compatibility.

Not to say the Radeon VII is a bad card, and its very strong in compute, but if VR, 3d performance is a concern its just nowhere close.

Gatekeeper I know how to get around, and SIP I know how to disable.

The problem is that compute performance difference matters for OpenCL and Premiere on Mac.

The Radeon VII I’m getting from a friend has a AIO attached so thermals aren’t the issue.

I’m leaning towards getting both, delaying my 6900 XT purchase to more like late next year, and getting the Radeon VII first.

I just remembered Puget Systems take advantage of CUDA acceleration in Premiere, so hence why my 1080 Ti will outperform the Radeon VII in macOS High Sierra. (and no newer)

The big problem is are they going to optimize Metal for RDNA2 at all? The Intel Mac Pro is getting new RDNA2 GPUs, but who knows if the creative apps will optimize for Metal on RDNA2? Intel is a dead end. (but I’m building a 9900K Hackintosh anyways)

If they’re releasing hardware today it has 3-5 year’s of productive life left in it so i’d say yes they will.

A lot of this depends on price, if you can get a Radeon VII at a reasonable price then definitely for it - they’re very strong on compute.

I likely can get it for $1000CAD. The only thing I’m hitched up on is Valve Index performance. I would prefer to run 120hz but can deal with 90hz initially.

Radeon VII drivers is another concern. On Windows (where I initially will use the Index) this is a huge concern. Not so much for Linux.

If you’re likely to run both cards, just be aware that in terms of power consumption… 6900XT can chew more than Vega 64 without pushing it with extreme clocks in my experience. Especially when doing compute.

In case you plan on making both work hard at the same time in the same box, i’d say you’re wanting at least a 900-1000 watt PSU.

Big Navi can also be massively efficient at low loads. I’ve seen mine clock down to 4mhz when doing basic 2d UI. But it’s capable of burning heaps.

Yeah… It’s a O11 Mini. I’m running either/or, not both at the same time. (meaning I will swap out the VII when the 6900 XT is purchased)

Also gonna run all core 5Ghz on the 9900K.

I intend for the Radeon VII to be primary Gaming GPU for Windows VR and Linux Gaming using the 9900K. Then when I get the 6900 XT, Radeon VII becomes a backup GPU (out of the system on standby) and Mesa testbed. (like if I get Zen4 before I get Navi 31)

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