Hi, I'm looking at getting a new mac pro and speccing it with this card - Radeon Pro W5700X with 16GB of GDDR6 memory. It's not in the list of supported cards but is anyone running it successfully.. or know of another card I could try? Or is it worth buying the cheapest card and swapping it out for a supported card?

I really wish that SideFX would update their OS X hardware support page to be more current. The truth is probably that they simply haven't tested Houdini on enough OS X machines and don't want to go on record saying something that they haven't tested works fine.

Here's what I can tell you, I am running a Hackintosh with a 5700xt GPU and Houdini works peachy with it. I don't think that you should have any issues with the GPU on the new Mac Pro.

The only caveat is that AMD is literally releasing brand new GPU's this week, and before putting in some serious dough into an outdated GPU, you might consider holding off. Supposedly Big Sur already has internal support for the new GPU's such as the 6800xt which also has 16Gb of memory but costs a fraction of the Radeon Pro. If you're purchasing a new Mac Pro soon, I would opt to buy the cheapest GPU option and then picking up a 6800xt or a 6900xt and swapping it out.

I'm on an iMac 2020 with an internal Radeon 5700XT and things seem to be working ok for me… I have been seeing an odd thing when bringing up some window panes which I describe in the thread below, and it seems to be persisting in Big Sur… I have no idea whether it's a driver thing or what… I don't think anyone at SideFX is using or testing on Mac.

https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/75948/ [www.sidefx.com]

Another thing, as a Mac user, which has been driving me nuts since R18 is that there's a lag to the cursor in the 3D, Network and all other window panes and viewers… It's like a ‘lazy mouse’ setting of a paint or sculpting app, where the cursor follows/lags behind your movement … I really have no idea why this should be happening in Houdini but in no other application I use. I did have this confirmed by someone at SideFX, but it seems it hasn't been resolved in 18.5 or with Big Sur.

That card was a bit buggy on Catalina but seems stable on Big Sur with Houdini.

Interesting thread. I'm also on a hackingtosh currently with a AMD 5600 xt card. I was thinking of getting a Radeon VII instead but would I benefit a lot from that as long as I don't use a GPU render? - Or would I have to get something like redshift to really benefit (which only support AMD under Big Sur which I'm not on yet and not for another month or so)

The upcoming Big Sur 11.1 will have Navi 2 drivers (or at least some initial version of them). I would urge anyone in the market for a new GPU to hold off for at least a month or two (plus all those new Navi 2 GPU's are sold out anyway).

The AMD 6800xt will easily outperform the current 5700xt, as well as the rest of the older AMD lineups. In Redshift and Octane the performance should be comparable to an Nvidia 2080ti and possibly even faster.

Either way, I wouldn't want to pay for older tech right now.

I’m using the Radeon Pro W5700X MPX module on a 2019 Mac Pro. I can’t verify whether the graphics card is the root cause, part of the problem or unrelated (neither can Apple or SideFX), but Houdini crashes constantly. So much so that I have the temp file directory in my Finder sidebar to grab the crash file every 30 minutes and copy it over to my working directory (because the crash recovery menu item doesn’t work lol). I have literally never seen an app crash this often in my 20+ years on a Mac. Crashing is part of my Houdini workflow. Absurd!

I tolerate it because I truly enjoy Houdini and it is just an artistic hobby, but if I’d bought this machine specifically for this usage professionally, I’d be banging my head against the wall.

I concur with Midphase that it’s an awkward time to buy. Both because of AMD’s new releases, but also because of the obvious question mark hanging over future support for 3rd party graphics cards on Mac, period. Apple is all in on their own silicon and that generally ends with Apple squeezing out other options in favor of vertical integration.

If you can wait, do. Or if your primary usage is Houdini, you might seriously want to consider a PC (painful if you are a Mac lover, but Macs are definitely second class citizens for Houdini and the 3D space in general). I have loads of professional work that relies on a Mac, so the Mac Pro made sense for me, but for most it won’t.

For what it's worth, the recent daily build fixed an OS X Open GL bug. I've been working with it all day yesterday and today without any crashing whatsoever.

"Houdini 18.5.429 Hardened some GL code to avoid viewport crashes on MacOS."

Midphase
For what it's worth, the recent daily build fixed an OS X Open GL bug. I've been working with it all day yesterday and today without any crashing whatsoever.

"Houdini 18.5.429 Hardened some GL code to avoid viewport crashes on MacOS."

Interesting! Viewport changes are definitely one of the most persistent crash-triggers for me, particularly when adding/removing a view. The UV view in particular is a minefield.

Are you on Catalina or Big Sur?

Both, Catalina on my main workstation and Big Sur on my new Mac Book Air M1.

I'm using 3Delight as my main renderer and surprisingly that works on the M1 as well (and it does work with the daily build despite the fact that it's only supposed to work with the latest Production build).

I’ve been meaning to revisit 3Delight. Been enjoying Octane’s Metal-compatible preview release, though it isn’t without its own bugs. I want to upgrade to Big Sur for the new drivers, but will likely hold off for a couple of months to ensure all of my pro apps work.

… but Houdini crashes constantly. So much so that I have the temp file directory in my Finder sidebar to grab the crash file every 30 minutes and copy it over to my working directory (because the crash recovery menu item doesn’t work lol). I have literally never seen an app crash this often in my 20+ years on a Mac. Crashing is part of my Houdini workflow. Absurd!

Yeah, I completely understand this along with the other stuff you mention, my experience is very similar to yours.