Radeon VII compatible with Mac?  

Posted by: Robin_Martin

Also, has Apple ever skipped support of certain AMD cards in recent years. What’s the chance of being stuck with an unsupported VII card indefinitely?

Y'ever hear of Nvidia? Apple's been skipping their everything since MacOS Mojave. =P

I dunno... I don't think they've got any glaring omissions...

Yep, that’s why I specifically referred to AMD. CUDA support in Adobe apps can take a hike. Give me that Metal hotness!!

I know, I know. I kid. 😛

No great surprise, let’s hope for 10.14.5 beta which should be out soon

This kinda.... sucks really. 
I don't know if its AMD or apple, and I know that apple takes their sweet time with approving anything, but this behavior sometimes is really pushing the limits of giving the middle finger to customers.

It's clear: They have enough RX590, Vega 56 and 64 to sell. Moreover the new iMac Pro with Vega 64X must be sold, too.

What's Radeon VII then? A Windows gaming card, as powerful as the all mighty GTX 1080 Ti. Only: It's not.

Funny thing is that you can get the VII at discounted price with the 3 games in Newegg, the PowerColor version, it's $679.

Hey guys, 

I wrote to AMD support and explicitly asked for macOS 10.14. support of Radeon VII.
That's what they've answered:

=====zzzzzzip=====

Dear xxx,

Your service request : SR #{ticketno:[xxx]} has been reviewed and updated.

Response and Service Request History:

Thank you for your email.

I understand that you wish to have drivers to support eGPU and Radeon VII together in your MacBook Pro in macOS 10.14.

This is not supported at the moment and there are no compatible drivers available. 

However, we cannot comment on future plans, For MacOS driver support is provided by Apple in the OS.  If you wish to know the available drivers For Apple Boot Camp driver.

I suggest you to please periodically check our Apple Boot Camp driver page for updates:  https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/apple-boot-camp

Thanks for contacting AMD.

In order to update this service request, please respond, leaving the service request reference intact.

Best regards,

xxx

AMD Global Customer Care

=====zzzzzap=====

"For MacOS driver support is provided by Apple in the OS" sounds like Apple develops the driver on their own.
Ok, who wants to contact Apple Support and ask them the same question? 😉

Posted by: Roedi78

"For MacOS driver support is provided by Apple in the OS" sounds like Apple develops the driver on their own.
Ok, who wants to contact Apple Support and ask them the same question? 😉

It doesn't mean that apple are making the driver on their own. 
It only means that you can get drivers only through the OS itself.
AMD makes the drivers, ship them to apple, and apple test and validate the drivers, they then put them into the OS, and ship them with the next update.

Historically Apple was never in hurry to provide drivers for current generation graphics cards. For example the Polaris GPU series became available on June 29th, 2016. The official support for Polaris GPUs were available with 10.12.6 update on October 31st, 2017. Prior to this software update, we were relying on kext injection to make them work.

The Fiji series, R9 Fury cards have never been officially supported. The drivers were working/non-working through many macOS versions but Apple never used them in any Macs. WWDC19 is when we have a good idea whether Radeon VII would have official support in macOS and eGPU.