The AMD Radeon VII doesn't work on the Mac at launch, but will soon

AMD's Radeon VII graphics card may offer considerable performance, but at launch it isn't able to be used on either a PCI-E Mac or in a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure, as a driver that allows the card to work in macOS is still under development.

Announced in January, the Radeon VII is latest major release in AMD's roster of graphics cards, boasting a 25-percent performance improvement compared to earlier Vega cards. The card is a prime candidate for use in future "Pro" Mac models, but it first has to work with macOS.

According to a query to external GPU enthusiast site eGPU.io, there currently isn't a driver in macOS that will enable the graphics card to function, but one is apparently under development and intended for use in macOS 10.14.4. Another post notes the PCI ID is listed in the latest macOS 10.14.4 beta build, indicating that future support for the hardware is highly likely, but without a driver, it won't work.

A driver for the card would mean more than allowing owners of GPU enclosures being able to buy the card and use it with their Macs and MacBooks, as it could also be an indication that the card will be offered to Mac users when buying a new Mac.

As Apple seemingly is not interested in making macOS support Nvidia cards, this limits the range of graphics cards that could be used in a future modular Mac Pro considerably, with AMD's offering being the most likely card to be used in such a high-powered machine.

Produced using a 7-nanometer process, the Radeon VII has 16 gigabytes of memory with up to 1 terabyte per second of memory bandwidth. Processing takes place on 60 compute units clocked at up to 1.8 gigahertz, resulting in playing games like "Devil May Cry 5" at a 4K resolution with framerates over 100 frames per second.

AMD shipped the Radeon VII on Feb. 7 as promised, priced at $699.

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27 Comments

lkrupp 10521 comments · 19 Years

About 5 years ago

And, lo and behold, the critics just got into trashing Apple for the T2 Macs having issues with audio interfaces in another article and this hardware manufacturer releases a product that doesn’t work with macOS because there’s no driver yet. But I’ll bet those same critics will blame Apple for the “issue”, right? Oh, the irony.

jlocker 2 comments · 5 Years

I know that the external GPU box would not work. But was wondering if a legacy Mac Pro 2013 would work. I am going to sell my Nvidia GTX 1080 TI card and get the new AMD Radeon VII. I am tired of waiting for the Apple to approve the drivers for Mojave OS. It is stupid that Apple and Nvidia can not get along and work together.

Mike Wuerthele 6901 comments · 8 Years

jlocker said:

I know that the external GPU box would not work. But was wondering if a legacy Mac Pro 2013 would work. I am going to sell my Nvidia GTX 1080 TI card and get the new AMD Radeon VII. I am tired of waiting for the Apple to approve the drivers for Mojave OS. It is stupid that Apple and Nvidia can not get along and work together.
FTA: "but at launch it isn't able to be used on either a PCI-E Mac or in a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure"

And, the 2013 is the Coke can looking one. Are you talking about the 5,1? If so, it should work fine, but powering it from the pair of motherboard power connectors might be an issue. We'll see.

I suspect that given the emphasis that AMD has put on memory bandwidth, there'll be a bigger squeeze on it than in previous models, but how much I don't have a good handle on yet.

bsbeamer 77 comments · 16 Years

jlocker said:

I know that the external GPU box would not work. But was wondering if a legacy Mac Pro 2013 would work. I am going to sell my Nvidia GTX 1080 TI card and get the new AMD Radeon VII. I am tired of waiting for the Apple to approve the drivers for Mojave OS. It is stupid that Apple and Nvidia can not get along and work together.

Stick with approved GPUs if you want official support. Outside of that, it's a hack and workaround. If your budget and workflow can support that type of experimentation, go for it and be sure to report your experience (and headaches) in forums.

Still don't know who to really believe with the lack of NVIDIA web drivers for Mojave (Apple or NVIDIA). Both are to blame to an extent and we are all "suffering" from the results. There's rumors of a class-action lawsuit in regards to this, but doubt it'll get much traction. Everyone basically says wait until MP7,1 before really evaluating. High Sierra still works (and still is being updated) and the 387.10.10.15.15.108 (which added VOLTA) does not break with each High Sierra update like all other driver versions do. Mojave does not offer a ton for MP5,1 & MP6,1 that High Sierra does not already cover.

CommanderPho 2 comments · 6 Years

jlocker said:

I know that the external GPU box would not work. But was wondering if a legacy Mac Pro 2013 would work. I am going to sell my Nvidia GTX 1080 TI card and get the new AMD Radeon VII. I am tired of waiting for the Apple to approve the drivers for Mojave OS. It is stupid that Apple and Nvidia can not get along and work together.

No, contrary to what the other people say I don't believe it will work in your Mac Pro (under macOS) until AMD releases a driver for the card and Apple reviews/signs it. The official AMD site for the card offers drivers for Windows or Linux, but not macOS. That being said, you could bootcamp the Mac Pro and use the card in a different OS until the driver for macOS is released, but I doubt this is what you want to do.