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Well, thank you. You certainly wrote up a detailed report. I think it may be too much for me. I'm not very savvy with the technical aspects. Are there people out there who might hire out to set up something like this for me? If so, would I contact them on a website?
Another Question: I was told that you can't run a Mac with a system older than the system the Mac was released with: for example, if I bought a new Mac in the fall, with system OS 10.15, I could not choose to run OS 10.13 on it because the necessary drivers would not be there. Is that true? The reason for asking this is if 10.15 only supports Metal, with 10.12 or 10.13 I could get Open GL or Open CL and still run DAZ Studio. And, I've have a faster Mac. As an alternative, maybe I should just buy older Macs, refurbished, and repair this Mac when necessary, and run 10.12.6, which is what I'm running now, and just forget about buying a new Mac. DAZ Studio is that important to me.
Yes, the general rule is that Macs cannot be ‘downgraded’ below the version of the OS that was current when they first shipped.
That’s not quite the same as “the version they shipped with”. Suppose a new Mac comes out in, say, January 2021, when OS X Fresno is the current version. In July, OS X Burbank is released. You buy your Mac in September, and it comes with OS X Burbank preinstalled. If you could find an OS X Fresno installer, you could probably install Fresno on your Mac (possibly with some difficulty). But you are unlikely to be able to drop back to, say, Sierra.
I think pretty much any Mac you might buy this fall will only run Mojave and up. Which, unless Apple has a change of heart, means no Nvidia drivers.
So is the better idea to stick with older Macs, or what?
Well, much as I hate to say it, the better idea is probably to switch to PCs.
That could change if Apple start supporting Nvidia cards. However, currently they’ve shown no sign of wanting to do so.
Because Apple don’t offer official support for Nvidia cards, you have to use third party solutions to use Nvidia cards with Macs, which is not ideal. And it seems that Apple wom’t even help Nvidia put out drivers that are (a) compatible with newer versions of MacOS and/or (b) compatible with Nvidia’s latest graphics cards. So if you stay with Mac, you’re limited to old OSs and old Nvidia GPU’s.
As I say, that could change. But I’m not optimistic that it will.
I'd have to agree with bytescapes here. The most important thing for Iray renders is a powerful Nvidia card. You don't need a super expensive machine just a good graphics card. I picked up a second handed Nvidia card that is a little outdated now but still super powerful. For your comparison: my renders became around 20 times as fast, even with losing 20-30% render speed because of the Thunderbolt adapter, the difference is insane.
If you don't wanna go for PC, you can go for an Older Mac Pro (2012), like Totte is using. I'm sure you can find a cheap second handed one. The good thing about that Mac Pro is that you can customize it, just like you can with a PC. I think the only thing you need to be aware of is the OS X version you are running. But anyone correct me if I'm wrong.
Btw, I've also read things about building a "Hackintosh". Any people here familiar with that? From what I saw online, this is truly the best of both worlds...
The Hackintosh idea takes advantage of the fact that recent Macs have been essentially Intel PCs, very little different from PCs that run Windows or Linux (note: this is not true of the most recent Macs, which tend to include specialized hardware such as the T2 chip). Obviously, Apple would rather you ran their software on their hardware rather than on a cheap PC that you built yourself, so they don't make things easy for you (and by running on non-Apple equipment, you're probably technically in violation of the OS X software license).
The process of building a Hackintosh and getting OS X running on it is fairly technical, even with help from online guides (of which there are many; just Google 'Hackintosh' and you'll find lots of good resources). You can expect to spend a lot of time tweaking software and even hardware to get the OS to boot. Even after it's running, you'll probably find things that don't work, you'll have mysterious crashes etc. Graphics cards reportedly tend to be particularly difficult to get running on Hackintoshes.
The real curse of the Hackintosh is that every time Apple updates the OS -- even if it's just a minor update -- it will probably break your Hackintosh, and you'll have to do more fixing and tweaking. Eventually, future versions of OS X will be so locked to Apple proprietary hardware that it won't be possible to run them on a Hackintosh at all.
This is not necessarily a big deal in the context of trying to build a box that will run DAZ Studio. For reasons discussed above, you don't want to keep your Hackintosh up to date with the latest and greatest from Apple. You want to lock it to an older version such as High Sierra, and leave it there. And the process of getting High Sierra running on a Hackintosh is fairly well understood and documented by now, and Apple isn't going to break your build by putting out new versions of older OS's. The only danger is that someone might discover a security issue that's bad enough that Apple will put out a security update even for older OS's. In that case, you'll have the choice between carrying on without applying the update, or applying the update and risking having to spend a few weekends getting your Hackintosh working again.
I don't have personal experience of building and running a Hackintosh, and I haven't seen any discussion of running DAZ Studio on a Hackintosh. But from what I've read online, it sounds like you should expect the process to be a lot of work (and getting the graphics card working properly may be the most challenging part). At the end of the day, you're sacrificing the legendary ease of use of the Mac -- "It just works" -- for a lot of fiddling around to get a not-quite-Mac that may fail in surprising ways. It's a trade-off, and it might be one that works for you -- but don't expect it to be a magic bullet.
Well, thanks for all of these explanations. Perhaps I shouldn't post this here, but what's most worrisome for me is whether or not DAZ Studio will be able to run in OS 10.15. In other words, will DAZ make some changes to DAZ Studio so that it will be able to run in Metal? Related to this, I think, is the question of about how many Mac users are there of DAZ Studio? If only a few, DAZ may not care to lose them. Hopefully, there are many. Are there? In other words, I could go with running slower in Metal, (slower that is than with nVidia,) but I don't want to give up DAZ Studio. Running in DAZ Studio is more important to me than is using an nVidia card. Sorry if this is a bit off topic.
I don't know, but as DAZ Studio only used a pretty straight forward OpenGL, my guess though, there are ways to wrap OpenGL calls in Metal so you can make the transition. Main issue is that you won't be able to run 10.15 on a machine with nVidia cards until nVidia has drivers, which is far from certain they will have.
Well, that's some relief, if DAZ does get DAZ Studio running in Metal in OS 10.15, even without an nVidia card.
One of the promises of the new technology was that people could have items built for them as they would like to have them built. In other words, small runs (or builds) are now possible. But the super-large companies are not moving in that direction. Apple, now an Irish company, paying very small taxes, will tell us what we'll take, like it or not. And I'm not trying to jump on Apple. This is but one small example of a large company saying "You'll do it our way. You'll do as we say." Just how much do these companies value the consumer? Back in American history, when companies got started, every year or two the company had to justify its continued existence by demonstrating to the community how the company was improving the lives therein and serving its customers. Without community approval, the company would "die." SCOTUS says that companies are "people," but recently I haven't seen any dieing.
Hackintoshes are complicated to setup and subject to basically being stuck on whatever OS version you install, Apple frequently changes the supported hardware in OS versions which can result in a machine that booted yesterday not booting today.
However if you are careful and build a rig according to the very specific list of known supported hardware you can build one.
yes, installing the MacOS on anything but Apple hardware does violate the license. Apple has never prosecuted anyone who wasn't selling hacktinoshes.
So, how many Mac users are there of DAZ Studio? Does anyone know? Perhaps numbers might make a difference in Apple's decisions.
Given the size of Apple's market I doubt that even if DS users were 100% Mac it would make much difference.
OK, but how many DS users are there who use Macs? Anyone know?
Based on volume of questions asked about this subject it is not a neglible number but not significant. Anyway Apple pretty much ignores any issue any SW has with their products unless it is their own or Adobe.
I signed, lets hope they listen.
@jimmac-donald: Thanks very much for signing. I'm hopeful, too. In politics, petitions very seldom have any effect. But politicians are paid by the corporate elite, for the most part, and, of course, they vote on their own salaries and take taxpayer money for those salaries, excellent health plans, excellent funeral plans, etc. Apple depends on customers and sales. Petitions to corportations may have more effect.
@cf_df Thanks to your instructions, I had this working for one glorious night. Now the Mac isn't recognizing the eGPU. Have you had that happen? If so, do you have any solutions? I'd hate to have to return the thing, but I'm at my wit's end. I need this stuff to just work, which is of course why I use macOS as my OS in general.
Did you update OS X?
Apple and nVidia went really separate ways....
https://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2019/11/apple-and-nvidia-are-over/
So it seems I have some simial issues, but have resolved most by the steps suggested here int his thread. However, the only thing I can't get working, is DAZ seeing the GPU. Everything else looks fine. When simply using DAZ, I can see usage going to the nVidia card, however, the render settings still only list CPU. the the DAZ preferences it shows there is nVidia card:
Using the current version of DAZ 4.12.1.117
Really baffled here... any suggestions welcome...
Also tried the latest daz public build...
I'm having the same issue. I thought that perhaps 4.12 required a more modern nvidia driver than the one available on Macs and asked daz if they could give me an older version of DS. Haven't had a response yet, but reading this thread is making me doubt that this is the source of the problem.
Has anyone managed to get DS 4.12 to recognise an nvidia card on a Mac/hackintosh?
Incidentally, in response to the comments upthread about hackintoshes, I've been using them since 2011 and once they're properly set up they work just like a real Mac. It's the set up that's a pain, but if you're willing to spend a few days swearing at computer equipment you should be able to put together something that will outperform current Macs at a fraction of the price. You just need to be careful about the hardware you buy.
For anyone Googling, I've had a read at the Mac FAQs thread and apparently any version of Daz Studio above 4.12.0.86 won't work with Mac nVidia drivers. You need to ask customer services for an older version.