External GPU support

[Maitken]

Hi,

I run Vray Next for Sketchup '19 on a MacBook pro. Chaos Cloud helps massively with output but wondered if performance would be enhanced by an external GPU? I've read that only certain types of software benefit from them (eg video editing). And does anyone have any good recommendations?

Thanks!

[Peter.Chaushev]

Hello, Maitken,

I'm afraid we cannot recommend using an external GPU on macOS. The reason for this is outlined in this article:
https://www.chaosgroup.com/support/f...encl-and-macos

"With V-Ray GPU Next, CUDA rendering on macOS is still there, but its status is changed to “unofficial” for reasons we'll try to explain below.

Apple devices don't come with NVIDIA GPUs installed and there is no official support by Apple for NVIDIA eGPUs on macOS devices. This makes it really hard for us to develop code and provide adequate support. We have tried the Metal API and, currently, it is not a viable option for our ray-tracing code. If this changes in the future, we will surely consider it."

Having a powerful GPU will surely be a benefit for SketchUp's viewport performance but for rendering with V-Ray we recommend sticking to the CPU engine on macOS.

Kind regards,
Peter