will the iMac 5K Retina’s AMD Radeon graphics card be a problem for Premiere Pro CC and AE???

[Chin Up]

I bought a 27″ iMac 5k that came with the AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4GB GDDR5 running El Captain and I can confirm that Premier Pro CC 2105 will not even launch on this machine with this video card. Previously I was able to run Adobe Premier CS6 on Yosemite but since upgrading to El Captain no version of Premier will run at all.

Error message on launch:

[Andreas Urra]

Hi, I just did the test and started Premiere CC2015.1 that is, version 9.1.0 (174). I did start just fine. My platform is the iMac 5k i7 4 GHz, AMD R9 M395X 4GB, El Capitan.

Maybe a reset of the Premiere preferences would help? According to this post it is done by either holding down Shift or Opt during startup of Premiere.

Best, Andreas

[Chin Up]

I just uninstalled the entire package 🙁

But thank you I will give it another shot.. is that what worked for you?

[Danny Beard]

@walter biscardi

Nvidia is NO LONGER required for high performance with Adobe apps. Hasn’t been for two years at least. Adobe supports Open GL just the same as CUDA. If you were at NAB this past April you would have seen the latest AMD cards in a Dell screaming with 6k footage in Adobe Premiere Pro running with Open GL.

The problem with the iMac, as least as far as we can tell, is that there’s only 4GB RAM on the graphics card to drive that display and help drive the performance of software such as Adobe Premiere Pro. It might work out perfectly fine, but many of us are scratching our heads wondering why an 8GB AMD card is not an option. According to Apple specs, there’s some other processor in there to drive the display, but we’re suspect until we see a real world test

Walter, is there any update on this issue?

Have you found a forum, speed tests, resource(s) that discusses editors best options, who prefer to stay on OSX and work in Adobe CC? I have a 27” 5K imac with a 4GB of AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4096 MB graphics card.

based on this thread- I concluded that new imacs are incompatible with CUDA. I have been running Open CL in Premiere, with glitches, slow render times, text all issues I would hope would have been resolved with a contemporary graphics card. From what I gather, Adobe and Apple want to split ways regarding collaborative performance, the question is what optimal performance do apple editors have? Or is better to throw you hands up and move over to PC?

Thank you for your time and input.

[Michael Van metre]

I have the same computer, late 2015 iMac 5K Retina, 32 GB Ram, AMD Radeon R9 M395X GPU.

After extensive research and trouble shooting my conclusion is the Radeon R9 is not compatible with Premiere Pro CC. Adobe has confirmed that they have not tested the card and will not give a time frame as to when. Very disappointing to purchase a “high end” iMac to work in 4K only to have it not work decently at all. I’m looking into swapping out the GPU for one that is compatible with CC and will still run on the iMac, but this is doubtful.

I have been in contact with both Apple and AMD in addition to Adobe. Currently there is no work around. Apple needs to stop selling this configuration as the end all NLE work station when it is not compatible with Premiere, and Adobe needs to get busy and test this GPU and make it work. This has been a known issue for well over a year and a half. Solutions are:
1- wait it out
2-go with a PC
3-try a swap out of the GPU-doubtful
4-edit with FCP X