Metal system requirements

[leman]

Its because the APIs have been changed a number of times after Netkas first released his tool. I don't know whether there is an updated version.

 

[Draeconis]

This might be redundant, but I've just tested Metal on my 5,1 with a Mac Edition 680 and it's all good.

Metal does indeed seem to be linked to specific hardware, which might explain why the Mac Pro 2012 was left out, as the 5770 and 5870 are 2009 hardware, and don't support DX12 either.

 

[crjackson2134]

This might be redundant, but I've just tested Metal on my 5,1 with a Mac Edition 680 and it's all good.

Metal does indeed seem to be linked to specific hardware, which might explain why the Mac Pro 2012 was left out, as the 5770 and 5870 are 2009 hardware, and don't support DX12 either.

How did you test it? Were you using the netkas tool?

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Are there any test programs to see how well Metal works with your GPU compared to the same test with OpenGL and of course other GPUs/models? How the heck do I know for sure it's even working? I've read the HD4000 is supported, but things don't really feel faster.

I'm also highly concerned Apple did something to SLOW hard drives. I used to get 280MB/sec for large files with RAID 0 in Mavericks. Now I get like 120-180 at most in El Capitan. Why is it so much slower? My USB3 memory stick does better than my RAID0 hard drives in Black Magic's disk test....

 

[chrfr]

Are there any test programs to see how well Metal works with your GPU compared to the same test with OpenGL and of course other GPUs/models? How the heck do I know for sure it's even working? I've read the HD4000 is supported, but things don't really feel faster.

Metal isn't necessarily faster, although the benchmark tool may not be accurate just yet: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/1...-os-x-el-capitan-sometimes-great-often-mixed/

Using Blackmagic disk speed test, I see exactly the same speed benchmarks in 10.10.5 and 10.11 to a 2 disk RAID 0: about 240MB/sec in both directions, which is pretty much double the speed at which a single drive benchmarks.

 

[Draeconis]

How did you test it? Were you using the netkas tool?

Yeah, is there another one?

 

[LaurentR2D2]

This might be redundant, but I've just tested Metal on my 5,1 with a Mac Edition 680 and it's all good.

Metal does indeed seem to be linked to specific hardware, which might explain why the Mac Pro 2012 was left out, as the 5770 and 5870 are 2009 hardware, and don't support DX12 either.

Do you mean that there is no chance that my 5870HD could support Metal one day ? Which graphic card I should put in my Mac Pro rev 1,1 to get Metal working ?

 

[Draeconis]

No, the HD 5xxx series don't have the hardware requirements for Metal, and unless Apple change the spec, which I doubt they'll do, Metal won't work with that GPU.

Decent modern GPUs to use currently are the 970/980 if you don't want to mess about with an additional power supply. On the AMD side, I believe the R9 2xx series work, but again for some you'd need to look at an external PSU.

The R9 Nano would be an amazing new AMD option as it only draws 175w, but currently OS X doesn't support it, and unlike nVidia, AMD don't release OS X drivers. OS X either supports AMD cards OOTB or it doesn't.