Intel GPU Rendering now works on all Macs since 2012

This is BIG News !

Fractal Architect 4  now fully supports Metal GPU rendering on all Macs built since 2012 (using the Mac’s Intel GPU). Version 4.3.3 of FA 4 has some critical fixes.

Last October, we reported issues with Metal rendering. Those issues have been resolved in version 4.3.3 of Fractal Architect 4.

With the latest Sierra Beta, OpenCL GPU rendering now works on Intel GPUs for the first time too.

The rendering performance increase is HUGE.

El Capitan 10.11.6  Performance using Intel Metal

2013 Macbook Air     10.5 X faster than CPU
2015 Macbook Pro      4.8 X faster than CPU

3 thoughts on “Intel GPU Rendering now works on all Macs since 2012”

    1. I have submitted about 30 bugs to Apple over the last 5 years. Most were never fixed. The one related to this blog post was.

      Metal is working better on Sierra Beta, but not for every device. In particular, GPUs older than 3 years don’t seem to work in recent versions of Mac OS (a sad trend – but Apple only gets revenue from new Mac sales – which is why they test the latest stuff in detail).

      In El Cap, 2012 MBP with Nvidia GT 650M worked with neither OpenCL nor Metal. In Sierra, it does work again.

      In Sierra, right now older Intel GPUs are broken, but newer ones are not. (Here older is 2013 and earlier)

      Testing all these frequent OS versions and many, many different GPU configurations is both very time consuming and very expensive.
      The app does not sell well enough to be able to test 100’s of OS version vs GPU configurations.

      There are about 100 different Mac models in use today, all capable of OpenCL GPU rendering. We have 5 test Macs. That means 95 specific Mac model configurations are untested.

      There are simply not enough end users of the app to make that level of testing remotely possible. Even Adobe does not do that amount of testing. And they are experiencing the exact same type of compatibility issues, this app has.

      Maybe if Adobe produced the app and charged 20 times more for the app than I do.

      Apple does seem to be “trying harder” to improve their drivers for the Sierra release. Its not a problem I can solve for Apple.

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