Christian Stueben
Level 1 (120 points)
Mac OS X

Q: el capitan and metal, test application?

Hi all,

after succesfully installing el capitan on my old Mac Pro, i would like to know if my old machine supports the new grafics engine metal.

 

Is there any test application that can tell if my machine has metal or not?

 

Thank you!

 

greetings from germany

Chris

Mac Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on Oct 1, 2015 7:09 AM

by John Lockwood,Solvedanswer
John Lockwood John Lockwood
Level 6 (9,411 points)
Servers Enterprise
A:

Yes I am finding the cube demo app now also crashes. I suspect Apple made a change to the Metal programming interfaces during the beta-testing of El Capitan and the cube app needs updating to be compatible again.

 

The terminal utility also included in that zip still seems to work and reports my HD 7950 as being "AMD Metal" which knowing the cube app did previously work, to me confirms it is a metal supported card. It is my understanding this demo Metal app even when it used to work would not show a bouncing cube if your video card was not Metal capable. It is my understanding Metal is a hardware only solution, if your video card does not support Metal you cannot use Metal, developers would then have to should they choose write a second branch to use old style OpenCL/GL as a fallback. The demo cube app would have deliberately been written to only use Metal and therefore would not display anything if your card does not support Metal. (When it used to work.)

 

As per the NetKas article any GTX 400 or higher should be Metal capable. So your GTX 980 Ti should be Metal capable.

 

Apple are providing a list of Macs that are Metal capable but as I mentioned they are not including classic Mac Pro's in that list because the video cards Apple shipped them with are not Metal capable e.g. my original 5770. Apple would not comment on third-party upgrades like my HD 7950 and your GTX 980 Ti. No current  or recent Macs have upgradeable video cards.

 

I have now found a free screensaver for the Mac that is written specifically to use Metal it should not work if your video card does not support Metal. This would be another possible test. See https://github.com/nickzman/rainingcubes There also seem to be several further demo apps here http://metalbyexample.com/

 

PS. Even though you have used up all your 'helped me' points you can still award a 'solved it' reward.

Posted on Oct 6, 2015 1:53 AM

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Christian Stueben

Q: el capitan and metal, test application?

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  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt Oct 1, 2015 10:51 AM in response to Christian Stueben
    Level 9 (50,493 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 1, 2015 10:51 AM in response to Christian Stueben

    Hi Chris

     

    The currently produced Mac Pro is the only model with support for Metal.

  • by Christian Stueben,

    Christian Stueben Christian Stueben Oct 1, 2015 11:14 PM in response to John Galt
    Level 1 (120 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 1, 2015 11:14 PM in response to John Galt

    Hi John,

    thank you for the information.

     

    But i am curious why only the tube pro supports metal.

     

    Processors - are functionally identical.

    Ram - both models have enough.

    Rom - i can´t imagine that this is the reason, i am sure apple wouldn´t put grafic into rom, but into os.

    OS - identical on both models.

    Video card - that is my first suspect. Is it something with open gl / cl / cuda? Or something completely new that only the firepro can do?

     

    My grafic card (geforce 980 ti) can do open gl / cl / cuda.

     

    greetings from germany

    Chris

  • by John Galt,Helpful

    John Galt John Galt Oct 3, 2015 10:27 AM in response to Christian Stueben
    Level 9 (50,493 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 3, 2015 10:27 AM in response to Christian Stueben

    As you suspect the GPU will be the limiting factor. Metal will require OpenGL 4.3. I do not know if the GeForce 980 will be capable.

     

    I do not know of any currently released games or other applications specifically designed for Metal.

  • by Christian Stueben,

    Christian Stueben Christian Stueben Oct 2, 2015 11:17 PM in response to John Galt
    Level 1 (120 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 2, 2015 11:17 PM in response to John Galt

    Hi John,

    the geforce 980 ti has open gl 4.5:

    http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-980-ti/specifications

    If the presence of 4.3 would be the only reason, this means good luck and some hope for me.

     

    So again my question ... is there any kind of application, which can test if metal is present in my system?

     

    greetings from germany

    Chris

  • by John Galt,Helpful

    John Galt John Galt Oct 3, 2015 10:27 AM in response to Christian Stueben
    Level 9 (50,493 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 3, 2015 10:27 AM in response to Christian Stueben

    If I knew of one I would suggest it. From its specifications though, your graphics card is probably compatible with Metal.

     

    At present I am not aware of any application written to take advantage of Metal. There are anecdotal reports of increased frame rates and faster image rendering from Mac users who play games and other graphic-intensive programs, but it is not clear if those applications have been rewritten for Metal. I suspect they were not, and are simply performing better under El Capitan.

  • by Christian Stueben,

    Christian Stueben Christian Stueben Oct 3, 2015 10:27 AM in response to John Galt
    Level 1 (120 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 3, 2015 10:27 AM in response to John Galt

    Hi John,

    thank you for your help. Hmm, i see, i have t make a test app myself. Xcode is currently downloading...

     

    We will see if my hope is well founded ... or just a pipe dream (oops, right word? in german: Luftschloss, Wunschtraum)

     

    greetings from germany

    Chris

  • by jayv.,

    jayv. jayv. Oct 3, 2015 10:50 AM in response to Christian Stueben
    Level 4 (1,290 points)
    Oct 3, 2015 10:50 AM in response to Christian Stueben

    Sorry to hijack this post but curious how do I update my OpenGL version? Apple states my Mac Pro 2012 can handle OpenGL 4.1 but when I check the terminal with glxinfo | grep "OpenGL version" I get this result: "OpenGL version string: 2.1 ATI-1.36.46" meaning version 2.1?

     

    Christian, I'd like to get my hands on that test app if you end up writing one.

  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt Oct 3, 2015 9:16 PM in response to Christian Stueben
    Level 9 (50,493 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 3, 2015 9:16 PM in response to Christian Stueben

    Hi Chris,

     

    You may find this of interest to you: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/10/metal-performance-in-os-x-el-capitan-someti mes-great-often-mixed/

     

    It left me with more questions than answers though.

  • by Christian Stueben,

    Christian Stueben Christian Stueben Oct 4, 2015 12:38 AM in response to John Galt
    Level 1 (120 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 4, 2015 12:38 AM in response to John Galt

    Hi John,

    yesterday i downloaded and installed xcode. And one of the project types it offers is ... OSX, Metal game project. This (nearly) empty project contains a small demo app.

     

    Of course i immediately made a new project, compiled, run it. Bingoooo! It shows a simple cube rotating. The source code of the project shows metal system calls. So when metal is not emulated by software, the probability that metal exists in my mac pro (2010, 5.1) and is working properly, has increased from 49% to 100%.

     

    @Jayv: simply load xcode from apples app store, it´s for free, make a first project of type osx metal game, compile, run. It is very easy to do.

     

    greetings from germany

    Chris

  • by Christian Stueben,

    Christian Stueben Christian Stueben Oct 4, 2015 1:00 AM in response to jayv.
    Level 1 (120 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 4, 2015 1:00 AM in response to jayv.

    Sorry, but in my opinion you only can update your open gl by buying a new video card. Here you can get some most recent cards that work in mac pro 2012:

     

    http://www.macvidcards.com/

     

    In their store you find such big weapons like geforce 980 titan with 12 gb, amd r9, and some others. My choice has been the gtx 980 ti.

     

    Yes, they are a little bit more expensive than the find-the-cheapest-price-websites, but you get 100% compatibility to your mac pro 2012, including the boot screens. The only problem i had has been when upgrading from yosemite to capitan. The old nvidioa driver that was made for yosemity didnt work with el capitan. So i had to re-install my old 5770, wait four never ending hours until i got a message "a new driver is ready to load", et lé voilà, nvidia had a brand new driver fpr capitan.

     

    So when you buy a video card that needs additional drivers, dont sell your old vid card on ebay, keep it for a few hours at the next system update to keep your system running.

     

    greetings from germany

    Chris

  • by Barney-15E,

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Oct 4, 2015 4:13 AM in response to Christian Stueben
    Level 9 (50,871 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 4, 2015 4:13 AM in response to Christian Stueben

    I'm not sure that "test" tells you anyrthing just because the program runs. All metal-enabled programs should run on any Mac. If the Mac doesn't support Metal, then you just won't see the benefits.

    Here is the list of officially supported Macs: List of Mac computers that support Metal - Apple Support

  • by Christian Stueben,

    Christian Stueben Christian Stueben Oct 5, 2015 12:41 AM in response to Barney-15E
    Level 1 (120 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 5, 2015 12:41 AM in response to Barney-15E

    Hi Barney,

    as i said somewhere before "if it isn´t emulated by software".

     

    The official statement from apple says, that my mac doesnt support metal.

     

    But official statements from apple also said, it doesnt support blue ray drives and that i cannot install them. In fact i have a blue ray drive running perfectly.

     

    Another statement from apple says, it supports up to 64 GB of ram. In fact it supports up to 128 GB (yes OSX only will take advantage of 96 GB, but 64 bit Windows on the bootcamp side will utilize the full 128 GB).

     

    Yet another statement lists a very short list of original video cards. Old video cards, deprecated video cards with limited capabilities and limited video ram. I have a geforce 980 ti running perfectly.

     

    And there are many other official statements that definitely are not true.

     

    I simply would like to hear or read the true statement, not the official statement.

     

    Let me clarify my question a little ...

    ... how can i test if my mac supports metal in its native gpu mode?

     

    greetings from germany

    Chris

  • by John Lockwood,

    John Lockwood John Lockwood Oct 5, 2015 5:13 AM in response to Christian Stueben
    Level 6 (9,411 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Oct 5, 2015 5:13 AM in response to Christian Stueben

    Christian Stueben wrote:

     

    Hi John,

    the geforce 980 ti has open gl 4.5:

    http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-980-ti/specifications

    If the presence of 4.3 would be the only reason, this means good luck and some hope for me.

     

    So again my question ... is there any kind of application, which can test if metal is present in my system?

     

    greetings from germany

    Chris

     

    Your card is more commonly described as a GTX 980 Ti.

     

    According to early research by NetKas.org your card should support Metal but may require new drivers from Nvidia to enable this. Netkas has also provided a download of a couple of tools to test Metal compatibility. One seems to be a compiled version of Apple's Cube demo, the other is a very basic terminal utility.

     

    I ran these on a Mac Pro 5,1 2010 model with an AMD Radeon HD 7950 card. Both indicated Metal was supported and working e.g. the cube appeared and rotated.

     

    The NetKas article here http://netkas.org/?p=1405 has a link to download these test programs and also lists what they feel are compatible video cards.

     

    Note: The Mac Pro 2010 and 2012 models are effectively identical apart from CPU speed.

     

    I have not yet re-run these tools on the latest El Capitan release, I will try and do so as it is possible Apple may have deliberately disabled support that was previously working in earlier betas.

     

    Note: Apple are probably not officially listing the Mac Pro 2010 and 2012 models because the video cards they originally shipped with are not Metal capable. For example my Mac Pro 2010 (and a 2012) would have originally shipped with a Radeon 5770 card which is not Metal capable. I have an after-market Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 Mac Edition card that I added later and which does appear to be supported.

  • by Christian Stueben,

    Christian Stueben Christian Stueben Oct 6, 2015 12:24 AM in response to John Lockwood
    Level 1 (120 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 6, 2015 12:24 AM in response to John Lockwood

    Hi John,

    glad to see there is one more person who has the same suspect as i have ... the grafic card.

     

    meanwhile i found the netkas article myself, but i hesitated to load software from an unknow russian server. You mentioned it too, so i gave it a try. But i only got a message that the program aborted unexpected

     

    You say your 5770 does not support metal, but your 7950 does ( in the fast gpu mode, or the software emulated mode? ), so there is a high probability that my 980 ti supports gpu based metal too.

     

    For apple, ahem, for apple users it would be a great advantage if apple would show a compatibility list of modern and recent grafic cards that support gpu based metal. Simply to show "yes, users of older macintosh hardware, we love you too". The way apple behaves in fact, is "hello users of old apple hardware, we really really HATE you. Buy a new macintosh, make us rich, or die". Sorry for the harsh words.

     

    greetings from germany

    Chris

     

    ps.: unfortunately it seems that i can give "this helped me" to only two postings, and they already are in use. Feel your post has helped me.

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