The recommended use of High Sierra applies to the 2019 versions of the following video applications, all of which released on October 15, 2018: Adobe programs can run on macOS 10.12, but they will utilize the older OpenCL acceleration instead at a 15-20% performance hit compared to Metal. MSI Gaming Radeon RX 560 128-bit 4GB GDRR5Īpple has also put out a list of AMD Radeon cards that “might” be compatible, and should be taken with a grain of salt:Īdobe applications are supported on the three most recent Apple OS versions, but MacOS 10.13 High Sierra, or above, is recommended to run applications with Metal acceleration. While more recent Mac systems running macOS 10.13 or newer should all be Metal-capable, some older systems may require an upgraded graphics card.įor 2012 Mac Pro towers, Apple has released a list of supported GPUs that are Metal-capable: This frees up the system processor to handle other tasks, while dedicating the GPU to rendering. Metal allows for the GPU to construct rendering commands with little, if any, CPU involvement. Metal 2, the current version, debuted with macOS 10.13 High Sierra and brings even more features with an eye toward machine learning and GPU rendering tasks - a boon in today’s creative industry that sees heavier reliance GPU rendering solutions. Metal was designed to be efficient and low-overhead, meaning it maximizes processing time dedicated to running your favorite creative programs. Metal combines similar capabilities of both and boosts the performance of graphics tasks (like render commands) by facilitating communication between your applications, processor, and graphics card. What does this mean, and how will Metal affect the creative production pipeline?Īpple Metal is an application programming interface (API) much like OpenGL and OpenCL. Nodal’s look at macOS 10.14 Mojave discussed that the newest version of Apple’s flagship OS requires Apple Metal graphics API support.

Metal capable graphics card