Metal 3 Support?

After WWDC 2022, apple was release Metal 3, a new version of their Graphics API, I use Radeon Pro 560X GPU on my iMac 21.5 4K 2019, does my GPU support for Metal 3?

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PhilipsApple
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Hi PhillipsApple,

The best way to check for support is by querying the MTLDevice whether it supports the Metal 3 GPU family.

Here's an example of how you can accomplish this in Swift:

import Metal
print( MTLCreateSystemDefaultDevice()!.supportsFamily(.metal3) )

If the program prints true, then Metal 3 is supported.

In your specific case, on AMD GPUs, Metal 3 requires features from the Vega (or newer) architectures. The Radeon Pro 560X is based on the Polaris architecture, which predates Vega, and therefore it is not capable of Metal 3.

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Graphics and Games Engineer
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  • Hmmmmmmm so I’m using an MacBook Air 2015 recently and surely its now out of the metal 3 support list just like Phillips so I’m kinda curious ‘bout is apple gonna extend or is it possible for apple to extend the metal3 support list in the future or we could say is there any hope or ways for our ‘unsupported’ devices to use the metal 3 ? May be some day in the future? How’s the possibilities? Thanks in advance. :D

    —
    PD-Kerman

  • Hi,

    I'm on Ventura 13.2 with a Radeon VII card. I compiled and ran the above program and it returned false. Also the Metal 3 examples from the developer pages cannot run correctly. So indeed there is no Metal 3 support when using a GPU that has the exact same GPU chip as found in the Pro Vega II card... How come? Should it not be enabled for all Vega cards? Thanks.

    —
    monoton
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Hi Graphics and Games Engineer Thanks for your answer But what can I do to improve my graphics performance such as gaming, 3D drawing?

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PhilipsApple
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Hi Graphics and Games Engineer,

I'm on Ventura 13.2 and using a AMD Radeon VII. Exact same chip as in Pro Vega II card, just 4 compute units less for a total of 60 CUs. I wrote and compiled your program, it returned false. Also the Metal 3 Xcode examples cannot run correctly. The Metal 3 support is simply not there/enabled all though it should be.

What is the solution to this? The VII definitively supports Metal 3 from a hardware perspective. Does Apple not enable this for PC-GPUs? Thanks.

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monoton
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