I just got a new 2019 Mac Pro, 28 core 96gb ram, planning to add more soon. OS Monterey. Upgraded to Blender 3.0 Blender is running slower then it was on my 2013 mac pro? Viewport is laggy and get the spinning wheel constantly. Clicking on object takes 2-3 sec to activate. Applying modifiers takes sometimes up to a min to apply. Switching Modes i.e edit mode, shading, UV edit mode 5-10sec. Rendering is a bit faster but expected much faster than it is going from 8core to 28core. Could this be the lack of support for OpenGL in Monterey?
The Blender 3.0 version no longer works with OpenGL. You have to wait for the new Blender version for Metal. It is currently under development and will most likely be released in (March?). Until then you can only render with the CPU.
Appreciate the response, However this does not answer my questions. I’m already aware that you can only render in cpu mode on a mac unless you have AMD ProRender installed. My issue is extremely slow viewport operations. Going from an 8 core 16gb ram 2013 mac pro to a 28 core 2019 mac pro with 96gb ram, everything is slower than it was on the 2013 mac. Even CPU rending is surprisingly not that much faster. So I’m curious, is all this due to the lack of support for OpenGL, Blender not optimized for Monterey? is there anything I can do… downgrade blender, downgrade OS
You are confusing Blender with Cycles, ther are kinda diferrent things and have different supported APIs.
Blender wouldn’t run at all without OpenGL. It is possible to run OpenGL on CPU, but it not possible currently to run Blender without OpenGL.
Blender (whole UI, 3d viewport, 2d viewport, eevee)
works on OpenGL
upcomming Vulcan support (with possibility to have Metal on top of that (via MoltenVK or not, its probably not being developed yet))
Please forgive me as I am not trying to be rude, I am not confusing Blender with Cycles, simply trying to sort the cause/why Blender is running much slower on my new mac with much more power under the hood. Aside from power, the only other difference between the previous mac and this one is I’m now running OS Monterey which dropped support for OpenGL and now using Blender 3.0. So what is causing Blender to be so laggy?
No problem, i was just trying not wast your time to solve Cycles performance issue when You clearly have just plain Blender issue even before enabling Cycles.
I’m not Mac person, so i can’t really tell you for sure.
As far as i know Apple didn’t yet removed OpenGL (and without OpenGL You wouldn’t even run Blender), (it could be that OpenGL is running in softwaremode CPU instead of GPU? dunno).
And i didnt saw other users as such complaint, so these is probably something wrong with Your setup. But i might be wrong. Good luck.
I’m also very curious about the Blender performance on the newest Mac. This thread put a brake on my plans to upgrade to a M1 Mac and I hope you resolve this issue. It’s a huge bummer you have so much more power but Blender is so laggy now. The good news is that with Apple being a sponsor of the Blender foundation, this should be worked out with developers. In the mean time, I hope you can still use your older Macbook. Please keep us posted if you discover the cause and/or a solution!
Old computer wasn’t a MacBook, rather the 2013 Mac Pro/trashcan. That has been since donated to my son. It is a shame as this new 2019 mac pro was a 30k build and to have blender run slower is a bummer and confusing. Perhaps the Blender 3.1 build will rectify the issues.
Anyone know where I could get some phone support. I am really struggling to find a solution to Blender behaving very poorly. On some deadlines with a few projects and am waisting a ton of time. I have been using Keysot for years for texturing/lighing but this past year I have been slowly moving some of that to Blender for certain projects and at this point I am considering just going back to Keyshot. Blender was much better in 3.0. Since 3.1 simply switching to Cycles takes up to a min. Trying to edit any material, adding a node and connecting it the screen will go grey and hang for 20-30 seconds before cycles refreshes. Making a simply value change, same thing screen goes grey 20-30 sec before cycles refreshes, doesn’t matter what it is every time I click on something same thing. forget panning/rotating camera while in cycles, it will hang for up to a min. GPU mode very slow, up to 5min to switch from viewport shading to cycles. Tried CPU + GPU no difference. I thought the support for metal and my current setup and GPUs I should be pretty smooth. Im currently just trying to texture a car and it is so painfully slow. Just the car in the scene with a simple HDRI. Please someone help me figure this out. I am on a 2019 Mac pro 28 core 64gb ram and AMD Radeon Pro WX6800 Duo and feel like Im on a 2010 MacBook air.
I’m so sorry to hear about the sluggish Blender performance on your Mac. No way I can help since I migrated all my 3D work to PC/Windows because of the general sub-par performance of virtually all 3D applications on Mac OS (Cinema 4D may be the one exception).
I hope you find a way to have Blender run well on your Mac. Good luck!
Hello there Paul,
I kind of am in a similar position right now and am getting increasingly desperate only thinking about going back to what I know and what works the way I want it to.
I wanted to ask what you did in the end? Could you find a solution?
No I have not found a solution and am still struggling with performance issues. Crazy with such a large Blender community no one has provided any insights to this. I can’t even get a hold of anyone at Blender.
