# Mac: M3 - \*Hardware accelerated RT (Part 1) **URL:** \ **Category:** Blender and CG Discussions\ **Created:** [November 10, 2020, 8:37pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658 "2020-11-10T20:37:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![3DToni](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/3dtoni/32/1287947_2.png) [@3DToni](https://blenderartists.org/u/3DToni)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2020, 8:37pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/1 "2020-11-10T20:37:36Z")
Apple: ## The Apple M1 chip takes our most versatile, do-it-all desktop into another dimension. With up to 3x faster CPU performance. Up to 6x faster graphics. And our most advanced Neural Engine for up to 15x faster machine learning. Get ready to work, play, and create on Mac mini with speed and power beyond anything you ever imagined. Nov 2020 I am MacUser and BlenderUser. And I have a HP PC with Nvidia for Blender. But now M1 from Apple is here, what will the Blender programmers do? 13.12.2021. DONE! They did it! 😃 🚀 Metal is there!!! Thanks to the developers! Thanks to Apple! Thanks to the Blender boss 🙂 22.12.2022. DONE! The next milestone! 😃 Metal Backend!!!\*\* Thanks to the developers! Thanks to Apple! Thanks to the Blender boss 🙂 15.02.2023. DONE! We will soon reach Jupiter! Blender 3.5 Beta! Thanks to the developers! Thanks to Apple! Thanks to the Blender boss 🙂 23.03.2023. Blender 3.5.0 Release Candidate! The spacecraft goes into a stable orbit. We are almost there! 😃 Thanks to the developers! Thanks to Apple! Thanks to the Blender boss 🙂 To all who have been on this almost 3 year journey. Mac is back! 29.03.2023. Blender 3.5.0 Stable! 😇 🧑🏻‍💻👩🏼‍💻👨🏾‍💻 25.04.2023. Blender 3.5.1 Stable! 💫 31.10.2023. M3 with Hardware accelerated RT! 🚀 07.05.2024 M4 🚀 15.10.2025 M5 😃 ---
**Author:** ![matthe](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/3da27b/32.png) [@matthe](https://blenderartists.org/u/matthe)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2020, 8:54pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/2 "2020-11-10T20:54:52Z")
I really hope Blender/Cycles will run on AppleSilicon one day… Ordered a Mac mini immediately after the event 😉 ---
**Author:** ![UseTheFarce](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/usethefarce/32/957234_2.png) [@UseTheFarce](https://blenderartists.org/u/UseTheFarce)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2020, 9:58pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/3 "2020-11-10T21:58:19Z")
Anandtech extrapolating M1 performance from their study of the current iPhones’ A14 until they can get their hands on the new Macs. They are _beyond_ impressed. > **[Apple Announces The Apple Silicon M1: Ditching x86 - What to Expect, Based on...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive)** The main problem I see with them is their current 16 GB RAM limit. ---
**Author:** ![matthe](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/3da27b/32.png) [@matthe](https://blenderartists.org/u/matthe)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2020, 10:23pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/4 "2020-11-10T22:23:59Z")
I think efficiency wise Apple has a real advantage now. Not only they control the design of the SoC and the OS, all their devices use that same architecture. It will be really hard to beat this in regards of optimisation. I am looking back on a long history on different systems. Starting from a VIC-20, C64 over Atari Mega ST to PC (DOS, Windows 2.11 – 10, Linux, Unix) and finally to Apple – still have a PC with NVDIA for Blender 😉 But every time I start my PC it really feels (and sounds) like going back into the steam age 🙂 Blender is performing really nice on that machine and that is the only reason for me using it. But I would be really glad to run Blender on the new Mac mini, with its much more sane ratio between energy consumption and performance. Sure, the current 16gb really is limiting, but I bet that will change over the next iterations of AppleSilicon. ---
**Author:** ![UseTheFarce](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/usethefarce/32/957234_2.png) [@UseTheFarce](https://blenderartists.org/u/UseTheFarce)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2020, 10:29pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/5 "2020-11-10T22:29:39Z")
I’m on an old 2011/2012 Mac Pro tower (my daily mover machine) plus a circa 2012 gaming PC. I’m contemplating getting a Zen 3 machine plus new GPU card next year and maybe all out-migrate to Windows (a new Mac means abandoning a lot of old software anyway), but boy do toys like these complicate one’s decisions. ---
**Author:** ![matthe](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/3da27b/32.png) [@matthe](https://blenderartists.org/u/matthe)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2020, 11:03pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/6 "2020-11-10T23:03:03Z")
That’s true 🙂 My two MacBook Pro are also really old (early and late 2013). I am a self-employed Fullstack Developer, so for that kind of work they both still fit. But I also do a lot of graphic works like photo editing and print design etc. and there I often feel their age 😉 If I would do more jobs with blender I also would consider using AMD Zen 3 and decent GPU. But I would never go back to Windows only. In all those years using it exclusively I never really liked it – but it did it’s job. I’m not a typical fanboy, in the end I am using what fit best for my needs. And for blender it’s still my old PC (with WIN 10, so I can also test my web projects on that horrible IE11), for servers Linux and for everything else my Macs. ---
**Author:** ![BigBlend](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/bigblend/32/1324_2.png) [@BigBlend](https://blenderartists.org/u/BigBlend)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2020, 11:41pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/7 "2020-11-10T23:41:08Z")
> [@matthe](#): > > Sure, the current 16gb really is limiting, but I bet that will change over the next iterations of AppleSilicon. If it’s on the same chip, that should mean that the 16GB can be used as graphics memory as regular RAM memory. So in theory if the next iteration of chip has 32 GB then it has 32GB(less of course because of the OS and opened apps) of GPU memory for rendering. Edit: Just saw it had “unified memory architecture”. Edit2: Cinema 4D will work. “Millions of objects” is one quote. Don’t know if it’s on viewport or not. ---
**Author:** ![matthe](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/3da27b/32.png) [@matthe](https://blenderartists.org/u/matthe)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 1:06am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/8 "2020-11-11T01:06:33Z")
Regarding the 16gb memory limit. What if Apple plans to increase the number of SoCs instead just RAM… ---
**Author:** ![Dorro](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/54ee81/32.png) [@Dorro](https://blenderartists.org/u/Dorro)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 1:46am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/9 "2020-11-11T01:46:54Z")
Also no Thunderbolt eGPU support… ---
**Author:** ![gorion103](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/gorion103/32/1443290_2.png) [@gorion103](https://blenderartists.org/u/gorion103)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 2:03am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/10 "2020-11-11T02:03:24Z")
![obraz](https://blenderartists.org/uploads/default/original/4X/0/d/d/0ddf41d7e96e1518022d4545d11089f5bbaa0131.jpeg) it is next to cpu and not same chip ---
**Author:** ![sid350](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/sid350/32/827882_2.png) [@sid350](https://blenderartists.org/u/sid350)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 3:38am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/11 "2020-11-11T03:38:12Z")
3x faster than what? 6x faster than what? ---
**Author:** ![doublebishop](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/db5fbb/32.png) [@doublebishop](https://blenderartists.org/u/doublebishop)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 4:02am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/12 "2020-11-11T04:02:59Z")
Whilst it may not be on die, it may be on package. I have a suspicion that tehy have yet to develop a DDR4/5 memory controller. ---
**Author:** ![William\_Walker](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/william_walker/32/739889_2.png) [@William\_Walker](https://blenderartists.org/u/William_Walker)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 10:06am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/13 "2020-11-11T10:06:07Z")
I think initially blender will work under Rosetta 2 emulation in Mac m1, which won’t be as fast as the arm native version. Just don’t expect the full features and Pythons won’t work well and Maybe cycles won’t work well. But I could be wrong. It will take a while to see a native version of blender ---
**Author:** ![matthe](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/3da27b/32.png) [@matthe](https://blenderartists.org/u/matthe)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 10:52am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/14 "2020-11-11T10:52:56Z")
Around 23 Nov - 25 Nov I will be able to check and report. ---
**Author:** ![UnifiedMinds](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/a6a055/32.png) [@UnifiedMinds](https://blenderartists.org/u/UnifiedMinds)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 12:25pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/15 "2020-11-11T12:25:36Z")
[![](https://blenderartists.org/uploads/default/original/4X/6/b/f/6bfd8dd91956a145c71877fefb437e69053fe4f8.jpeg "Apple Silicon Mac Announcement - Slow Motion Dumpster Fire") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljApzn9YWmk) Here is another take on it from Linus Tech Tips. Personally, I wouldn’t trust Apple’s statements. Also, they’re now all about locking down things in general, so yikes. ---
**Author:** ![anon55679826](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/9e8a1a/32.png) [@anon55679826](https://blenderartists.org/u/anon55679826)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 5:36pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/16 "2020-11-11T17:36:09Z")
I haven’t seen the vid and haven’t watched Linus in several years; there are just better/professional tech vloggers out there now. Saying that, and knowing that none of these machines are out yet, I can only assume this vid is an opinion piece were he takes slides and comments out of context so he can high-five his gamer buddies in the background while yelling “O’Doyle Rules”. 😛 But **if** the leaked Geekbench benchmarks for the new Apple Silicon, “_1634 Single-core and 7220 multi-core_”, **are true** , and starting in the $700 entry level Mac, with the M1 tech reportedly being truly scaleable for future high-end Macs… Then I would say the old “86” architecture is getting a little nervous. 🙂 Either way I hope the devs at Blender Foundation are being proactive rather than reactive. ---
**Author:** ![UnifiedMinds](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/a6a055/32.png) [@UnifiedMinds](https://blenderartists.org/u/UnifiedMinds)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 6:53pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/17 "2020-11-11T18:53:40Z")
You posted all of that without watching a tiny video? You’re not a fanboy at all… 😏 ---
**Author:** ![Ace\_Dragon](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/ace_dragon/32/1067926_2.png) [@Ace\_Dragon](https://blenderartists.org/u/Ace_Dragon)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 7:34pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/18 "2020-11-11T19:34:14Z")
> [@anon55679826](#): > > But **if** the leaked Geekbench benchmarks for the new Apple Silicon, “_1634 Single-core and 7220 multi-core_”, **are true** , and starting in the $700 entry level Mac, with the M1 tech reportedly being truly scaleable for future high-end Macs… Then I would say the old “86” architecture is getting a little nervous. 🙂 AMD might be able to fight off Apple considering the massive performance and technology gains being made in the Zen architecture, but Intel’s days are likely numbered if they end up in third place in terms of desktop performance (because of their apparent lack of ability to bring their next gen processes to the point of making desktop chips). In addition, we might have to wait and see if Blender will run on the new Macs, as there is nothing preventing Apple from just banning the GPL and other open licenses from the upcoming versions of MacOS (which means no Blender, no Krita, no Inkscape, no Godot, no GIMP, you name it). ---
**Author:** ![anon55679826](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/9e8a1a/32.png) [@anon55679826](https://blenderartists.org/u/anon55679826)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 7:36pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/19 "2020-11-11T19:36:50Z")
Agreed. I hope BF takes up the ARM mantle because when It comes down to it , I’m a Blender user; so I would have to make the full transition to Windows. ---
**Author:** ![anon55679826](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/9e8a1a/32.png) [@anon55679826](https://blenderartists.org/u/anon55679826)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 7:37pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658/20 "2020-11-11T19:37:24Z")
> [@UnifiedMinds](#): > > You posted all of that without watching a tiny video? You’re not a fanboy at all… People still use the term “Fanboy”? lol And yes I posted that without watching. It’s pretty easy to guess the type of video style when the presenter plasters his or her face on the cover with either a forehead slap or a stupid grin. Gamer Bait lol [Next page](https://blenderartists.org/t/mac-m3-hardware-accelerated-rt-part-1/1264658.md?page=2)