Back in October, Apple, however, joined the Blender Development Fund, which allowed macOS to become a supported platform again. The addition is noteworthy because Blender has yet to offer GPU rendering on Macs since Apple ended support for OpenCL. In addition, the Blender 3.1 update that includes the new Metal GPU backend also features memory usage improvements, ray tracing upgrades, and better indexing on asset browser libraries for faster loading times, among other features. The app itself also runs faster on M1 Macs because the app now have direct access to the GPU. The Metal GPU rendering is also available on Macs with an AMD graphics card.Īccording to Blender, the new Metal GPU support allows for rendering times that are up to 2 times quicker. If not I’ll probably just get a good deal on an M1 mini and hopefully by then more programs (like Blender) will be optimized for it.The addition of a Metal GPU backend, which was contributed by Apple, allows Blender to take advantage of the built-in graphics processing unit in Apple's M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra chipsets. In the end I think I’m going to wait until the next Mac Mini comes out to see if RAM and the new M1X/M2 chip are significantly more powerful.

My ideal is to use the laptop for long-term renders and the Mac mini for 80% of workflow.

Gaming is fine since I can just put on a headset.

I’m probably not even going to consider getting a Mac mini until later this year because the laptop can manage most tasks, but as a work station it’s been annoying having a jet engine next to me. I have a Gigabyte Aero with an intel i7 and RTX 2070 Max Q in it, and heat/fan noise is abysmal. And YEAHH the heat is another reason I’m leaning to an M1. Yeah they do still have another half decade at least of support, but the M1 is still kind of blowing things out of the water with unoptimized programs, it’ll only get better as companies get the time to transition to Apple Silicon.

Blender mac m1 download