Mac “METAL” renders faster in Blender3D
For years, Apple’s Mac computers languished at the periphery of the 3D rendering world, dismissed by professionals as underpowered creative machines unable to compete with NVIDIA’s CUDA-accelerated dominance. The transition to Apple Silicon changed everything. With the introduction of M-series chips and the Metal graphics API, Mac users suddenly found themselves with rendering performance that not only made Blender usable but competitive—and in some scenarios, remarkably fast. The evolution from M1 through the latest M5 chip tells a compelling story of Apple’s commitment to creative professionals and the resurgence of Mac as a serious 3D workstation platform.
The Metal Advantage
Metal, Apple’s proprietary graphics API, serves as the foundation for GPU-accelerated rendering on Mac. Unlike NVIDIA’s CUDA or OptiX which require discrete graphics cards, Metal leverages Apple’s unified memory architecture where CPU and GPU share the same memory pool. This architectural advantage eliminates the bottleneck of transferring data between separate CPU and GPU memory, enabling faster scene loading and more efficient resource utilization for large projects with complex textures and geometry.
Blender’s adoption of Metal support marked a turning point for Mac users. Version 4.0 introduced enhanced Metal support with MetalRT—Apple’s hardware ray tracing acceleration technology that debuted with the M3 chip. MetalRT automatically enables on M3 and later chips, leveraging dedicated ray tracing accelerators that dramatically improve rendering performance compared to software-based ray tracing. This hardware acceleration brings Mac performance closer to NVIDIA’s RT cores, though implementation differences mean the technologies aren’t directly equivalent.
M1: The Revolutionary Beginning
The M1 chip launched Apple’s Silicon revolution in late 2020, introducing an 8-core CPU and up to 8-core GPU built on 5nm process technology. For Blender users, the M1 represented a revelation—unified memory architecture meant scenes with massive textures could load entirely into shared memory accessible by both CPU and GPU simultaneously.
Benchmark data shows the M1 GPU scoring around 193 points in Blender’s standard tests. While modest by today’s standards, this performance demolished previous Intel-based Mac rendering capabilities. The M1 Max, featuring up to 32 GPU cores, achieved approximately 696 points—competitive with mid-range discrete graphics cards of the era. Real-world testing showed the M1 Max rendering complex vegetation scenes in approximately 14 minutes—respectable performance for a laptop chip with no discrete GPU.
M2: Incremental Improvements
The M2 generation brought refinements rather than revolutionary changes. Built on an enhanced 5nm process, M2 featured improved GPU cores and increased memory bandwidth. The M2 Max, with its 38 GPU cores, delivered noticeable performance gains over M1 Max in Blender rendering workloads.
The M2 Ultra, combining two M2 Max dies through Apple’s UltraFusion interconnect, offered the highest rendering performance of the generation. However, the M2 lineup still relied on software-based ray tracing without dedicated acceleration hardware, limiting performance in ray-intensive Blender scenes compared to NVIDIA’s RTX lineup.
M3: Hardware Ray Tracing Arrives
The M3 series, announced in late 2023, introduced game-changing hardware ray tracing accelerators into Apple Silicon. This architectural addition, combined with Dynamic Caching for more efficient GPU resource allocation, transformed Mac rendering performance. Blender 4.0’s MetalRT support enabled these chips to leverage hardware acceleration automatically, delivering substantial performance improvements.
The M3 Max with 40 GPU cores achieved benchmark scores around 5,000 points—comparable to NVIDIA’s RTX 3090 in certain Blender tests. Real-world rendering times confirmed these improvements, with the M3 Max completing the standard Classroom scene in approximately 11 seconds—matching or slightly exceeding the RTX 3090. This performance level positioned the M3 Max as genuinely competitive with high-end discrete graphics cards, particularly impressive considering the entire system-on-chip design with zero discrete GPU power consumption.
M4: Refinement and Efficiency
The M4 generation, released in 2024, continued Apple’s trajectory with improved ray tracing performance, enhanced GPU architecture, and increased efficiency. The M4 Max averaged 5,208 points across Blender benchmarks—placing it just below NVIDIA’s laptop RTX 4080 and above the desktop RTX 4070. This remarkable achievement meant a laptop chip with integrated graphics matching or exceeding dedicated desktop graphics cards from the world’s leading GPU manufacturer.
Practical rendering tests demonstrated the M4 Max’s capabilities convincingly. A complex vegetation scene requiring 1 minute on an RTX 4090 took just 1 minute 49 seconds on the M4 Max—less than twice the time despite the 4090’s substantially higher power consumption and discrete card design. Another test scene showed the M4 Max rendering in 2 minutes 27 seconds compared to the RTX 4080’s 1 minute 58 seconds —a competitive showing that would have been unthinkable just years earlier.
The M4 Pro delivered impressive mid-range performance, beating the M2 Max easily and rivaling the M2 Ultra in GPU-intensive tasks. Even the base M4 chip outperformed the previous generation M1 Max, demonstrating consistent generational improvements across Apple’s entire Silicon lineup.
M5: The Latest Leap Forward
Apple’s M5 chip, announced in October 2025, represents the newest advancement in their Silicon roadmap. Built on third-generation 3nm process technology, M5 introduces a revolutionary 10-core GPU architecture with Neural Accelerators embedded in each GPU core. While primarily designed to deliver 4x peak GPU compute performance for AI workloads compared to M4, these architectural enhancements benefit ray tracing and rendering performance as well.
The M5 offers unified memory bandwidth of 153GB/s—nearly 30% higher than M4 and more than double the M1. This increased bandwidth proves crucial for Blender scenes with high-resolution textures and complex geometry that benefit from rapid memory access. The improved 16-core Neural Engine and enhanced media engine suggest M5 will deliver further rendering performance gains when Blender benchmarks become widely available.
Early indications suggest M5 continues Apple’s trajectory of incremental but meaningful performance improvements, with the anticipated M5 Max and M5 Ultra variants promising even greater rendering capabilities for professional Mac workstations.
Apple’s Corporate Support
Beyond hardware improvements, Apple’s commitment to Blender manifests through direct financial support. In October 2021, Apple joined the Blender Development Fund as a Patron Member—the highest tier of corporate sponsorship. This membership places Apple alongside industry heavyweights like NVIDIA, AMD, Epic Games, Unity, and AWS in supporting Blender’s continued development.
Apple’s contribution extends beyond monetary donations. The company provides engineering expertise and additional resources directly to Blender’s development community. This support helps optimize Blender’s Metal backend, improve performance on Apple Silicon, and ensure new features leverage Mac hardware capabilities effectively. The partnership benefits both organizations: Blender gains technical expertise and financial stability, while Apple ensures its increasingly powerful chips receive proper software optimization for creative professionals.
The Competitive Landscape
While Apple Silicon has achieved remarkable progress, context remains important. NVIDIA’s RTX 4090 still leads absolute performance with benchmark scores exceeding 10,000 points—roughly double the M4 Max. However, the gap continues narrowing, and hypothetical M4 Ultra and M5 Ultra configurations combining two Max dies could theoretically match or exceed RTX 4090 performance.
The unified memory architecture provides unique advantages for extremely large scenes that exceed discrete GPU memory limits. An M4 Max with 128GB unified memory can handle scenes impossible on RTX cards with 24GB VRAM, eliminating expensive workarounds or scene optimization requirements.
Apple’s journey from 3D rendering afterthought to legitimate competitor demonstrates the power of architectural innovation and sustained commitment. Metal rendering in Blender has evolved from barely functional to genuinely impressive across five chip generations. With corporate patronage supporting Blender’s development and continuous hardware improvements, Mac users now enjoy professional-grade rendering capabilities that rival traditional discrete graphics solutions—all in silent, efficient packages that redefine what integrated graphics can achieve.