Is there a way to check for Metal compatibility?

[sithinjatyler]

I have a fully working laptop hackintosh, with an intel Core i5-5200U CPU and HD 5500 Graphics. I have seen that supposedly Apple's "Metal" API will work with HD 4000 and newer, but since the HD 5500 is NOT supported by Apple by default, is there a way to check if programs can use Metal on my hardware? I have seen an app called "Metal Test" but it detected my graphics card from the SMBIOS, (MacBook Pro 12,1 13-inch with Broadwell) which has Iris 6100 graphics as what shows up. Is there a way for me to test to see if Metal will actually work on my hardware? Will I just have to test out a program with a selectable API? Is there any way to see what API's are being called? Any help is appreciated.

 

[P1LGRIM]

Try GLview 4.1 :

 

[sithinjatyler]

Try GLview 4.1 :

View attachment 210414

No, that's not quite what I meant... Let me rephrase:

My SMBIOS reports to the system that I am using Intel Iris 6100 Graphics
I actually have Intel HD 5500 Graphics

How do I know the app doesn't just look at the 6100 Graphics and think "Yep, that's compatible with Metal!" and report that back to me? How can I know that Metal is ACTUALLY working and not just reportedly working?

 

[P1LGRIM]

My SMBIOS does not say that I have a GT 740, the app detects it and displays accordingly.

 

[sithinjatyler]

My SMBIOS does not say that I have a GT 740, the app detects it and displays accordingly.

But the app detects that I have Iris 6100 Graphics... And I don't... So obviously it's not seeing my hardware, just whatever is reported to it, in my case, anyways.

 

[P1LGRIM]

But the app detects that I have Iris 6100 Graphics... And I don't... So obviously it's not seeing my hardware, just whatever is reported to it, in my case, anyways.

I see - No idea then, sorry.

 

[sithinjatyler]

Here is an example of what I'm talking about. The SMBIOS reports my GPU as Iris 6100, but I have HD 5500, reported by System Information.

 

[sithinjatyler]

Bump?

Anyone?

I just need a way of detecting what API is being called if I use an app that supposedly uses Metal so I can test this. Any way I can do this that anyone knows of? Any free applications that use Metal as their API?

 

[vulgo]

ps aux | grep -i "metal"

 

[sithinjatyler]

ps aux | grep -i "metal"

Tyler            1790  17.4  2.2  3110416 187992   ??  U     2:13PM   0:34.84 /Applications/GFXBench Metal.app/Contents/MacOS/gfxbench_metal
Tyler            1814   0.0  0.3  2502804  21948   ??  Ss    2:14PM   0:00.26 /System/Library/Frameworks/Metal.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/MTLCompilerService.xpc/Contents/MacOS/MTLCompilerService
Tyler            1777   0.0  0.1  2485672   9900   ??  Us    2:10PM   0:00.04 /System/Library/Frameworks/Metal.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/MTLCompilerService.xpc/Contents/MacOS/MTLCompilerService
Tyler            1655   0.0  0.2  2498324  15012   ??  Ss    1:27PM   0:00.15 /System/Library/Frameworks/Metal.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/MTLCompilerService.xpc/Contents/MacOS/MTLCompilerService
Tyler            1520   0.0  0.1  2487196   8120   ??  Ss    9:51AM   0:00.05 /System/Library/Frameworks/Metal.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/MTLCompilerService.xpc/Contents/MacOS/MTLCompilerService
Tyler             942   0.0  0.1  2483100   6304   ??  Ss   Wed12PM   0:00.05 /System/Library/Frameworks/Metal.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/MTLCompilerService.xpc/Contents/MacOS/MTLCompilerService
Tyler            1819   0.0  0.0  2434840    784 s000  S+    2:15PM   0:00.01 grep -i metal

Well here are my results when running GFXBench Metal from the App Store, so I'm assuming it's running. Also, the test didn't crash, so I'm pretty sure it's working. Thanks cubawire!