macOS_GPUFamily1_v3 is the official name for Metal 2 in High Sierra, which you can actually see in the System Information app under Graphics/Displays.

GPU Family 1 covers all GPUs from the earliest 2012-era Metal Macs to the latest 2017 versions.GPU Family 2 refers to the Apple A10X.iOS_GPUFamily4_v1 refers to Metal 2, since the A11 is brand new in iOS 11. iOS_GPUFamily 3_v3 refers to Metal 2, since the A9 and A10 weren’t around for the first release of Metal back in iOS 8. GPU Family 3 refers to the Apple A9 and A10.iOS_GPUFamily1_v4 is the under-the-hood name for “Metal 2,” since it’s the fourth Metal release to cover the A7. These families are tracked differently across the three different Metal-enabled operating systems each GPU family gets a different Metal version depending on which OS it’s using. So while “Metal 2” is being marketed as the second version of the API, it’s actually the third revision of the macOS version of the API.Īpple groups GPU hardware together into “families” based on the Metal feature set they support. From there, Apple supports different Metal features on different hardware, and there are different versions of Metal for each major operating system release.

Metal 2: VR, external graphics, and a handful of bugsīefore we talk about the new stuff in Metal 2, let’s talk about how Metal versioning actually works ( PDF), since it’s not quite as simple as rolling over from “Metal version 1” to “Metal version 2.”įor starters, Apple tracks the iOS, tvOS, and macOS versions of Metal separately.

Metal gpus