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I am a newbie who has just (re-)begun using Blender, version 2.8, on a retina Macbook Pro from around 2014 with MacOS 10.14.2 ("Mojave"). GPU is (selectable) an internal discrete NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M (2048 MB) and an on-board Intel Iris Pro (1536 MB). Neither of these are recognised by Blender when I try to select them.

So I visited the NVIDIA site, hoping for a CUDA driver update, but no suitable "Latest drivers" are listed there for MacOS, only for other operating systems (Windows, Linux, Solaris).

As far as I can tell, this situation is the result of a debacle between Apple and NVIDIA, where Apple is (currently?) not authorising NVIDIA drivers under MacOS Mojave.

Especially annoying, since I had specifically selected a Macbook model that came with a NVIDIA GPU, with use of Blender in mind. At the time I bought it (2016), AFAIR, Blender had either more or only support for NVIDIA CUDA.

I can only hope that this apparent inter-company situation will eventually be resolved.

Currently my Macbook has NVIDIA CUDA Driver version "410.130", GPU Driver version "355.11.10.50.10.103". Latest in the NVIDIA drivers archive for "All Mac products" is "418.105". I hope to install (and use) that one, as an unapproved download, if Mojave will let me. Following a system backup (via Time Machine) that is...

Any constructive advice / workarounds welcome.

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  • $\begingroup$ I have the exact same GPU you do (although my MacBook is a little older). Does it show up under OpenCL in Blender's System settings? $\endgroup$
    – SilverWolf
    Mar 2, 2019 at 18:51
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks cegaton, that offers hope then that this “game” is winnable. What MacOS and Nvidia Driver versions is that working under? In my installation of Blender 2.8, in Preferences > System > General, under “Cycles Compute Device” it says “No compatible GPUs found”. Am I looking in the right place? $\endgroup$
    – esp
    Mar 4, 2019 at 9:48
  • $\begingroup$ My next plan - unless there is s better suggestion - is to do a further backup (at another site) then update MacOS to 10.14.3 (which has just recently become available). Then also update the Nvidia GPU Driver. FWIW: The “System Info” generated by Blender for my MacBook contains the following (that I don’t understand but it looks relevant): GL_ARB_gpu_shader5 GL_ARB_gpu_shader_fp64 ... OpenCL device capabilities: ... Device #2 ...GeForce GT 750M ...Device OpenCL C Version: OpenCL C 1.2 ...Device Profile: FULL_PROFILE ... $\endgroup$
    – esp
    Mar 4, 2019 at 9:50
  • $\begingroup$ I've got my OS at 10.14.3, but I believe it was working at 10.14.0. Hm, it looks like Blender is detecting your GPU just fine, but I just opened mine and it says "no compatible GPUs found", just like yours does. Weird, because Blender 2.79 sees it, but the GPU Compute setting still seems to work in 2.8. $\endgroup$
    – SilverWolf
    Mar 4, 2019 at 16:14
  • $\begingroup$ no compatible GPUs found same thing here. macbook pro mac, OS Hight Sierra 10.13 & egpu NVIDIA 1080 Ti Blender 2.79 recognice it, 2.8 does not. $\endgroup$
    – xilef
    Mar 8, 2019 at 10:13

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Blender developers have indicated (Dec 2018) two main obstacles to Blender using GPU on a Macbook: 1) Apple have not been properly supporting OpenCL (in addition to not supporting CUDA). Consequently Blender had been crashing when attempting to use GPU on MacOS-Mac. Outside Blender developers' control. 2) Macbook GPUs are not sufficiently powerful - not designed for intense long-duration usage as required for big renders (GPU gets so hot its lifetime may become shortened) - and also they found no overall speed advantage over CPU-only (possibly in part another consequence of poor support by Apple). In that case, I doubt there is any hope at all in trying to use linux (on same machine) as a workaround.

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