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As the development notes of Blender 2.76 tell, there should be support for GPU rendering under OpenCL now and it should be possible to let the AMD GPU's do the Cycles Rendering.
I tried and it seems to work but it is outrageously slow and I will return to my old habit again (modelling at MAC and rendering at a Windows / NVidia machine. Anyone who can explain how to render Cycles with reasonable performance at a Mac Pro? And what can be expected in near future?

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    $\begingroup$ Throw that mac notpro out the window and do everything on that nvidia workstation. In the future it can be expected that apple will keep producing overpriced garbage. It's not Blender's fault the rendering on a Mac is so slow.. $\endgroup$
    – Jaroslav Jerryno Novotny
    Commented Feb 17, 2016 at 15:46
  • $\begingroup$ @Jerryno I am not blaming Blender. I am just curious if there is anything good to expect from GPU rendering at Mac Pro now or in the near future. $\endgroup$
    – user13877
    Commented Feb 17, 2016 at 17:13
  • $\begingroup$ @cegaton I am not expecting a lot. But somehow I cannot believe that Apple is saying goodbye to the 3D world. As I like the Apple platform I continue to use it for general stuff, Photoshop/Lightroom and I do everything that has heavy GPU tasks on the NVIDIA machine. $\endgroup$
    – user13877
    Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 15:34

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The original graphics cards that came with the mac pro's aren't up to much so I'd expect the cpu to render faster. However if like me you want to stick with the mac pro you can get an nvidia card and use their web drivers.

I think there are many PC cards you can put in there (you'll just lose the boot screen). I got a GTX 980 from Mac Vid Cards which is awesome to render on. Sometimes I get a CUDA error but generally a restart of blender fixes that.

Another option that I use is Ray Pump. You need to pay but it's really cheap. They've been down for maintenance but I assume they'll be back up soon.

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  • $\begingroup$ Sorry, But i have a Mac Pro late 2013 (the cylinder) and I just want to know what is possible with that machine. $\endgroup$
    – user13877
    Commented Feb 17, 2016 at 23:21
  • $\begingroup$ ah sorry. Yeah the fixed AMD cards and inability to sensibly upgrade those machines have kept me with my old 2010 model :) I added a new CPU and the better graphics card and it still runs great for me. $\endgroup$
    – cshelswell
    Commented Feb 17, 2016 at 23:31
  • $\begingroup$ my old Mac Pro was really old and I wanted to stay at MAC OS X. Also I use the Mac Pro not only for Blender. So I bought the new one (doing the rendering at a NVIDIA machine). $\endgroup$
    – user13877
    Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 11:37
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Forget it Mac Pro (new one) is garbage. It also want to buy this thing but as I learned it is not suitable to render GPU I revised my plans. Get a linux station, buy 2 GTX 980 and mem of 32GB. And you have all what this stylish thing DOESN'T have...

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  • $\begingroup$ Why do you install two GPU on your Linux machine ? Does Blender render on two GPU's ? I ask because I render on a windows/NVIDIA machine (I do the modelling part on the MAC). $\endgroup$
    – user13877
    Commented Mar 5, 2016 at 11:45
  • $\begingroup$ @JanScherders blender can use multiple GPUs read: blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5228/… $\endgroup$
    – user1853
    Commented Mar 5, 2016 at 18:40
  • $\begingroup$ @JanScherders as an alternative look into external GPU enclosures that can be hooked up using Thunderbolt. $\endgroup$
    – user1853
    Commented Mar 5, 2016 at 18:45
  • $\begingroup$ @cegaton That is a very interesting option (external GPU). This is really new to me !! Thanks a lot !! $\endgroup$
    – user13877
    Commented Mar 5, 2016 at 23:38

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