Hi,
I have been trying to use Blender 2.8 in a 2009 iMac with ATI Radeon HD 4850 (512 vram) and El Capitan for some months without success.
There are some UI issues: LookDev (shading Workspace) is corrupted (no HDR light) and in edit mode, while in vertex selection, lots of colored edges shows over the mesh – 2.8 and Eevee is a no deal in this machine.
Are these bugs or hardware/OS limits?
Any solution?
Im guessing its the 512MB of VRAM. Quite surprised that a 11 year old Graphic Card has OpenGL 3.3 support, which is what is needed for 2.8. ATI ftw.
If its possible try to test with a slightly more modern graphics card.
Most likely OSX OpenCL bugs combined with low VRAM
for older video cards …
they should create a level that disables eevee and makes it possible to use solid mode and cycles as was the case for blender 2.79 …
I also have another laptop with a radeon hd 2600 and 512 mb ram , with 2.79 blender goes a splinter but with blender 2.80 crash at boot … even if it supports opengl 3.3 …
An iMac is going to be really, really, next to impossible to upgrade… I have a 2010 MacPro Tower and have just installed a Radeon RX580. I am really happy with it (Except the OpenGL bit). It runs straight out of the box except you do not get a boot screen.
You can pick up a second hand MacPro 2010 or 2012 for next to nothing these days and the good thing is you do not need to buy an apple compatible card.
what do you think?
My problem is that I am a teacher in a public federal university full of 2009 iMac (110 to be precise). Here in Brazil we are now in deep trouble (financial and political), so no hope for upgrades in next years…
I have been teaching Blender with this hardware for 10 years and I’d love to teach 2.80 from now on.
I understand that due to its very nature, Eevee is GPU dependent and it will be hard to use it in these machines, but I also think that as long as they are OpenGL 3.3, UI problems are to be considered as BUGS and not as limits.
Wow, that’s a shit of a place to be. I would say the best thing is to stay with 2.9 and do the best you can to teach basic modeling, animation, rigging, etc and just stay with cycles.
Hopefully things will change for you soon, otherwise why not approach Apple directly and see if they are willing to sponsor you with some new hardware?
It might also be an idea to approach educational institutions in other countries and ask if they have any gear they can help you with, there must be someone out there who has the capacity to sponsor.