Does anyone know if Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 1536 MB is compatible for SketchUp 2024? I don’t want to invest in software that will not run. I have a MacBook Pro from 2017.
It will probably run, but Intel integrated graphics are not generally suitable for SketchUp. You could download SketchUp Pro 2024 and use the 7 day free trial to test whether it has problems.
2017 MacBook Pros typically had the built in intel graphics but also a dedicated GPU as well, from Radeon.
I imagine a 650 is better than a 630. We did see some Mac Intel 630 related issues, but some of those were Monterey OS related. If you are up to date with macOS, the integrated GPU should work, at least as well as it ever did.
Another thought, for any GPUs that don’t cope well with Metal or DX12, SketchUp 2024 has the option to switch back to the older OpenGL graphics engine.
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Out of curiosity I tested installing sketchup 2024 on my old 2013 13” MacBook Pro with a 4th gen dual core i7 and integrated gpu, sketchup runs smoothly with a medium size model, I added some geometry and made copies of elements just to overload the model and my old machine handled it very well, it started to lag a bit but still it was workable. You won’t have any issues with your 2017 MacBook.
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Colin,
Can you explain how Layout and Sketchup work or not with the GPU? I have a 2019 MacBook Pro with with a Radeon pro Vega 20 running 14.4.1
What kind of performance should I expect? Are there any tests with the different machines that we can see?
Thanks again!!!
I don’t know exactly how it works but the new graphics engine takes advantage of modern hardware and software, Metal and DX12 are more advanced and modern engines than the old OpenGL used until sketchup 2023. The former API was like a bottleneck, it didn’t take much advantage of the hardware, specially on Mac, cause apple left support for OpenGL in 2017 and sketchup/Layout weren’t using even the latest version of OpenGL. Now Sketchup uses the native windows and MacOS API’s, that take full advantage of the hardware. Before there wasn’t much difference between a modern and powerful and an old one.
Your MacBook is not old and still has support from apple, that means that you can install the latest OS with all the features and improvements on the software side, you should be able to use the new graphics engine and make some tests with big models either with a previous version of Skp or switching from the preferences window to the old engine, the performance gain is amazing.
This is a feature that was requested for some years, sketchup was one of the few softwares that were using OpenGL, most of the competition left it a while ago.
