Mac Hardware Requirements

Why is the 1.17 Beta limited to Macs with AMD Radeon HD 7000, the base model 2011 iMac comes with a 6000 series powerful enough to run EE 1.14 smoothly with a high render distance. I know this is a very popular model of computer across America but with 1.17 the computers can’t run it. I understand that some betas require more powerful hardware. Will the threshold be lowered in the full release?