I think since Mojave, MacOSes require Metal to work.
DeletedI have a dual boot setup High Sierra and Windows 7. Before disabling Metal, image retention in Windows was as bad as in MacOS; now, after disabling Metal, somehow, image retention disappeared in Windows as well. This is only possible if there is some long term effect of using Metal.
Image retention is not completely gone, but it is way less without Metal (like 100x) and easily removed by a few minutes of screensaver or watching youtube in full screen.