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macOS 10.14 Mojave on Unsupported Macs Thread

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The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
lumos said:
I have a Mac Pro 2008 (3,1) in wich I have replaced the graphic card.
Now I have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2048 MB.
Despite the SSE2 kernel error, how much probabilities I have to run macOS 10.14 Mojave?
I know that is to early, but I'll ask anyway :D.

Thank you
Click to expand...

Maybe, or maybe not. If i need to guess, i guess not. Because of the missing SSE4.2 instruction set from the CPU.
 
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Is it possible to get hardware acceleration on a 2011 Late MBP if someone made Mojave kexts for Radeon HD6000 series?
 
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Taufiq91 said:
Is it possible to get hardware acceleration on a 2011 Late MBP if someone made Mojave kexts for Radeon HD6000 series?
Click to expand...

If someone making it, yes. But, Metal requires some hardware support, thats why Apple does not create Metal drivers for it. Anyting before GCN is not supported by Apple's Metal. In the PC world, Microsoft's DirectX 12 API and Khronos Group's Vulkan API is very similar to Apple's Metal and non GCN cards does not support either.

GCN cards are Radons that are based the newer GCN arch (some models of the HD7000/HD8000 and Rx200/300 and newser series). HD6000 and before chips using TeraScale arch.
 
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hi. I have a 5,1 with a gtx 1080 ti. I assume the GPU is metal capable but there are no drivers form nvidia yet, is this correct? how long do you think till there are drivers?
can the beta be installed with a non metal GPU?
I have an old mac pro GPU that isn't supported past lion but it has boot screen support so I use it to install the operating systems.
thanks.
 
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Eweie said:
hi. I have a 5,1 with a gtx 1080 ti. I assume the GPU is metal capable but there are no drivers form nvidia yet, is this correct? how long do you think till there are drivers?
can the beta be installed with a non metal GPU?
I have an old mac pro GPU that isn't supported past lion but it has boot screen support so I use it to install the operating systems.
thanks.
Click to expand...

nVidia Pascal (1000 Series) are working fine (since last september) under HS with full Metal support.
 
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dosdude1 said:
macos_mojave_roundup.jpg


In this thread, advancements in running macOS 10.14 (Mojave) on unsupported systems will be discussed.​

June 4, 2018 conclusions:
We (dosdude1 & parrotgeek1) have thoroughly investigated 10.14 GPU drivers, and sadly, we have concluded that it is not possible for any non-Metal GPU to work, because almost the entire OS uses Metal.

Evidence for this: If you remove the Metal driver, it won't boot. But if you remove the OpenGL driver, it boots with acceleration but random actions throughout the OS cause crashes. Also, removing the OpenGL software renderer doesn't break safe mode, so it must use a non-OpenGL software renderer.

This leaves the compatibility list as theoretically (with a Metal capable GPU):
  • Xserve 2008?
  • Xserve 2009
  • Mac Pro 2008?
  • Mac Pro 2009
  • Mac Pro 2010/2012
The 2008 computers have a kernel panic currently but we are investigating. They might need a patched kernel or SSE4.2 emulator, both of which can't happen until GM (we need XNU source code).

Another possibility for some computers is a Thunderbolt external GPU.
This needs to be investigated more, and requires kext patches.

The following unsupported models are Thunderbolt capable:
  • MacBook Pro (Early/Late 2011)
  • MacBook Air (Mid 2011)
  • Mac mini (Mid 2011)
  • iMac (Mid 2011)
Yet a third possibility is to upgrade the MXM slot GPU on 2008-2011 (and maybe 2007 with an upgraded CPU?) iMacs. This has not been investigated yet.

Moderator Note:

Please do not ask for, or provide help getting developers profile information to access unauthorised beta software on MacRumors. If you are not a developer, sign up to the Apple Beta Software Program to get the official public beta releases.
Click to expand...

Will my MacPro 12Core (Mid 2010) with ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024 MB be compatible?
 
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Sounds like my iMac 27 2010 with 5750 will end up as external display. Sad there wasn't decent 11-13" macbook with 4-core CPU and they all have just 4-8 Gb of RAM.
 
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tsialex said:
If you update your GPU, HD5870 do not support Metal.

AMD HD7950 or Nvidia GTX680 are Metal v3 compatible and have "For Mac" officials models.
Click to expand...

Good point. But... the Sapphire HD 7950 and EVGA GTX 680 have been out of production for quite a while now though. Is Apple really going to tell people to go hunting for used cards on eBay? I'm hoping they're going to work with a vendor to produce a newer "Mac Edition" card that will be available to purchase new.
 
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bookemdano said:
Good point. But... the Sapphire HD 7950 and EVGA GTX 680 have been out of production for quite a while now though. Is Apple really going to tell people to go hunting for used cards on eBay? I'm hoping they're going to work with a vendor to produce a newer "Mac Edition" card that will be available to purchase new.
Click to expand...
I'm hoping too, but I've bought one more eVGA GTX680 For Mac after 10.13.5 changes on System Information. Price definitively gone up now with Metal pre-requisite…
 
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lumos said:
I have a Mac Pro 2008 (3,1) in wich I have replaced the graphic card.
Now I have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2048 MB.
Despite the SSE2 kernel error, how much probabilities I have to run macOS 10.14 Mojave?
I know that is to early, but I'll ask anyway :D.

Thank you
Click to expand...

I'm thinking it's the end of the line for those of us on the Mac Pro 3,1 since SSE 4.1 is likely an unpatchable limiting factor. I have two of them, one as a household media server (3.0 Ghz, 8 Core, GT120), the other as my primary desktop (2.8 Ghz, 8 Core with an ancient GTX 8800 card). The desktop machine has lasted me 3 years now as it was a gift from a friend who upgraded to a 5K iMac. The media server 3,1 was also donated from a friend whose a pro photographer and found a 2012 Mac Pro to replace it with. So I cannot complain much about my situation since outside of more hard drives I've bought over the years and a few accessories, it's not like I have that much money in these machines and the efforts of Dosdude, Czo and others on this forum has saved me from buying a new desktop machine for 3 years. I used to keep a Mac Pro 1,1 as my media server but it's now retired (but still working).

But now I think the desktop machine will need to be retired in favor of either a 5K iMac or if my wife goes along, an iMac Pro unless I feel I can wait until the magical unicorn 2019 Mac Pro. For a new media server, I'd kill for a new Mac Mini with TB3 since I have a Drobo 5D3 that would be well mated to it. But I'm growing increasingly despondent that we'll ever see such a machine.

But for all of you complaining about the 2009-2011 class of machines being deprecated, this isn't inconsistent with Apple's past actions. In the last several years, Apple has usually kept OS support for machines made in the last 5-6 years with the exception of Mac Pros which got up to 8 years of compatibility. Last year, High Sierra didn't deprecate anything (much like iOS 12 this year) which gave a lot of these older machines an additional year of life. But it had to end sometime and I'm not surprised that Metal/SSE 4.2 are the cutoffs this year.

Others have pointed out that you can install Windows 10 on much of this ancient hardware. That's true...I have Windows 10 running on a 2008 iMac that used to be in my daughter's room before she got her iPad Pro for Christmas. That iMac is sitting in my living room hooked up to my audiophile rig running Tidal/iTunes for anyone who wants to play music there. As for my other machines, I may see if I can install Windows Server 2016 on the 3,1 Mac Pro and finally retire a Dell 2900 from 2006 that still functions to this day as my household Windows Server. But Bootcamp isn't really setup up for a server install so that may be a limiting factor.
 
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Good morning. Two updates:

1)
The kernel panic on MacPro3,1 is in fact caused by missing SSE4.2. This is bad in a way, but also good because it means all we need is a SSE4.2 emulator (which can be ported from hackintosh AMD kernels) but we need to wait until GM for the kernel source.

2)
Fredrik Andersson on Low End Mac Facebook group traced the GUI rendering in safe mode and concluded that I was wrong, and it is still using OpenGL. It has just been intentionally blocked when not in safe mode.
This means there is hope for using an OpenGL driver. cc @Czo any reverse engineering help?
 
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With the help of those above, especially dosdud1 and his Patchers that made it possible for me to update my 3,1 to Sierra (and then High Sierra, didn't like HS and went back to just plain Sierra and it's running far better than anything ever) Thank You! and I sure hope that my lowly 2008 3,1 can go to Mojave. Strange thing, they are finally incorporating things like Dark Mode, 20 years too late, that I have been using third party apps for and would love to have it native. PLUS I have read several article saying that the 2008 or so architecture is the best platform to be running this stuff anyway. Even better than the new trash cans. So keep up the good work and fingers crossed . . .
 
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Czo said:
The first Metal capable iMac released in 2012. Anything before is not.
Click to expand...

This is why I asked; "and mid 2010 an mid 2012 where equipped with Metal-capable GPU". Made me want to take a look, if possible, and see if mine had that Metal-capable GPU.
 
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ronharp said:
This is why I asked; "and mid 2010 an mid 2012 where equipped with Metal-capable GPU". Made me want to take a look, if possible, and see if mine had that Metal-capable GPU.
Click to expand...
That's referring to the Mac Pro, not your iMac.
 
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EugW said:
That's referring to the Mac Pro, not your iMac.
Click to expand...

Shoot!! That's not what I wanted to hear. Looks like the first time in 34 years that I will not have the latest OS on my PC and now MAC. Well, it may take a smidgen of satisfaction off my upgrade to dual drives(500gb SSD and 1TB SSHD. At least the machine is still solid and will be speedier. Hopefully Windows 10 will work the way I want to when I get it all set up.
I surely do appreciate the help and suggestions from this group.
Thanks again
Ron
 
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