Hi, I would like to share my experience installing Big Sur and Monterey on iMac12,2 (i7 3.4GHz, 16Gb, Quadro K2100M). Before replacing graphics card, High Sierra was installed, I couldn't afford more on Radeon 6970M.
So, after replacing graphics card, I used OCLP 0.6.2 and did a MacOS update to Big Sur. The first thing I encountered was a bug with Menu Bar (left side of Menu Bar was missing, while icons on right side such as language, spotlight, time were all still there). Various attempts to fix Menu Bar back using methods from internet didn't work.
Then I formatted internal SSD and installed Catalina on it using patch from Dosdude1 (successful) and then did an update to Big Sur via OCLP, success! I can see Menu Bar again (left and right parts). BUT whole system was extremely slow in everything related to graphics (windows minimising, browser working, etc), it was impossible to work. Then I read this great forum and made a hypothesis that version of OCLP patch makes a difference. Without going into details, I can say that I did a clean install of Big Sur with OCLP versions 0.4.1, 0.6.2, 1.3.0 – result was equally bad: very slow system performance, no Menu Bar.
I was ready to despair and put Catalina on and forget whole thing. But last attempt I took was to install Monterey via OCLP 1.3.0 and it was amazing!!! Everything worked from first time including Wi-Fi, system is flying, my iMac is like new, no lags, everything is smooth. I wrote all this for those who may have difficulties with Big Sur installation,
let try to install Monterey, you may like it much better!
Many thanks to all the creators of OCLP, you are awesome! And thank you to everyone who writes detailed replies on this forum, you are a pleasure to read!