MP 1,1-5,1 What Mac OS can be upgraded to for Mac Pro 3,1?

[lovecd]

Have early 2008 Mac Pro with the following hardware specs:

1. 2 x 2.8ghz quad core xeon cpu.
2. 32GB 800mhz 6400 ram
3. ATI radeon HD 4870 512MB GPU.
4. 500GB Samsung SSD.

Currently running Hi Sierra, runs great. I just wondering if I can upgrade it to any newer OS? Can anyone give some advise?

Thanks,

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Have early 2008 Mac Pro with the following hardware specs:

1. 2 x 2.8ghz quad core xeon cpu.
2. 32GB 800mhz 6400 ram
3. ATI radeon HD 4870 512MB GPU.
4. 500GB Samsung SSD.

Currently running Hi Sierra, runs great. I just wondering if I can upgrade it to any newer OS? Can anyone give some advise?

Thanks,

Officially, High Sierra is the last Mac OS supported by MP3,1.
The former mining RX580 graphic cards are offered in my country for quite reasonable price now. (50~60$). Tempt to get one for cMPs.

macOS 12 Monterey on Unsupported Macs Thread

This thread will be dedicated to the discussion of running macOS 12.0 on unsupported Macs At the time of writing, WWDC has wrapped up and Developer Seeds have been sent out. We're eagerly awaiting for all our community developers and enthusiasts to test out the new version of macOS We will...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[doobydoooby]

I'm running pretty much the same machine as you and it's running the final version of Catalina perfectly. I used dosdudes absolutely fabulous software and it runs like a dream.

The only thing I would advise you to change is your very old graphics card: I am running a years-old but metal-compatible Nvidia card which works perfectly, is very cheap to buy on ebay and a doddle to install. You just need to find one which is Metal-compatible. Dosdude's page says that the patcher should now also work with AMD GPU's but without graphics acceleration I wouldn't recommend it! The only difference between the mac running Catalina under dosdudes patch and a usual mac is that you don't get a boot screen: your first inkling of a mac os is at the login screen. You can flash the nvidia card with EFI firmware to get the boot screen if its important to you, but its not entirely necessary.

Oh, and you need to check that you have an up to date wifi/bluetooth chip in the machine; the old ones aren't compatible. I bought one for $20 on ebay.

macOS Catalina Patcher

 

[Dayo]

Officially, High Sierra is the last Mac OS supported by MP3,1.

Actually, the MP31 and MP41 were dropped at El Capitan. If the OP is indeed running HiSierra, then it is via OpenCore or DosDude/similar.

M31 to MP51 can run MacOS versions up to Monterey with the help of tools like OpenCore as you hinted. People are able to boot Ventura but this is to be avoided by ordinary folk.

 

[lovecd]

Actually, the MP31 and MP41 were dropped at El Capitan. If the OP is indeed running HiSierra, then it is via OpenCore or DosDude/similar.

M31 to MP51 can run MacOS versions up to Monterey with the help of tools like OpenCore as you hinted. People are able to boot Ventura but this is to be avoided by ordinary folk.

Thanks. Does any one have experience running Catalina or Monterey on it?

 

[Hrududu]

I've got the same 3,1 as you, but with 16GB of RAM and 7200rpm drives instead of SSD. The trick was a cheap Metal graphics card. I got an HP GeForce GT 630 and flashed it to give me Metal support. I'm currently using Mojave as my primary OS, but I boot El Capitain, and Sierra too. No issues at all with Mojave. It runs fast and stable. I'll likely push it to Catalina before too long, or even take a crack at Big Sur/Monterey.

 

[Project Alice]

Thanks. Does any one have experience running Catalina or Monterey on it?

A 3,1 was my DD until I picked up a 4,1 and upgraded it.

I had Mojave on my 3,1 using a Geforce GTX 780 Ti. With an SSD the thing was plenty fast.

If you put in a supported GPU with appropriate patches it can run whatever version you want. Monterey would run on it pretty well, and Ventura once the patching as been sorted.

 

[lovecd]

A 3,1 was my DD until I picked up a 4,1 and upgraded it.

I had Mojave on my 3,1 using a Geforce GTX 780 Ti. With an SSD the thing was plenty fast.

If you put in a supported GPU with appropriate patches it can run whatever version you want. Monterey would run on it pretty well, and Ventura once the patching as been sorted.

How should I choose the GPU which is metal supportive?