Likelihood of Mojave on Unsupported Systems

Mac
#83

Actually, that does happen occasionally. A new os improves the mac’s performance. Snow leopard for example. I suspect it will be so for Mojave , just not available on machines where the GPU doesn’t support metal APIs.

In fact, I would go as far as to say one of the reasons I like Apple products is because OS upgrades are more likely to improve my machine. Windows 10 is an aberration performance wise on the dark side, and it comes with its own pile of baggage. It took multiple iterations to get XP working properly. And MS gave up on vista and win8.

2 Likes
#84

So, it appears that my Mac Pro 3,1 won’t b getting Mojave. Oh well. It’s not worth it to me in the immediate to change to a 2009-2012. I will just wait or I will go Hackintosh.

Current Hardware Support Status:
Video Cards
Pre-Metal AMD video cards (Radeon HD 6xxx series and older): Drivers will load, but full acceleration will not be achieved.
Pre-Metal nVidia video cards (GeForce 5xx series and older): Drivers will load and full acceleration will be achieved, but menu bar and Finder sidebar will look weird in the light mode. Also some weird menu bar anomalies in dark mode, but much less apparent. Random kernel panics have also been reported with these cards.
Pre-Metal Intel iGPUs (Intel HD Graphics 3000 and Intel HD Graphics “Arrandale/1st Gen”): Drivers will load and full acceleration will be achieved. Menu bar/Finder sidebar anomalies described above will also be present. No kernel panics or any instability issues have been reported with Intel iGPUs thus far.
Machine Support
Any system that uses a Core i-series CPU (Arrandale or later) will be able to run Mojave.
Core 2 Duo/nVidia MCP79/89/i965-based systems will kernel panic on boot. The cause of this kernel panic has yet to be determined. It is NOT caused by USB drivers or a lack of SSE4.2. It does not occur in virtual machines.
MacPro3,1 (Early-2008) systems have the same kernel panic issue, and as such, Mojave will not run on them.
Installing for Testing:

To install on your machine, you can download and run my “macOS Mojave Patcher” application, which will let you download a copy of the latest Public Beta from Apple, and create a bootable USB installer for use on unsupported systems. It contains all the patches necessary to achieve the hardware support listed above. At this point, it is recommended that you install Mojave on one of these unsupported systems for testing only, and NOT as your main/daily use OS.

The compatibility list ls currently (assuming we are able to fix AMD acceleration):
Xserve 2009
Mac Pro 2009 (although, it makes more sense to upgrade it to a 2010/2012 and then install officially)
iMac Late 2009-Late 2011 (Core i series only)
MacBook Air Mid 2011 (works perfectly except for UI glitches)
MacBook Pro Mid 2010-Late 2011 (Core i series only) (works perfectly except for UI glitches if you disable the discrete GPU)
Mac Mini Mid 2011 (the HD 3000 variant works perfectly except for UI glitches)

#85

Update: Looks like in the last month or so (while my Mac Pro was essentially out of commission), dosdude1 SUCEEDED in patching Mojave for the 3,1. Now that my Mac Pro is back to working, LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

  • Early-2008 Mac Pro (MacPro3,1) GPU support: When running Mojave, you CANNOT use a newer AMD video card EVEN IF it is a Metal-comptible card and is supported in Mojave. The newer AMD drivers used in Mojave require the SSE4.2 instruction set, which the MacPro3,1 does not support. There is no way around this at this time. Your only GPU upgrade options for MacPro3,1 systems are nVidia cards, which work perfectly fine.
#86

Totally worth finding an eVGA GTX 680 and flashing it. It’s the best natively supported (with EFI) card you can get for the Cheesegrater Mac Pros.

#87

My 950 should work just fine. My 710 gets me Apple Logo and is allowing me to install Mojave no issues. I’m not going to spend money on new video card when I’ve got a perfectly working situation and I just sent you a couple large! :smile:

#88

Yes, good point. :joy: Only issue is no FileVault on Mojave without an EFI GPU (and even then it’s a hack sadly!).

#89

So, as usual, NVIDIA doesn’t have web drivers available for Mojave, but…

On my testing drive (a spinner drive, not even an SSD) Mojave is running buttery smooth on the 710. lolwut, that didn’t happen on Sierra or High Sierra. It runs Premiere CS6 fine, scrubbing is smooth, exporting is quick, watching 4K/60FPS (which I watch, but do not need to edit in) is no problem at all.

…This is going to work while I wait for the 950’s web drivers. I’m pleased.

#90

I’ve been vaguely following this thread… as I’ve been getting used to the idea of actually having “the latest” OS on a Mac that I own again, for the first time in about a decade…

But then I just started researching purchasing one of the required, compatible graphics cards… and the cost will be more than I paid for the MacPro5,1 itself.

So - High Sierra it is.

#91

My biggest problem with Mojave so far? It made me certain it’s time for new glasses. I have about six pairs of glasses and they’re all essentially useless. I have one pair (my Harry Potter style glasses) that has a prescription almost good enough to see the text at its actual sharpness. If I squint, of course, everything looks fine, so I know it’s me. Somehow, I didn’t notice that with High Sierra. I guess it has been about three years, so maybe my eyes really have changed enough. And that’s the funny thing, I’ve been told my eyesight hasn’t always gotten worse, sometimes it just shifts enough one way or the other that I need a new prescription, even if technically my 20/whatever hasn’t changed. Has to do with the astigmatism or whatever.

Here are some screenshots (1440p, even with a 27" 4K monitor, 4K itself is too small for my eyes).

31%20PM
31%20PM2560×1440 791 KB
27%20PM
27%20PM2560×1440 936 KB

#92

I have bought 3 PC GTX680 cards off gumtree in the last 18 months for $120-140. Flash with Mac firmware and off you go. Worth every single cent - even in High Sierra!

ie this one is/was $75!

#93

Let me guess - you’re not using Retina? I just upgraded on my Cheesegrater, and the text is awful on my 30-inch display. :confused: Also, the font much denser. I wonder if that’s a new version of the San Francisco font perhaps?

#94

I have a 27" 4K monitor. I think that’s “retina” in non-Apple speak, right? HiDP or something like that?

#95

I ran the first command from this link and it made a BIG difference:

defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO

Your mileage may vary.

Text looks great on my MacBook Pro Retina display with not changes (unsurprisingly)… :man_shrugging:

#96

Not quite. Retina at 27-inch = 5K. 4K is retina at 21-inch. It may still be scaled - I don’t know - but I’d guess unless it’s the magic ratio Apple use (which is the traditional 27-inch res of 2560*1440 doubled up) then it may still need tweaking.

#97

I did that first thing, too. It improved it a lot, but it didn’t solve my eyesight problem!

1 Like
#98

Still not loving the font rendering after that after an hour. Back to 10.13 for me for now and a few bugs to file.

#99

Yeah, it’s not ready for the Cheesegraters yet, obviously. But that’s why Mojave is on my tester drive, and 13.6 is still on my SSDs.

#100

Cloned my tester install over to a 250GB Samsung 860 Evo. Unsurprisingly, massive responsiveness improvement. My view of Mojave so far is that whatever front-end stuff it’s done is relatively minor. The back-end stuff is unobtrusive. My prediction in the original post of this thread is correct: this just feels like one more minor update. Which is fine by me, because it means I was correct in presuming that dosdude1 would succeed. He did. This is almost an 11 year old computer that is still kicking. Now that the problem RAM was removed, there appears to be no issues with the Mac Pro 3,1 continuing to run. I’m very pleased, indeed.

Update: My GTX 660 works without webdrivers on Mojave. It didn’t work at all on High Sierra. But it had worked on Sierra. Glad to see this got fixed.

1 Like
#101

I’m ready to eat my words. Since a reboot the fonts look good to me now. Have been on Mojave for about 4 days full time and am loving it.

Only real gripe is the reduced vertical line spacing in Mail app ‘classic’ view. :man_shrugging:

1 Like
#102

I saw a font improvement going from the 710 to the 660, but I thought it may have just been my imagination.