MP 1,1-5,1 Mac Pro 5,1 OCLP: Any reason to stick with Ventura rather than go straight to Sonoma?

[Pimander]

I am stuck on Mojave on my old Mac Pro 5,1. I am about to take the dive with OCLP and wondered whether there is any reason to go for Ventura rather than straight to Sonoma?

My reasoning is purely that I have a slight worry that Apple are constantly "changing" Sonoma and there might be a chance that Sonoma will suddenly stop working on my system. Is this nonsense.

Forgive my ignorance, I have never used OCLP before.

 

[startergo]

First of all I would not recommend anything greater than Monterey for cMP, due to the AVX2 support. In Sonoma the root sealed volume has to be patched to make the old WIFI Broadcom cards work, so if you insist choosing between those 2 I recommend Ventura.

 

[Pimander]

AVX2? According to the link below, my GPU (Polaris RX580) will be patched by OCLP and works in Ventura and Sonoma? Am I misunderstanding something here? I don't want to do anything stupid.

OpenCore Legacy Patcher

I don't care about WiFi because I don't use it, I just use ethernet.

 

[startergo]

Dropped CPU Support​

macOS Ventura drops support for pre-Haswell CPUs. Much of userspace now requires AVX2 support, along with AMD Polaris GPU drivers and some instances of AVX2 instructions in some kexts. Although the kexts can be patched (opens new window)or downgraded (opens new window), the Polaris GPU drivers and most of userspace rely on AVX2 too much to be able to be patched.

Apple has left a dyld cache that does not use AVX2 instructions in Ventura to support Rosetta on Apple Silicon machines, but this cache is not installed by default. You can use CryptexFixup (opens new window)to force this dyld cache to be installed, but:

• Apple may remove this cache at any time in the future if they add AVX2 support to Rosetta
• Delta updates (small 1-3GB updates) will no longer be available and you must install the full update (12GB), as delta updates only contain the non-AVX2 cache on Apple Silicon machines
• Polaris GPUs remain unsupported on machines without AVX2

Because of these caveats, Dortania will no longer be supporting pre-Haswell CPUs for Ventura and above. The pages for these CPUs will remain updated for Monterey.

macOS 13: Ventura | OpenCore Install Guide

 

[startergo]

You can run Ventura with OCLP, but it is not recommended for various reasons. You will see some apps not working, crashes even maybe reboots. If you can live with these go ahead.

 

[haralds]

Ventura and Sonoma are working ok for me. But with the RX-580, Monterey does not need root patching.
It really depends on what is important to you in regards to apps:
- Homekit is outdated in Monterey and does not work with updated installs.
- Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro are not supported with their latest releases.
Always keep Mojave. I actually also have Catalina. Eventually I might drop Ventura, since there is little difference in stability and installation complexity. For now, I have enough disk for the extra 500GB it takes.

 

[Pimander]

The plan was to keep my native Mojave install drive as it is. I happen to have a new SSD here so can install the newer system using OCLP on that: Opencore with Monterey/Ventura/Sonoma (one of the three) so that I have a bootpicker.

I'll admit, I'm a bit nervous about Ventura on Mac Pro 5,1 now.... I was only concerned about Sonoma updates before and was hoping for reassurance. 😁

I'm thinking of giving in and installing Windows 10/11 (apparently it's simple to do with Rufus boot creator from an Opencore boot). I've heard it works better on the cheesegrater than OSx now.

 

[haralds]

I'm thinking of giving in and installing Windows 10/11 (apparently it's simple to do with Rufus boot creator from an Opencore boot). I've heard it works better on the cheesegrater than OSx now.

I have Windows 11 running under Legacy Boot, and it works nicely. The most responsive OS for me is ZorinOS/Debian. But that is more of an experiment since it does not support my native macOS apps.

 

[Pimander]

I already run Linux on a regular PC, but I've never bothered on the Mac. I suspect the best bet to get the most out of this machine going forward is to run Windows and learn to edit video on that. I can't be bothered to keep removing the RX-580 just to get a boot screen so just need Opencore working I suppose. The more I think about it the more it makes sense just to use Monterey/Opencore/OCLP as a base and forget about running recent MacOS.

The end of an era is really here then I suppose. For me, the best computer Mac ever made needs to run Windows to get the most out of it? Shame on Apple!!!

 

[startergo]

I can't be bothered to keep removing the RX-580 just to get a boot screen so just need Opencore working I suppose

You know that you can flash the cMP firmware to enable boot screen support without OpenCore, right?

 

[Pimander]

I heard about injecting the ROM with EnableGOP. I'm scared. I hear horror stories about bricking the MAC.

 

[MNissen]

For 10 hours a day over the last week (I'm retired and obsessive ) I've been trying to get Ventura/Sonoma to install in my Mac Pro 5,1, AMD RX590. Starting from Catalina via Dosdude.

I have had Sonoma installed before but... Instability and trying to get a WIFI card to work have me abandoning the WIFI card and sticking with Monterey.

I've tried all sorts of permutations of the install path , started from blank disk, upgrade from Catalina and combinations of graphics cards (RX590 and GeForce 120).

So it's been a week of learnings.

Takeaways: Use OCLP 0.6.8 - don't upgrade when offered. - ignore.

Install on the Catalina disk, as well as the SSD that Monterey is going on. Keep Catalina disk in reserve.

Start using the RX590, and when reboots happen, if trouble happens, Shut Down and then Start, restarting seems to be inferior to shut down and start. If I used the Geforce when installing OCLP - OCLP removed a bunch of AMD Radeon files (blech! disaster!)

Use the GeForce 120 to choose the EFI (on the SSD) to use, Ctrl key and enter/click to make default. Then put the RX 590 back in to do any installing.

Monterey is where I'll stay.

 

[haralds]

Here is my experience with a flashed RX-580 8GB and updated WiFi/BLE card.

• Always keep a Mojave install for recovery. I have it on an SSD with a standard BootCamp install upgraded to Windows 11.
• I also have DosDude patched Catalina. That's been super stable. It's also a nice transition system, since it can boot with and without OCLP. With my hardware updates, it only has plist patches and can run with full SIP enabled. Those were the good old days, when Apple engineers internally still used that iron.
• OCLP v1.3.0 and Monterey are completely stable. There is no root patch required. I use it as a baseline. But it does not have the latest HomeKit and Logic Pro.
• OCLP v1.4.2 and Ventura and Sonoma are a mixed bag. Lately Sonoma has been stable for runs of several days and then it might have a crash or Safari starts crashing/reloading in pages.
• Since there is little reliability difference between Ventura and Sonoma, I might delete the volume to get the 700GB+ space back plus reduce the hassle of keeping the horses groomed.
• Lately, I have been mainly using Sonoma. I now shut it down at the end of the day instead of using sleep. It should be stable for the 12-14 hour period it is running.
• Monterey is ok with the OCLP 1.4.2 EFI partition.
• Both Monterey and Sonoma do not work with the OTA update. I download full installers and it takes HOURS to install. Sonoma has the rootpatch removed before and reinstalled after.
• VMWare no longer supports the CMPro due to missing instructions past Mojave. Parallels Desktop works, but does not support guests past Monterey. Windows and Linuz are fully supported. Parallels Desktop has dropped support for old versions of macOS.
• Transitioning to updated OCLP and or new versions of the OS can give trouble with boot etc. I often have to fiddle with option boot etc. to get the "bless" to take after changes. The sympton is that after the start chime the system will not progress to load anything. I presume it sits in the first stage of the OCLP EFI boot but is stuck. Every update or change is an adventure.

I fully expect that Sonoma could get more unstable again depending on the apps used. For a while it was crashing hard every six hours. If I would have only one system, I would pick Monterey.

 

[MNissen]

Thank you Haralds, I'm grateful to get some confirmation of what I've seen.

I shut down also, sleeping means a hard reboot.

I also have another HDD with DosDude and Catalina - as back up - rock solid.

 

[haralds]

Just an illustration: I was triumphant today about using Sonoma in two posts. Then, when I was cramming through a task, Safari started hanging with beach balls. I don't have time and switched back to Monterey for the day.

 

[Fred4]

I heard about injecting the ROM with EnableGOP. I'm scared. I hear horror stories about bricking the MAC.

No horror stories here. I have 2 x 2009's and a 2010, and all went fine, not a hitch. Just make sure you have a UPS when flashing anything.

 

[MNissen]

Thank you Haralds, I'm grateful to get some confirmation of what I've seen.

I shut down also, sleeping means a hard reboot.

I also have another HDD with DosDude and Catalina - as back up - rock solid.

Just a further note that may be of some help to others playing with this.

Whilst my primary concern has been the Mac Pro 5,1 (4,1 flashed), I have had, my Laptop running Sonoma via OCLP quite happily in the meantime.

It is a: Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013, 2.7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB, 16 GB RAM running Sonoma 14.3.1 (23D60)

I'm not keen on taking it up to 14.4 as yet, given the issues I've had with the Mac Pro.

But as I discovered with the Mac Pro, Carbon Copy Cloner can do a complete clone (of OCLP Monterey) using Apple's Legacy Bootable Copy Assistant, and boot from it, so I may do that with the laptop and then go to 14.4.

Sucker for punishment me...