MP 6,1 MacPro6,1, Ventura/Sonoma and OCLP (still DRM issues)

[tsialex]

I just installed Ventura 13.2 on my MacPro 6,1. Everything works without problems. I only had a wifi problem but my eth works fine. No problems on installing.

You are mistaken, Power Management and DRM still does not work even with yesterday OCLP 0.6.2 Nightly - it's clearly noted with the commits.

 

[Killerbob]

Except, that may not affect his usage in Ventura. Power Management is not necessary to run and use the Mac, and DRM is content based.

 

[tsialex]

Except, that may not affect his usage in Ventura. Power Management is not necessary to run and use the Mac, and DRM is content based.

Sure, but since most people never read the release notes, this need to be clearly noted here or they will think that now everything works, which is not correct.

Support of Ventura with AX2-less Macs is beta for the majority of Macs and alpha for late-2013 Mac Pro.

 

[Pierluigi.tac]

Which OCLP version did you start with, when you initially installed Ventura on your Mac Pro?

Did you install it on the internal disk, and did you do a fresh install or an upgrade to an existing Monterey?

TIA

6.1
I make an update from Monterey use an external disk i install ventura on external disk and after i patched it. The macs works well without any problem. The update was perfect. Drm doesn’t involve any activity. So for the moment everything is ok. I will update here on usage.

 

[profinite]

Success!

 

[Pierluigi.tac]

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Hmmm your Macpro has 128gb but Apple says only 64gb ram are supported. And alsways Apple says that the supported ram is ECC DDR3 1866 mhz ...

 

[tsialex]

Hmmm your Macpro has 128gb but Apple says only 64gb ram are supported. And alsways Apple says that the supported ram is ECC DDR3 1866 mhz ...

When you install a 32GB DIMM, the memory controller frequency is downgraded back to 1066MHz.

It's a compromise, you can double the RAM capacity of the late-2013 Mac Pro, up to 128GB of RAM support when four 32GB DIMMs are installed, but at lower frequency.

For a lot of people, more RAM even with lower frequency still gives more performance = job completed with less time.

 

[plunger]

View attachment 2102970

Tonight, OCLP team (thx @khronokernel) started supporting MacPro6,1 and Ventura for the first time:

View attachment 2102971
View attachment 2102974

OCLP 0.5.1 Nightly brought Ventura support for the late-2013 Mac Pro. Somethings don't yet work, like DRM and CPU power management (Ventura is running with the VMM flag enabled), but besides that, it's fast/stable and the installation is fully automatic:

View attachment 2102975
View attachment 2102973

DRM is one of the two major bummers right now and nothing (really nothing) that demands DRM with Safari works, Netflix asks for Silverlight for example:

View attachment 2102972

The other major bummer is the missing macOS CPU power management - no Intel SpeedStep, so the CPU is always clocked from the nominal to the Turbo frequency with no SpeedStep down clock when the CPU is idle - this generation of Xeon processors can down clock to 1,1GHz when idle.

Sleep works, fan works - the SMC works and is independent of the CPU power management by macOS, so the fan works as expected. While you are not in CPU load, no greater heat is generated, even without SpeedStep working at this moment.

Apple removed AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext from Ventura, and OCLP devs are waiting for Apple to publish the XNU sources to start re-implementing it (edit 20221103: Apple already released the XNU sources xnu-8792.41.9 for Ventura GM) - the workaround to begin supporting the late-2013 was setting the VMM flag and running Ventura as a VM.

As of OCLP 0.6.2 nightly, same issues still present with late-2013 Mac Pro.

How come DRM and CPU power management are supported on MacPro4,1 and MacPro5,1 but not MacPro6,1?

 

[tsialex]

How come DRM and CPU power management are supported on MacPro4,1 and MacPro5,1 but not MacPro6,1?

It's not just that, but the two things that does not have workarounds are these two. Btw, MacPro6,1 is a XCPM Mac.

For details, read the open issues below:

2013 Mac Pro and macOS Ventura Boot Issues · Issue #1009 · dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher

As discussed previously in the overall macOS Ventura and OpenCore Legacy Patcher Support Issue, certain units, namely the 2013 Mac Pro, fail to boot macOS Ventura due to a mixture of several issues...

github.com

Ventura Boot Issues with certain GPU/Firmware combinations · Issue #2126 · acidanthera/bugtracker

An odd issue that we've seen pop up on Ventura is certain GPUs having boot issues depending on the hardware combination. Specifically stalling around PCI configuration begin stage. We've seen this ...

github.com

macOS Ventura and OpenCore Legacy Patcher Support · Issue #998 · dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher

This page will be updated as we learn more about Ventura and the changes within. If you're not an active developer for legacy Macs, DO NOT INSTALL VENTURA. Even if you're bored, more random users i...

github.com

 

[TheDonut125]

Do you think it is better off to wait for future update to get PowerManagment resolved or would the machine be fine running in the mean time?

 

[TheBigHunt]

Monterey works like a charm... i really dont see any advantage to move to ventura (fir me at least ;-))

 

[Killerbob]

Except for Advanced Data Protection, Passkeys, shared iCloud Library, Stage Manager, and a ton of updates to security...

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

Is it possible to install Ventura on an external 1 TB Thunderbolt drive and boot the "trash can" from it using OpenCore?

 

[tsialex]

Is it possible to install Ventura on an external 1 TB Thunderbolt drive and boot the "trash can" from it using OpenCore?

Yes.

 

[emmab2006]

Curious to know if there’s been any progress on potentially fixing the DRM issues on the Mac Pro 2013.

 

[tsialex]

Curious to know if there’s been any progress on potentially fixing the DRM issues on the Mac Pro 2013.

Nothing changed, same issues with MacPro6,1. You can read the OCLP change logs for each release to know the progress, or currently the lack of it.

 

[eternalpeasant]

I don't believe we will be seeing a fix anytime soon, Devs are working hard to make it fully functional for all systems.

 

[tsialex]

This week there was some progress with macOS 12+ dyld cache extractor - this is indirect, but extremely important for GPU/Wi-Fi drivers and METAL compiler support. Unfortunately, nothing directly related to MacPro6,1 that I know from reading the change logs and commits.

 

[steve123]

I noticed a post dated a bit more than a week ago posted to the Ventura on Unsupported Mac's thread that he submitted some fixes for the power management issue:

hey everyone just wanted to give a quick up for those who have the Late-2013 Mac Pro 6,1. I have applied some fixes to get power management back under control. As most of you know its kinda broken at the moment. I wil be passing all my stuff over to the OCLP team to decide if they want to implement or not.

I cannot see a PR on the OCLP Github repo related to this.

 

[KD7IWP]

0.6.2 release notes also mention that DRM is being patched.

OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/CHANGELOG.md at main · dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher

Experience macOS just like before. Contribute to dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

• Implement Hardware Encoding support for AMD GCN 1-3, Polaris and Vega GPUs
  • Applicable for pre-Haswell Macs on macOS Ventura
  • Resolves DRM playback issues on Netflix, Disney+, etc.
    • Note: GCN 1-3 DRM is functional, however hardware video encoding is still experimental
      • AppleTV+ may be unstable due to this

 

[steve123]

0.6.2 release notes also mention that DRM is being patched.

Indeed, AppleTV now works in Ventura on my Mac Pro 6,1.

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

I’m aware that there are still crippling issues with the MacPro6,1, Ventura and OCLP; but they are so cheap used that I am tempted to get one as a playtoy. Can someone say which hardware config is currently the most compatible with the existing state of OCLP support? I’m assuming the GPU model would be the biggest issue (are there any issues with different CPU models?).

If I don’t need to play DRM’ed media and don’t put my Macs to sleep, will it mostly be OK on Ventura?

 

[genexx]

As i had used Hackintosh before my MBA M2 i had just used Firefox for any DRM Related stuff and the Sun is shining.

But i had working Graphics Acceleration.
There might lay the reason older MP 5,1 may work better cause you can just change the Grafic Card.

I still use Firefox for Netflix / Amazon and can not see any reason to do different now on the MBA M2, it is just running better.

But the Power Usage of an Old MP 6,1 with no CPU Power Management would bother me.
There is a CPUfriend extension / kext where i wonder that this would not work on PM 6,1 but there is also the possibility that the absense of AVX2 in the capabilities of the CPU can brake so much more that i would not use a System with Ventura on a Platform with missing AVX2 Cpu anywhay.

So i guess there is no big Hope for this, it will allways be a compromise.

Dropped CPU Support​

 

[steve123]

Can someone say which hardware config is currently the most compatible with the existing state of OCLP support?

Do not use a Samsung NVMe PCIe Gen 4 SSD such as the 980 PRO/990 PRO. DRM is working now (experimentally).

 

[steve123]

If I don’t need to play DRM’ed media and don’t put my Macs to sleep, will it mostly be OK on Ventura?

Sleep works fine for me ... in fact, I think it is the first time I have experienced sleep working reliably on my MP 6,1 in years. The Power Management issue is related to Intel Speed Step which slows the clock when the processor is idle. I also noticed that one of my cores (Core 1) is constantly running at 100%. I am not sure if the core running at 100% is a consequence of running macOS in a VM (VMM is on) or as a Reddit user suggested, related to the Power Management issue as well.