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Catalina on iMac 2010
- Thread starter maltau571
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Check out dosdude's patch here: http://dosdude1.com/catalina/
Officially, no, your iMac will only run up to High Sierra.
Unofficially, yes, it can run up to Monterey using various patchers. For Mojave or Catalina, check out dosdude's website for the patching tools. Read through the instructions before you start, and be sure that you have a good backup in place before you begin.
For Big Sur and Monterey, you'd want to check out Opencore Legacy Patcher. I have my own 2010 27" iMac running Big Sur well enough. Realize that any patched version of Mac OS will come with its own tradeoffs, things that may not work perfectly, etc. Be sure to read through the patcher websites thoroughly before starting down this path
Thanks for your reply. Can I use another graphics card in order to make this work safely?Officially, no, your iMac will only run up to High Sierra.
Unofficially, yes, it can run up to Monterey using various patchers. For Mojave or Catalina, check out dosdude's website for the patching tools. Read through the instructions before you start, and be sure that you have a good backup in place before you begin.
For Big Sur and Monterey, you'd want to check out Opencore Legacy Patcher. I have my own 2010 27" iMac running Big Sur well enough. Realize that any patched version of Mac OS will come with its own tradeoffs, things that may not work perfectly, etc. Be sure to read through the patcher websites thoroughly before starting down this path
Of course you can.
But it's not a walk in the park.
Starting with thorough reading the first post of this thread, and all the links to that post.
2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
iMac 2009 to 2011 MXM3 graphics card upgrade (Lastest update 10/13/2023 - this is the official documentation page - you found it finally!) This is the single and only documentation post. During the last years we constantly updated this post to reflect the lastet development of vBIOS and OCLP...
forums.macrumors.com
You can, but it’s not worth it in my opinion. Metal GPUs for those machines are at least around $100ish, and they come with their own sets of weird quirks. I’d personally just stick with the patches if you’re looking to go that route. The graphical oddities really aren’t that bad.
Yes, it will work with both a newer GPU and the stock GPU. My 2010 27" still has its stock ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB in it and it's been running Big Sur for the last year now. Again, there's little graphical oddities, particularly with transparency effects, but that's about it at this point. And apps that expect a Metal GPU in order to run will not run because no amount of patching will make an old GPU support APIs that it doesn't
Sorry to ask again as I am no techie.... So it is safe to use the OCLP to upgrade at least to catalina? I saw on their video that you can also partition the disk and install it on that partition in case something goes wrongYes, it will work with both a newer GPU and the stock GPU. My 2010 27" still has its stock ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB in it and it's been running Big Sur for the last year now. Again, there's little graphical oddities, particularly with transparency effects, but that's about it at this point. And apps that expect a Metal GPU in order to run will not run because no amount of patching will make an old GPU support APIs that it doesn't
You're good
It should be, yup! Though if you're going with Catalina, I'd use the dosdude1 patcher for Catalina instead. Dosdude1 for Catalina and lower, OCLP for Big Sur and newer.
Installing it on a separate partition is always a fantastic idea - that way you can play around with it a little and see if it works the way you need it to, then if it does, upgrade your main partition! And if it doesn't, just remove the new partition and be done with it.
ok many thanks for all your helpYou're good
It should be, yup! Though if you're going with Catalina, I'd use the dosdude1 patcher for Catalina instead. Dosdude1 for Catalina and lower, OCLP for Big Sur and newer.
Installing it on a separate partition is always a fantastic idea - that way you can play around with it a little and see if it works the way you need it to, then if it does, upgrade your main partition! And if it doesn't, just remove the new partition and be done with it.
Many many thanks again. Sorry to ask again but did you use the OCLP on your iMac and you had no problems???
I've checked the link and still seen Dosdude's warning about HD5xxx GPU. Better use OCLP approach. Post-install patching of OCLP have fixed the issue with HD5xxx GPU.
?? Hope sooooo. Will have to see the tutorial many times before doing it then. Thanks so much everyone
Correct! That's how I've been running Big Sur on my 2010 27".