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Unsupported macOS Update on "iMac 21.5 Mid-2011"
- Thread starter tsuedan
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What is the exact model and specs of your iMac mid-2011? You definitely should upgrade your RAM and storage from HDD to SSD before upgrade macOS, but depending on your answer, you may have to upgrade the GPU as well.
See -
or
Updating to higher version of macOS on unsupported hardware is not for the newbie. You need to know how to get yourself out of trouble.
Hi @Bigwaff thank you for your feedback.
Good point !
Follow below the specs of my old iMac with some RAM and Storage updates that I recently have done
- Model: iMac 21.5-inch, Mid 2011
- Processor: 2,5 GHz Intel Core i5
- RAM: 32 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
- Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6750M 512 MB
- Storage: 2TB SSD
Good point !
Follow below the specs of my old iMac with some RAM and Storage updates that I recently have done
- Model: iMac 21.5-inch, Mid 2011
- Processor: 2,5 GHz Intel Core i5
- RAM: 32 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
- Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6750M 512 MB
- Storage: 2TB SSD
Either Big Sur or Monterey and using OpenCore Legacy Patcher. Make sure you have a data backup, a bootable USB installer with High Sierra for emergency rollback, and know what newer hardware you will purchase as plan C if things go really sideways.
I think Big Sur was when the OpenCore project finally managed to get working acceleration patches for the HD 6750M and other AMD TeraScale GPUs. I don't know if that fix was backward compatible with Mojave/Catalina.
Monterey is newer, but has a couple spots that are broken without Metal (see known issues: https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/issues/108)
Ventura/Sonoma start to accumulate known AVX2 issues and probably aren't worth installing if you are just trying to get Catalina+ to install a mainstream browser update.
Or you can do like I did and just stay on 10.12/10.13 to have a dedicated machine for legacy 32-bit Mac Apps.
I think Big Sur was when the OpenCore project finally managed to get working acceleration patches for the HD 6750M and other AMD TeraScale GPUs. I don't know if that fix was backward compatible with Mojave/Catalina.
Monterey is newer, but has a couple spots that are broken without Metal (see known issues: https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/issues/108)
Ventura/Sonoma start to accumulate known AVX2 issues and probably aren't worth installing if you are just trying to get Catalina+ to install a mainstream browser update.
Or you can do like I did and just stay on 10.12/10.13 to have a dedicated machine for legacy 32-bit Mac Apps.