MP 1,1-5,1 Upgrading a 5,1 Mac Pro to Monterey and Windows 10. Seeking advice/suggestions on doing so.

[SorpassoSonance]

Hello. I’ve had a 5,1 Mac Pro (mid 2010) since 2011. Many years ago I updated it to Mojave and got the Boot ROM updated to 144.0.0.0.0 per instructions on these forums. At the time I also read a fair amount about OpenCore, but held off on diving into it since at the time it seemed fairly experimental.

I have been meaning to take the plunge and finally update my 5,1 Mac Pro to Monterey for the last few years. Mojave is still usable but many apps no longer get updates for it and various sites are starting to act wonky (regardless of whether Safari, Chrome, Opera, or Firefox are used).

I know that Monterey is the ideal and final version of Mac OS to use with a 5,1 Mac Pro due to Mac OS versions beyond that requiring AVX2 support. Windows 10 support just ended in October but with all the horror stories about 11 I am fine going with 10. At some point major apps will stop updating for both Monterey and Windows 10 so clearly my 5,1 Mac Pro is nearing the end of its life. I am simply trying to extend it for a few more years, before I migrate to a Mac Studio.

I am going to use Martin Lo’s 1.0.1 OpenCore package since I never intend to install anything other than Monterey. I’ve already read guides from places like The House of Moth and Mac Sound Solution’s video on how to install Martin Lo’s OpenCore package on a 5,1. I feel like I have a decent grasp on what the process is and will be able to do it successfully.

But I still have some dumb questions since this is my first time doing so.

As I said, I currently have Mojave 10.14.6, with an unflashed (no boot picker) Radeon RX 580 4 GB card installed. I own a brand new, unflashed Gigabyte Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card, which was purchased directly from Newegg in April 2020. It has been sitting unopened in its box, waiting for the day for me to upgrade to Catalina or beyond. I read from the incredibly helpful tsialex on here that when you install Monterey via OpenCore Legacy Patcher, it will only package in drivers for the graphics card you have installed in the system at the time you create the Mac OS installer with the OpenCore Legacy Patcher. Is this also the case with Martin Lo’s 1.0.1 OpenCore package, or does Martin Lo’s 1.0.1 OpenCore package include drivers for both the RX 580 as well as the 5700 XT?

I also read from tsialex and others that once you have OpenCore installed (whether via Martin Lo’s package or from OCLP), you will no longer be able to boot into your Mojave install since OpenCore is spoofing a newer Mac that does not recognize it. Would installing Catalina via the dosdude1 patcher first be a good idea, in terms of having a drive with an older version of Mac OS to fall back on in case anything ever goes wrong with the Monterey drive? Are there any issues installing Monterey via Martin Lo’s OpenCore package from a dosdude1 Catalina system?

It seems to me like installing Catalina first via the dosdude1 patcher might be a good idea. That way I could install the Gigabyte 5700 XT card and verify that is working fine. And then in theory I’d have an older version of Mac OS to fall back on in case something ever goes awry with the Martin Lo OpenCore Monterey drive, that I’d be able to easily boot into. But please let me know if this is foolish thinking and upgrading to Monterey via Martin Lo’s OpenCore package from a dosdude1 Catalina system is a bad idea.

My last question is regarding what drives y’all think I should use for the Mac OS Monterey and Windows 10 installs. I currently have three 6 TB WD Black platter-based drives, one WD SN750 1 TB blade SSD (with an Aqua Computer kryoM.2 PCIe adapter + heatsink), and one Samsung 860 Evo 2 TB 2.5” SSD (with an OWC Mount Pro 2.5” sled). My current Mojave install is on one of the 6 TB WD platter drives. I think putting Monterey on the 2 TB Samsung 860 Evo and Windows 10 on the WD SN750 1 TB blade SSD is probably the best way to go, since I use Mac OS way more often than I do Windows and would prefer having the extra storage. I would leave Mojave (or Catalina if y’all think I should upgrade to that) on one of the 6 TB WD platter drives, disconnect it and leave it in cold storage should something ever go awry with the Monterey drive. Do y’all think that sounds like the best course of action?

Thanks again for any info/guidance here. Hopefully when it’s all said and done I have my 5,1 3.33 GHz Westmere Mac Pro with 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM running Monterey on a 2.5” Samsung SSD and Windows 10 on a WD SN750 blade SSD, with the 5700 XT graphics card. I feel like that should hopefully last me a couple more years. Once major apps and web browsers stop updating for both Monterey and Windows 10 then it will be time to finally move on from the beloved cheese grater and go to a Mac Studio.

I will also note that yes I will perform a 3x NVRAM reset prior to installing Monterey via Martin Lo’s OpenCore package. And I do still have the HD 5770 GPU that the mid 2010 Mac Pro originally shipped with, if at any point I need to swap that in there.

 

[reader50]

I don't have experience with Martin Lo's OC, I've only used OCLP. But I believe they're the same under the hood, just with different packaging and GUI front ends.

Running Mojave alongside OC is fine. Install to separate partitions, or even to a shared APFS partition (with separate volumes). You don't need to wipe your existing Mojave install. Just create another partition (or volume) and install Monterey (or other macOS) to it.

I personally clone the previous system (Mojave in your case) to the new volume first, then install the new macOS on top of the clone. You can use Migration Assistant instead before root patching is done. Note that OCLP often does root patching automatically on a fresh install - you'd need to use the utility to revert root patches and reboot, before you could use Migration Assistant reliably.

Whichever migration method you use, I would not upgrade your existing Mojave install in place. Better to keep it intact, so you can fall back to it if anything goes wrong. Like an app you need that does not work in Monterey. Remember, Mojave is the last macOS that runs 32-bit apps natively. You'll likely need to update or replace a few apps. By keeping Mojave intact, you avoid a possible panic over app updates.

On a 5,1 you'll need to boot Monterey via OpenCore each time, as Monterey will not boot directly on a 5,1. Not even after patching. Big Sur will boot directly after install and patching, but not Monterey or later.

Mojave can be booted directly (hold Option for the firmware boot picker) or booted through OpenCore.

note: OC can boot Snow Leopard, and every macOS from High Sierra through Tahoe. Lion through Sierra can only be booted directly, OC breaks their booting somehow. Also OC can boot Windows - a good idea, as this seems to prevent Windows writing security certs into your MP firmware.

About your RX 5700XT, it is a Navi card. I haven't bought a Navi card yet (RX580 here usually) but I've read Navi cards prevent boot until/unless you do a minor firmware flash on a PC first.

I have swapped between several GPUs at times - I just re-run the OCLP root patching afterwards to get driver support. But it's also easy to reinstall OCLP and reboot, then re-run the root patching. You don't need to reinstall macOS to update OCLP. My impression is that OCLP will add back in missing drivers as needed during root patching.

Does OCLP remove unneeded drivers during an OS install? When I check my Big Sur volume (installed with OCLP) the Extensions folder still contains nVidia drivers. I don't own a metal-compatible nVidia card, and there definitely wasn't an nVidia card in my MP when I installed Big Sur. So I've read about driver removal, but have not seen anything to confirm it.

 

[Borowski]

Some hints:

• In my opinion, macOS Monterey is best option with less work and depending on installed hardware possible without rootpatches
• RX5700XT is supported from Catalina and up, but choose Monterey instead of older Catalina. Mojave might work with RX5700XT, but due to lacking drivers you'll have no graphic acceleration.
• You can still boot Mojave from the OCLP-bootpicker if you use the "-no-compat-check" boot arg edited to the config.plist
• Windows+macOS could share one single SSD, but keep in mind: If it is NVMe-based drive, you have to install Windows in UEFI mode and has to be booted from OC bootpicker only to avoid firmware damage
• Instead of usage of GOP Enabler from OC, you can also integrate it to the card or Mac Pros bootrom. If you're familiar with bios modding, read my topic how to build the bootrom on your own:
  Guide: How to rebuild/update Mac Pro 4.1/5.1 bootrom with template files

 

[SorpassoSonance]

Doing some more reading on here it sounds like having a Mojave install to fall back to is preferable to Catalina. Which makes sense since Mojave was the last version of Mac OS that Apple officially supported for 5,1 systems.

I downloaded Macschrauber's Rom dump. When I disable SIP in preparation to install Monterey via Martin Lo's OC package, I will check and make sure my BootROM is in good standing. I've never installed or used any version of Windows on my 5,1 Mac Pro other than a Boot Camp version of Windows 7 a long time ago, so hopefully I will be good in terms of not having any Microsoft certificates in there.

I checked and my Mojave drive does have an APFS Volume Recovery partition, so I should be able to disable SIP by booting into the recovery partition using the command+R keys after doing the NVRAM 3x reset, rather than swapping in the old 5770 card to get the boot picker.

I saw Mac Sound Solutions had a video about installing Windows 10/11 via a Mac OS app called Windows Install. Seems like a much easier way to install Windows on an Intel Mac directly from Mac OS rather than using Rufus.

Seems like I should be good to go. Just trying to get confirmation that Martin Lo's 1.0.1 OpenCore package includes drivers for both RX 580 and 5700 XT (or perhaps a better way to phrase this is if the HWAccel included in Martin Lo's 1.0.1 package will properly recognize the 5700 XT after I swap to it from the RX 580). If it does then I will just wait until after I have Monterey installed to shut down the system and perform the GPU upgrade to the 5700 XT.