Thinking of Upgrading

[cc333]

My current build is:

• Gigabyte GA-Z270P-D3
• Intel Core i7-6700k
• AMD Radeon RX 560 4GB
• 32 GB DDR4 2666 MHz RAM
• Dual booting MacOS Mojave and Monterey

I'm thinking of upgrading to something a bit newer, not because I have to, but because I want to have something that will more easily support newer versions of MacOS and Windows, but I don't want to lose the ability to boot Mojave, as I need it for a few 32-bit apps. I suppose I could run it in a VM if I had to, but I'd perfer to avoid that if possible as it doens't seem to perform as well (unless things have changed? The last time I tried was at least five years ago).

This leads me to the conclusion that 9th gen Intel (aka Coffee Lake Refresh) is the newest I can go which still officially supports booting into Mojave, but what gen can boot it unofficially? Some brief research suggests that Comet Lake (aka 10th gen) may work with some caveats (no iGPU), but I'm not sure?

Thanks,

c

 

[etorix]

You can do Coffe Lake (Refresh) "natively" and anything later by spoofing the CPU to Coffee Lake. Even Alder Lake has been reported to run Mojave. Of course, you'll need a suitable dGPU from 11th gen. onwards, but you already have one.

 

[Jamesbond007]

My current build is:

• Gigabyte GA-Z270P-D3
• Intel Core i7-6700k
• AMD Radeon RX 560 4GB
• 32 GB DDR4 2666 MHz RAM
• Dual booting MacOS Mojave and Monterey

I'm thinking of upgrading to something a bit newer, not because I have to, but because I want to have something that will more easily support newer versions of MacOS and Windows, but I don't want to lose the ability to boot Mojave, as I need it for a few 32-bit apps. I suppose I could run it in a VM if I had to, but I'd prefer to avoid that if possible as it doesn't seem to perform as well (unless things have changed? The last time I tried was at least five years ago).

This leads me to the conclusion that 9th gen Intel (aka Coffee Lake Refresh) is the newest I can go which still officially supports booting into Mojave, but what gen can boot it unofficially? Some brief research suggests that Comet Lake (aka 10th gen) may work with some caveats (no iGPU), but I'm not sure?

Thanks,

c

Avoid using a virtual machine to run Mojave as graphics acceleration is NOT supported when Mojave is ran in a virtual machine using, say, VMware Fusion, as Apple did not provide the necessary OS functions to support graphics acceleration in virtual machines for old OSs like Mojave. Without graphics acceleration performance will be severely impacted, and applications might not work properly.

There is one thread here that successfully ran High Sierra and Mojave on a Z490 motherboard and a 10th / 11th generation CPU :

[GUIDE] OC 10.13.6 Z490 Gigabyte Aorus Xtreme + Core i5 10400 / i9 11900K + Nvidia GTX 1060

Not long ago, it was said that it was impossible to boot a Z490 based 11-gen system on High Sierra, and it was also said that it could not run Opencore. Well folks, this is the guide you've all been waiting for! This system is both High Sierra AND Mojave compatible...

www.tonymacx86.com

If you intend to upgrade to a system newer than 9th generation, prepare to spend some time to figure out how to boot Mojave on the new system. No iGPU is a given as Mojave does not support Intel iGPUs past 9th generation. As far as I can see it won't be easy.

Don't forget, the end of Intel MacOS is coming soon now that Apple no longer sells Intel Macs. It is possible that the current MacOS Sonoma will be the last MacOS to support Intel, or failing that, the next version MacOS 15 will be the last.

 

[cc333]

You can do Coffe Lake (Refresh) "natively" and anything later by spoofing the CPU to Coffee Lake. Even Alder Lake has been reported to run Mojave. Of course, you'll need a suitable dGPU from 11th gen. onwards, but you already have one.

Interesting. As you point out, I do have a dGPU, but doesn't Mojave use the iGPU for some rendering or something? (I ran into weird glitches in Preview and a few other places until I realized that the iGPU needed to be active and working for some reason).

Avoid using a virtual machine to run Mojave as graphics acceleration is NOT supported when Mojave is ran in a virtual machine using, say, VMware Fusion, as Apple did not provide the necessary OS functions to support graphics acceleration in virtual machines for old OSs like Mojave. Without graphics acceleration performance will be severely impacted, and applications might not work properly.

That was my experience when I tried it before. Looks like it never got fixed.

If you intend to upgrade to a system newer than 9th generation, prepare to spend some time to figure out how to boot Mojave on the new system. No iGPU is a given as Mojave does not support Intel iGPUs past 9th generation. As far as I can see it won't be easy.

Hmm, I would suppose that having a dGPU would alleviate this problem somewhat, yes? Or are there other issues that could come up?

Don't forget, the end of Intel MacOS is coming soon now that Apple no longer sells Intel Macs. It is possible that the current MacOS Sonoma will be the last MacOS to support Intel, or failing that, the next version MacOS 15 will be the last.

I know. It's sad that hackintoshing is facing obsolescence, as I've been dabbling in it almost since the beginning, way back in 2008, using one of those 10.4.x distributions on a stock eMachines tower from Walmart. It ran surprisingly well for a cheap PC while under MacOS (the install of Windows Vista it came with, on the other hand, was a big mess; XP was much better).

c

 

[etorix]

iMac SMBIOSes use the iGPU for video encoding/decoding. Without a supported iGPU, iMacPro1,1 offloads this wotk to the dGPU. (MacPro7,1 requires Catalina.)

If I'm not mistaken, Comet Lake uses the same (U)HD630 as Coffee Lake and should work, possibly with the injection of a suitable ID. Rocket Lake (11th gen.) and later require an AMD dGPU.

 

[Jamesbond007]

That was my experience when I tried it before. Looks like it never got fixed.

I would say rather than "it never got fixed", Apple apparently did not care about MacOS virtual machines at that point in time. Only on Apple Silicon Macs running Monterey or later is graphics acceleration finally available in MacOS virtual machines, and then only if the guest is Monterey or later.

Hmm, I would suppose that having a dGPU would alleviate this problem somewhat, yes? Or are there other issues that could come up?

A supported graphics card is absolutely necessary.

Since Mojave does NOT support the newer Intel CPUs, it may not even be able to boot on systems based on 10th generation and newer. You probably have to spoof the CPU to be a Coffee Lake for Mojave to be able to boot.

 

[etorix]

There are quite a few reports of using 10th gen. iGPU under Mojave. For instance:

<< Solved >> - [SUCCESS] ASRock Z490 Pro4 + i5 10400 + iGPU

Hello, I am trying to prepare an EFI directory from scratch. I went through all the dortania instructions but unfortunately the installation itself got stuck even before I loaded the system. If anyone has a moment please check my EFI directory. I also attached a screenshot of the error, dump...

www.tonymacx86.com

COMET LAKE iGPU under Mojave

@Middleman The wifi is working. I had to swap the AirportItlwm.kext to fit the OS. Just to make sure: I am running OSX HIGH SIERRA 10.13.6. The reason for this is that I need to be backwards compatible with some 32bit Plugins and Apps that wont otherwise work on Catalina or Big SUR. So once...

www.tonymacx86.com

Mojave on Z690 (dGPU):

Z690 Chipset Motherboards and Alder Lake CPU

I'm happy to help on one of the USB support threads in Post Installation / General Help threads with more info if needed. Basically SSDT-UIAC.aml stands for USBInjectAll Configuration and was designed soley for that purpose. If it works for USBMap then purhaps they used some of the code when...

www.tonymacx86.com