Running Mojave on (Some) Cheese Grater Mac Pros →

Today, Apple published a new support document outlining the requirements for running Mojave on cheese grater Mac Pros:

macOS Mojave requires a graphics card that supports Metal, an Apple technology that lets the system and apps efficiently tap into the capabilities of today’s graphics processors (GPUs). The graphics cards offered by Apple in Mac Pro (Mid 2010) and Mac Pro (Mid 2012) don’t have GPUs that support Metal, so these systems require upgraded graphics cards in order to install macOS Mojave.

Before you upgrade to macOS Mojave on these Mac Pro models, you need to update to macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 and then make sure that your graphics card is compatible. You also need to turn off FileVault.

The list of supported cards, as you may imagine, isn’t super long:

  • MSI Gaming Radeon RX 560 128-bit 4GB GDRR5
  • SAPPHIRE Radeon PULSE RX 580 8GB GDDR5
  • SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 7950 Mac Edition
  • NVIDIA Quadro K5000 for Mac
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition

Apple goes on to say that these cards may be supported, depending on GPU-specific details:

  • AMD Radeon RX 560
  • AMD Radeon RX 570
  • AMD Radeon RX 580
  • AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100
  • AMD Radeon RX Vega 56
  • AMD Radeon RX Vega 64
  • AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100
  • AMD Radeon Frontier Edition

I’m glad to see these older machines continue to be supported, but this definitely makes me look forward to a new Mac Pro.