GUIDE How to Enable NVIDIA WebDrivers on macOS Big Sur and Monterey

[EliteMacx86]

Dear EliteMacx86 and other MacGeeks,

Results First - It's a "NO-GO" on Nvidia Quadro M1200 eGPU!

Here is the report of my efforts -

1. I've spent quite some time mingling around my Lenovo Thinkpad P51 (yr 2017 Model) with Intel HD 630 (iGPU) and Nvidia Quadro M1200 (eGPU). Obviously this eGPU is a rare case to be sucessfully driven on MacOS Catalina and above as it's GM107 chip with 960 shader cores, similar to GeForce GTX 960M per se.
2. There is no issue to clean install a Big Sur 11.7.5 with OpenCore (0.8.8) and USB-Port-Mapping on the Thinkpad P51 laptop while enabling the Intel HD 630 (iGPU) only;
3. Then I followed the Steps stated on page #1 of this thread in the exactly same order and then messed around the sequence of the Steps a bit; everything went well prior to installing the OpenCore Legacy Patcher.
4. After applying the OCLP (whatever the version is, 0.4.6 the same as your Steps, 0.4.10, and 0.6.4), the booting process freezes when driving the Nvidia Quadro M1200 card. Please find the atached snapshot.
5. For sure, installing the OCLP went smoothly without any errors, and I have set the SMBIOS to iMacPro1,1 as well as my previous pick: MacBookPro14,3.
6. Then I enable the "Hybrid graphics" mode (that's what Thinkpad P51 called in the BIOS) and boot the system up into Big Sur with some malfunctionings: (a) the external HDD could not be recognized; (b) the Bluetooth devices got disabled.

It's a no-go as this moment, I bet.

What I will try in the future would be:
*** Freshly Install a High Sierra 10.13.1 (17B48), and then apply the equavalent Web Driver (version: 378.10.10.10.20.107); then upgrate to Big Sur / Monterey using OpenCore Legacy Patcher. Such that I may be able to drive the NVidia Quadro M1200 card.
......
or Stay as is - the Big Sur with iGPU only is not too bad since the Intel HD 630 encompasses 1.5 GB VRAM, while the NVidia Quadro M1200 comes with 2 GB VRAM.

Appreciated for your putting everything together.

======
PS:-
if anyone figured out a way to fire up NVidia Quadro M1200, Please let me know, I will definitely learn from you.
======

Well, seems like you're missing something here in terms of Laptop. As a limitation on Laptops, you cannot achieve Graphics acceleration on an Optimus or Switchable Graphics Laptop. To drive the acceleration, it must be discrete and the IGPU should be factory disabled or there should be an option to disable the IGPU in BIOS.

Due to such limitation, it would not be possible to even achieve acceleration on High Sierra for a supported NVIDIA GPU.

 

[caniculo]

Well, seems like you're missing something here in terms of Laptop. As a limitation on Laptops, you cannot achieve Graphics acceleration on an Optimus or Switchable Graphics Laptop. To drive the acceleration, it must be discrete and the IGPU should be factory disabled or there should be an option to disable the IGPU in BIOS.

Due to such limitation, it would not be possible to even achieve acceleration on High Sierra for a supported NVIDIA GPU.

I did swich off the IGPU in BIOS and keep only the NVidia Quadro M1200 Graphics Card that way I could see the Nvidia card pops up with 7MB VRAM in Big Sur.
Then I applied the OCLP and the system went into freezed ( a few tries, the same results).

A few minutes ago, I drilled into the source code of OpenCore Legacy Patcher a bit, and it seems the OCLP does support NVidia Quadro M1200 card, then I would shed some lights on this and would report here if anything exciting is triggered.

Tons of appreciations for putting such wonderful stuff together out here.

Cheers,

 

[EliteMacx86]

I did swich off the IGPU in BIOS and keep only the NVidia Quadro M1200 Graphics Card that way I could see the Nvidia card pops up with 7MB VRAM in Big Sur.

You need to provide the BIOS settings and a copy of the Hackintool>PCIe Devices. Of course, this should be from a clean install.

Then I applied the OCLP and the system went into freezed ( a few tries, the same results).

No PR Files attached.

A few minutes ago, I drilled into the source code of OpenCore Legacy Patcher a bit, and it seems the OCLP does support NVidia Quadro M1200 card, then I would shed some lights on this and would report here if anything exciting is triggered.

Although, it's from Maxwell, which requires WebDrivers to work but as stated before, not all GPUs are supported on Mac from the same lineup. Sometimes, you need to spoof in order to get it working

Tons of appreciations for putting such wonderful stuff together out here.

 

[caniculo]

You need to provide the BIOS settings and a copy of the Hackintool>PCIe Devices. Of course, this should be from a clean install.


No PR Files attached.


Although, it's from Maxwell, which requires WebDrivers to work but as stated before, not all GPUs are supported on Mac from the same lineup. Sometimes, you need to spoof in order to get it working

Yep, I've finished a process spoofing my NVIDIA Quadro M1200 to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 (since M1200 is a Maxwell type of GPU: GM107GL), and it seems okay for the faked "GeForce GTX 960" to be detected in Hacktool and the Apple System Info page, etc.

After after spoofing, I disbaled the iGPU and applied OCLP.

Then the hackintosh ran into an error state of complaining "XCPM Mode ... X86PlatformPlugin..."
After a few googling, it seems tha I should run some quirks on top of SSDT-PLUG.aml, etc, etc. I will look into the details later.

But any recommendations for a quick fix for this would be welcomed.

Plus - Spoofing M1200 to GeForce GTX 960 is probably something I went too far, better give a try to spoofing to Quadro M2000. Will try whenever I get some minutes.

 

[EliteMacx86]

Yep, I've finished a process spoofing my NVIDIA Quadro M1200 to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 (since M1200 is a Maxwell type of GPU: GM107GL), and it seems okay for the faked "GeForce GTX 960" to be detected in Hacktool and the Apple System Info page, etc.

After after spoofing, I disbaled the iGPU and applied OCLP.

Then the hackintosh ran into an error state of complaining "XCPM Mode ... X86PlatformPlugin..."
After a few googling, it seems tha I should run some quirks on top of SSDT-PLUG.aml, etc, etc. I will look into the details later.

But any recommendations for a quick fix for this would be welcomed.

Plus - Spoofing M1200 to GeForce GTX 960 is probably something I went too far, better give a try to spoofing to Quadro M2000. Will try whenever I get some minutes.

No Kext loaded which means the spoofing is either not proper or the Laptop is a Optimus (most of the cases).

 

[caniculo]

No Kext loaded which means the spoofing is either not proper or the Laptop is a Optimus (most of the cases).

Yep, it is a typical Optimus Laptop, that being said, any efforts on this Thinkpad P51 (2017) would end up with failures and "no-go" most likely. Sad me!

Will spare some time, say a hour or 2, and will give up if no positive result is achieved.

Tons of appreciation for your dedication and help!

 

[EliteMacx86]

Yep, it is a typical Optimus Laptop, that being said, any efforts on this Thinkpad P51 (2017) would end up with failures and "no-go" most likely. Sad me!

Will spare some time, say a hour or 2, and will give up if no positive result is achieved.

As mentioned earlier and in several of the guides, it is not possible to have acceleration even on a supported NVIDIA or AMD GPU if the Laptop is Optimus/switchable. Its simply a no-go.

Tons of appreciation for your dedication and help!

Anytime!

 

[caniculo]

As mentioned earlier and in several of the guides, it is not possible to have acceleration even on a supported NVIDIA or AMD GPU if the Laptop is Optimus/switchable. Its simply a no-go.


Anytime!

As stated prior, I just tried -
- Spoofed the Nvidia Quadro M1200 to M2000 and M4000 respectively;
- Swihcted to Discrete GPU Mode while changed SMBIOS to iMacPro1,1 (and other SMBIOS);
- Applied the OpenCore Legacy Patcher
the Optimus laptop Thinkpad P51 with Nvidia Quadro M1200 GPU could not be properly operated.

It's a no-go, period!

 

[EliteMacx86]

As stated prior, I just tried -
- Spoofed the Nvidia Quadro M1200 to M2000 and M4000 respectively;
- Swihcted to Discrete GPU Mode while changed SMBIOS to iMacPro1,1 (and other SMBIOS);
- Applied the OpenCore Legacy Patcher
the Optimus laptop Thinkpad P51 with Nvidia Quadro M1200 GPU could not be properly operated.

It's a no-go, period!

As stated before, Graphics acceleration on Intel+NVIDIA (Optimus) or Intel+AMD (Switchable) is a no go on macOS/OS X.

 

[tonidrbn]

Hello, I have done everything from the post but after OCLP installs and restarts, MacOS crashes at "AppleKeyStore: 12143:265 operation failed...". This error reminds me of the incident in June 2022, where Nvidia revoked the driver certificates and some people couldn't use their Hackintosh at all.
Removing "nvda_drv_vrl=1" from the boot arguments seems to be booting fine, but with no Nvidia Graphics.

I've been trying for a few hours to get rid of this error, but nothing works. Removed SIP completely, SecureBoot. Am I the only one experiencing this?