NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 runs macOS 15 with Metal 3 acceleration through unofficial driver
A developer known as NullMoth has released a third-party graphics driver for macOS 15 Sequoia that enables hardware acceleration on modern NVIDIA GPUs. The project reportedly allows Metal 3 applications and games to run directly on the hardware, bypassing the need for slow software rendering.
Technical Implementation
The driver functions by combining NVIDIA's open GPU kernel modules with the "Mesa" NVK Vulkan driver and a custom shader translator. The system translates Metal commands into Vulkan, while converting Apple's shader format into SPIR-V. This architecture supports hardware-accelerated desktop rendering, Metal applications, and GPU compute workloads.
Supported Hardware
The project's device table includes NVIDIA Turing architecture and newer, covering GeForce GTX 16, RTX 20, RTX 30, RTX 40, and RTX 50 series. While the developer has officially validated a full installation using an RTX 5060 paired with an Intel Core Ultra 5 225F and a B860 motherboard, other users have reported successful results with the RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 3090, and RTX 3060.
Tools and Experimental Nature
To assist with the setup, NullMoth released an application called 1401, which helps users prepare an OpenCore installation from Windows and configure the driver within macOS, including an option to revert the installation. It is important to note that this project remains experimental and requires modifying macOS security settings to load its components. Unlike previous efforts like TinyGPU or eGPU experiments via Thunderbolt, this driver aims for direct graphics integration on Intel-based Hackintosh systems.
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