Questions about the QEMU method of using macOS

Hi there,

Been using OSX/macOS in VMs since 2005 when I was part of the original The OSx86 Project teams doing various things, and I released the world's first truly generic OSX installation DVD (with help from bender12 long ago). I'm still using macOS High Sierra in a VM (VMware Workstation) on a variety of hardware and we all know that entails the complete and total lack of any hardware acceleration for the GUI which means lackluster performance overall. Yes, it works 100% aside from the lack of GUI acceleration, I can even watch YouTube videos without much issue - the crackling audio issue will be there forever it seems because of the way macOS handles audio but I'm not that worried about it.

Up till a few weeks ago I had never delved into the idea that I'd seen mentioned years ago of using QEMU to get some really fast performance using macOS and apparently to get actual acceleration on the hardware because of the PCI-passthrough aspects. So here's what's about to happen and why I'm making this thread:

I'm about to get a ThinkPad W540 maxed out meaning here's the specs:

• Intel i7-4930mx (Haswell) CPU, it has IOMMU support
• the chipset on the motherboard has IOMMU support
• Nvidia Quadro K2100m (based on the GeForce 730M series GPUs) w/2GB of dedicated VRAM

The rest of the machine is typical stuff: 32GB of DDR3 1600 (4x8GB), Intel Pro 5400s 512GB SSD (has barely 145GB of writes on it so it's practically new considering the W540 was manufactured in early 2015), 1920x1080 TN panel (sadly, it does't have the 2880x1620 IPS panel in it and I intend to get an AUO IPS 1920x1080 panel unless I can find a workable 3840x2160 one at some point in the near future).

OK, so I've spent time doing research into the QEMU method and a few days ago I set up Ubuntu 18.04 using the instructions and steps from here (this was done on the bare metal hardware using a spare SSD):

https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM/blob/master/HighSierra/README.md

and it did work, but of course because my current machine is an HP Folio 9470m with an i5-3427j Ivy Bridge and only has the Intel HD 4000 GPU on it the hardware acceleration isn't possible.

So here's the big question:

With the W540 I should have on Monday, and knowing it has a CPU (4th gen Intel Core) and chipset (QM87 Express) that both support IOMMU (which I've read is critical and required for PCI-passthrough functionality), is there anyone out there that can look at the given specs and tell me whether or not I'll have any success at all with using macOS with QEMU and getting the full performance from the hardware acceleration with the Nvidia GPU, or will I end up just using macOS in a VM as I've been doing for almost 14 solid years now?

Hope that's enough info for someone who's got more experience using the QEMU method. Yes, I know if I put a lot of time into it I can probably get macOS High Sierra natively functional directly on the bare metal hardware but that's not what I really want to do. My primary OS is Windows 10 LTSC 2019 (got some licenses for doing some remote server monitoring) and if I'm able to get macOS working on the W540 with QEMU and getting full acceleration the way I'm hoping, I've been considering using Ubuntu 18.04 as the host OS and then running both LTSC and macOS in VMs because with that machine I won't be losing any real performance for the type of work I do.

I ain't a gamer so that's not relevant at all, but I really would like to get macOS fully functional with working GUI acceleration for once without all the muss and fuss of Chameleon or Clover or having everything get borked because of some patch update to macOS itself, or any other methods.

If none of this works at all then I'll just keep using LTSC as my host OS and then run other OSes in VMware Workstation guests like I've always done. But it would be awesome to see if I can get the QEMU + macOS functional, for sure.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it. If anyone has any input I'd be eternally grateful to hear tips or tricks or suggestions.

Thanks for reading, and have fun, always...