Disable graphics acceleration in Mac OS Monterey

Hi @den.thed, thanks for your reply. I have gone through those steps and determined that the problem exists in normal mode and does not exist in safe mode. I have reinstalled the OS (and tried different versions of the OS) both though Internet Recovery and an external disk. I have tried various user accounts and the peripherals are at a minimum (keyboard and mouse). Also, there was an error message that indicated that the problem is the graphics driver when loading acceleration, so it is fairly clear now (wasn't for quite a while) what is causing the startup issue:

panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff7faba76244): "virtual bool IOAccelLegacyDisplayMachine::display_mode_did_change(uint32_t): AMDRadeonAccelerator driver returns false" @IOAccelLegacyDisplayMachine.cpp:267

Panicked task 0xffffff8b7445a6d0: 11 threads: pid 155: WindowServer

As a general principle "The graphic's drivers are built into macOS and should not be altered or removed" is fairly reasonable; however in my specific case, it would be very helpful to be able to alter or remove the driver to both to help solidify certainty that the cause is the AMD driver+GPU hardware and as a fix/workaround to make the computer usable without a logic board replacement. Do you know of a way to do this?

Hi rkaufmann87 the problem continues to occur on a newly reinstalled OS (with all the APFS volumes deleted and reformatted) with no extra apps installed. Even though drivers have always been integrated into the OS, a user running as root or in Single-User Mode could access and change these files pre-Catalina. Apple made the system volume read-only with Catalina for perceived security benefits, which probably makes sense for most cases. For my specific case, though, it is not helpful.

It seems like there ought to be some way, perhaps with extraordinary methods such as booting into recovery and doing some unmounting/remounting magic in terminal, to get access to that System volume and make a change to the default graphics driver. Do you know if there is a way to do this?

Thanks?

Since the problem appears to be graphic-acceleration-driver + flaky onboard GPU, replacing the logic board may fix the problem and the Apple Store/AASP would be willing to do that for $6-700. Just changing the graphics driver so that it does not load graphics acceleration also will likely fix it without requiring an outlay of cash that probably exceeds the value of the machine.

Loading a different graphics driver is a pretty basic thing to ask of an OS to be able to do. Are you Apple experts really saying Apple's flagship OS is incapable of this task?

So, hey, I get that you and den.thed do not know how to do this and I appreciate you saying it is just out of your ken (but that maybe the developers might know). I tried to be very specific in my request for help: how do I disable graphics acceleration in Mac OS Monterey? If you don't know to do it, that is fine - I still appreciate you and den.thed took some time to look at my problem with me. But hopefully there is someone else on this discussion forum who may know how? Are there Apple Engineers/reps that ever comment here? Maybe they would know?

Your suggestion to look at the developer's forum is a pretty good one. I had done some research there before but I went back to a thread I had looked at but not gone far enough on and it seems to perhaps have some more things I could possibly try. If I do find a method, I'll let you both know here to add to the collective knowledge base.

Side note: I don't know that I agree with you on the reliability of Mac OS: seemed probably more reliable before Apple made these changes to make the System volume read-only (e.g. Mojave and prior). Big Sur's reliability is not its strong suit (and I am not sure what is). Monterey seems maybe slightly better, but time will tell.

iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, 2017)

Good to know. Well, I hope there may be a user who knows how to do this then.