I've got a MBP 2012 on Monterey. I'm not sure if SIP is disabled, I'll have to check. It's totally worthwhile, Monterey has run the smoothest of any OS so far.
You only need the root patches if you want Nvidia Kepler acceleration, you don't need it for intel graphics.
You only need the root patches if you want Nvidia Kepler acceleration, you don't need it for intel graphics.