diff --git a/hw/ppc/spapr.c b/hw/ppc/spapr.c
index dee48a0043..489cefcb81 100644
--- a/hw/ppc/spapr.c
+++ b/hw/ppc/spapr.c
@@ -3275,6 +3275,19 @@ static void spapr_instance_init(Object *obj)
 {
     SpaprMachineState *spapr = SPAPR_MACHINE(obj);
     SpaprMachineClass *smc = SPAPR_MACHINE_GET_CLASS(spapr);
+    MachineState *ms = MACHINE(spapr);
+    MachineClass *mc = MACHINE_GET_CLASS(ms);
+
+    /*
+     * NVDIMM support went live in 5.1 without considering that, in
+     * other archs, the user needs to enable NVDIMM support with the
+     * 'nvdimm' machine option and the default behavior is NVDIMM
+     * support disabled. It is too late to roll back to the standard
+     * behavior without breaking 5.1 guests.
+     */
+    if (mc->nvdimm_supported) {
+        ms->nvdimms_state->is_enabled = true;
+    }
 
     spapr->htab_fd = -1;
     spapr->use_hotplug_event_source = true;
diff --git a/hw/ppc/spapr_nvdimm.c b/hw/ppc/spapr_nvdimm.c
index 73ee006541..b46c36917c 100644
--- a/hw/ppc/spapr_nvdimm.c
+++ b/hw/ppc/spapr_nvdimm.c
@@ -27,10 +27,8 @@
 #include "hw/ppc/spapr_nvdimm.h"
 #include "hw/mem/nvdimm.h"
 #include "qemu/nvdimm-utils.h"
-#include "qemu/option.h"
 #include "hw/ppc/fdt.h"
 #include "qemu/range.h"
-#include "sysemu/sysemu.h"
 #include "hw/ppc/spapr_numa.h"
 
 bool spapr_nvdimm_validate(HotplugHandler *hotplug_dev, NVDIMMDevice *nvdimm,
@@ -38,7 +36,6 @@ bool spapr_nvdimm_validate(HotplugHandler *hotplug_dev, NVDIMMDevice *nvdimm,
 {
     const MachineClass *mc = MACHINE_GET_CLASS(hotplug_dev);
     const MachineState *ms = MACHINE(hotplug_dev);
-    const char *nvdimm_opt = qemu_opt_get(qemu_get_machine_opts(), "nvdimm");
     g_autofree char *uuidstr = NULL;
     QemuUUID uuid;
     int ret;
@@ -48,16 +45,7 @@ bool spapr_nvdimm_validate(HotplugHandler *hotplug_dev, NVDIMMDevice *nvdimm,
         return false;
     }
 
-    /*
-     * NVDIMM support went live in 5.1 without considering that, in
-     * other archs, the user needs to enable NVDIMM support with the
-     * 'nvdimm' machine option and the default behavior is NVDIMM
-     * support disabled. It is too late to roll back to the standard
-     * behavior without breaking 5.1 guests. What we can do is to
-     * ensure that, if the user sets nvdimm=off, we error out
-     * regardless of being 5.1 or newer.
-     */
-    if (!ms->nvdimms_state->is_enabled && nvdimm_opt) {
+    if (!ms->nvdimms_state->is_enabled) {
         error_setg(errp, "nvdimm device found but 'nvdimm=off' was set");
         return false;
     }