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iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade

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The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
MichaelDT said:
Excellent news it is exactly as I suspected, you simply need an mxm a/b card that supports UEFI. I did loose my initial boot screen but once OSX loads the screen powers up. So initially I ordered the 675m but when I received that card it had BIOS only drivers...so I ordered a DELL/Alienware 680M off ebay. Only Trouble so far is it isn't recognizing my second display, but I'll tinker and we shall see if I can fix that.:)

Edit: So looking at my console logs it senses the second display then drops it, I'm thinking it is the driver.
Click to expand...

Hey, that's great!

I have an iMac 11,1 27" Late 2009 with Radeon 4850. Its graphics card just died. Buy and import a new one will be too expensive.

As far I could search, graphics cards from 2010 and 2011 models (5750 and 6970m) works great on 2009 models.

So, is it reasonable to assume that Alienware 680M will work too?

Is there some list of MXM cards that supports UEFI?

Thank you!
 
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havokalien said:
I put a Dell Quadro K3000M card in a 2009 iMac with El Cap on it and it works great. Had to shave down the heatsink for 2 parts of the card being in a different location.
Click to expand...

Do you think K4000M or K5000M would work too? Must it be specific from Dell? Did you do any flash update or something in order to work?

Thank you very much.
 
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Not sure of the other cards. I took the used cards from the list here. No drivers or flash was needed. You lose apple logo and brightness control.
 
I put a K3000m in my 2011 27" iMac now. Doesn't boot, display is blank. Any ideas what I could try?

EDIT: The post stated earlier that it had booted. I thought so because the network interface seemed up but that was a mistake. Sorry.
 
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Farthen said:
I put a K3000m in my 2011 27" iMac now. Doesn't boot, display is blank. Any ideas what I could try?

EDIT: The post stated earlier that it had booted. I thought so because the network interface seemed up but that was a mistake. Sorry.
Click to expand...

Try start in safe-mode and see how it goes.
 
mhafeez said:
Try start in safe-mode and see how it goes.
Click to expand...

Nothing. No screen, no backlight. Doesn't even ping when connected via ethernet. I don't even know if the card worked or was DOA except for trusting the seller in this regard.

EDIT: I managed to grab the system.log of me booting in safe mode. You can find it here: http://pastebin.com/2d4Lk0em

I guess the interesting line is here:
Code: 
Jan 20 19:19:46 iMac WindowServer[191]: _CGXGLDisplayContextForDisplayDevice: Display Context initialization failed - disabling OpenGL

It also seems to have problems detecting the display. This is the biggest resolution found:
Code: 
Jan 20 19:14:09 iMac WindowServer[191]: Display 0x41dc9d00: GL mask 0x1; bounds (0, 0)[1280 x 1024], 35 modes available
    Main, Active, on-line, enabled, built-in, Vendor 756e6b6e, Model 76697274, S/N 0, Unit 0, Rotation 0
    UUID 0xffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
 
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I think it's normal to have OpenGL disabled in safe-mode.

Did you try an external display?
 
Guys, just wanted to share that the latest ElCap10.11.3 with the new nVidia WebDriver are awesome!

Screen Shot 2016-01-20 at 9.22.32 PM.png

P/S - still have issue with the initial boot screen and brightness though
 
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Farthen said:
External Display doesn't do anything. Doesn't even notice it's connected to something.
Click to expand...

With NVIDIA cards you don't have boot logo and recovery mode. So, I guess (but I'm not sure) safe-boot should not work as well.

Suggestion: If you can use your old card to boot, ensure you have the latest OSX version. Also, do a clean OSX install and install NVIDIA drivers are things you can try too.
 
lucasfais said:
With NVIDIA cards you don't have boot logo and recovery mode. So, I guess (but I'm not sure) safe-boot should not work as well.

Suggestion: If you can use your old card to boot, ensure you have the latest OSX version. Also, do a clean OSX install and install NVIDIA drivers are things you can try too.
Click to expand...

It's interesting. It seems to find the graphics card, detects it as 2GB VRAM card etc. It seems to have trouble locating the display though. Which is partially good because that means the card isn't completely broken.

I have installed the NVIDIA driver by booting the system from a different Mac.

Code: 
Jan 21 21:34:07 big-macintosh loginwindow[113]: ERROR | -[LoginProgress startingProgressRectForMainScreen] | Could not locate the boot display

I have no idea why.

I enabled SSH now though so I can run diagnostics while the machine is running. At least some progress… So if there is anything I can do to find out why this doesn't work I can at least have more feedback.

EDIT: It doesn't make any difference if the internal display is connected or not. Exact same output. Weird. Disconnecting internal display and connecting an external one through HDMI doesn't work either.

EDIT2: Output of system profiler data:

Code: 
└[~]> system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType                  
Jan 21 23:08:16  system_profiler[445] <Warning>: CGSCopyDisplayInfoDictionary: error requesting display info dictionary (0x3e8)
Jan 21 23:08:16  system_profiler[445] <Warning>: CGSCopyDisplayInfoDictionary: error requesting display info dictionary (0x3e8)
Jan 21 23:08:16  system_profiler[445] <Warning>: CGSCopyDisplayInfoDictionary: error requesting display info dictionary (0x3e8)
Jan 21 23:08:16  system_profiler[445] <Warning>: CGSCopyDisplayInfoDictionary: error requesting display info dictionary (0x3e8)

Graphics/Displays:

    NVIDIA Quadro K3000M:

      Chipset Model: NVIDIA Quadro K3000M
      Type: GPU
      Bus: PCIe
      PCIe Lane Width: x16
      VRAM (Total): 2048 MB
      Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
      Device ID: 0x11be
      Revision ID: 0x00a2
      ROM Revision: preset 1.0.0
      Displays:
        Display:
          Resolution: 1280 x 1024 @ 60 Hz
          Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
          Main Display: Yes

EDIT3: Connecting an external display to the second(!) mDP port (the one closer to the Ethernet port) makes the second display detect *something* but it is still blank. Running system_profiler
SPDisplaysDataType just hangs and never finishes while plugged in.
 
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I would guess you have pulled to hard on the video cable without pulling the releases and could have damaged the board connection. The fact it boots and you can pull logs leads me to believe the connections or the cables are the issue.

The machine will not boot without a card it can use, the fact it boots to get logs off seems to me the card works, just be aware the first boot takes a long time about a minute and a half until it sets all up to the new card, may even try starting, hold button ten seconds to shut off and turn back on and wait. Also a dead Pram battery will make the wait time long every start.
[doublepost=1453474361][/doublepost]Also did you modify the heat sink? if not you may have already overheated and killed the card.
 
havokalien said:
I would guess you have pulled to hard on the video cable without pulling the releases and could have damaged the board connection. The fact it boots and you can pull logs leads me to believe the connections or the cables are the issue.

The machine will not boot without a card it can use, the fact it boots to get logs off seems to me the card works, just be aware the first boot takes a long time about a minute and a half until it sets all up to the new card, may even try starting, hold button ten seconds to shut off and turn back on and wait. Also a dead Pram battery will make the wait time long every start.
[doublepost=1453474361][/doublepost]Also did you modify the heat sink? if not you may have already overheated and killed the card.
Click to expand...

While it may be possible that I damaged the display connector I find that unlikely. I took this thing apart multiple times already and it always worked afterwards. Also external displays should work then.

I did not modify the heatsink but it did kind of fit without any modification. Maybe that was the problem, I can't really tell. As the card gets detected and the thing boots without any errors I would put this in the "possible but not sure" realm.

Maybe my logic board is damaged after all though. Who knows what kind of damage the overheated GPU did there. Some hardware damage must be the cause here I guess, otherwise I would have seen something on the screen for now.

I guess I'm going to get rid of this junk. Maybe someone wants it and I can at least get the money for the video card replacement back.
 
That's sad :(

I'm in a similar situation and don't know what to do. The original radeon HD 4850 (2009 27") is dead. A replacement is really expensive and I'm not sure if a generic NVIDIA will work.
 
I just tried reflowing the old card again with more heat and put it back in. Everything works again. Probably not for long but better than nothing I guess.
 
Well, this is good because it means the other parts are good. Maybe you can use it to do a clean OSX install and try K3000m again.
 
lucasfais said:
Well, this is good because it means the other parts are good. Maybe you can use it to do a clean OSX install and try K3000m again.
Click to expand...
I will probably use it like this until it breaks again. I doubt my K3000m problems were due to a broken OS X. I also tried booting Windows and Ubuntu and the screen never turned on. I will keep the K3000m as a backup though.

One thing I didn't think of yet… Is it possible that there are multiple versions of the k3000m around with different firmwares? That could explain it. It is also possible that I have just been ripped of by the seller, who knows at this point.

EDIT: At the final resassembly the screen slipped out of my hands and fell on the ground. It's cracked now. Crap. Everything worked again. I will get rid of it. Thank you all for your time.
 
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Fl0r!an said:
.
Click to expand...

hey! i am back on the quest, i see that it is possible to buy imac 2014 logic board "for part or not working" at ebay with 780m 4gb at really cheap.

do you think it is possible to grab the vbios from the logic board and combine it with dell 780m vbios? although the hardware ids are different?
 
Since this iMac has a soldered GPU I don't know if it even has a EEPROM for storing VBIOS and EFI. This might also be stored somewhere inside the iMacs Bootrom like they do with the 2013 MacPro.

Changing the device ID usually needs some hardware modifications since it's hard strapped with resistors, so I don't think flashing a non-matching vbios would work.

Additionally, I think Apple is using different EFI technology in those iMacs. The newer should be (somehow) UEFI 2.0 compliant (using GOP video drivers) while the older ones use UGA video drivers like the classic MacPros.
So I think it would be more promising to try making the Mac GTX 680 EFI work with your MXM card.
 
Hi folks, first sorry for my bad english xD
I want to know if i can upgrade My old 21.5"late 2009 iMac with HD 4670 256mb to a Radeon HD 6770 1GB (is not the one that comes with the iMacs, it's a laptop board bought on eBay, but the model is MXM III Type A).
If is possible, after this upgrade i will lose the initialization screen and brightness control? because this board comes with 2011 models and if i'm not wrong the kexts already exist in OS X
 

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You guys are the only hackers who can help me I think. Should I start another thread?

So, I got myself an Nvidia GT 330M card (non-efi) and the 2011 imac chimed and booted into Windows via bootcamp, it was set to automatically load (as it was set that way when it died with the original graphics card). Sweet. It works! Now to get OSX running.

I cloned a working imac El Capitan drive (no special kexts) via CCC and stuck it into the mac - no boot, or at least no video. Just fans going. Pulled the drive, performed an PRAM (NVRAM) reset by holding the keys right after the chime, released after the next chime. It chimed one more time and then that's the last I've heard the mac chime. Can't get anything to boot. Help!
 
Kamionist said:
I do believe I've got the latest software versions available for iMac 27" mid 2011.

El Capitan 10.11.1
iMac EFI Firmware Update 1.9
iMac SMC Firmware Update 1.1
Mac EFI Security Update 2015-001


Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
Did you ever have any luck? I had an R9 M290x 4gb card that OSX and Bootcamp both loaded, however internal display would never come on. Device ID was listed natively in the drivers, but again, display never came on. I was able to connect to my desktop via screen sharing on OS X and Remote Desktop on Bootcamp Windows 7 partition.
El Capitan 10.11.1
2011 27" iMac
 
hey everyone, i have been following this thread for a little while and was wondering something, i have a 27 inch 2011 imac that has a bad video card and had a bad logic board which i have replaced with a working one, but now i need a video card and dont want to spend another 300 on one, i see some people mentioned the 6770m 1gig video card non apple version and want to know if someone can confirm it works? they are like 80 buck on ebay
 
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