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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.
@isayusay so the only chance is to get a cpu upgrade as well :) there must be a site somewhere far east selling those....
 
Great work!!

Are you sure that you used UEFI supported firmware of GTX 680MX?

I am surprised that you actually lost initial boot screen.

Would you mind if you post your 680MX Bios here so I can do some research?

I am aiming same upgrade but just with 660M.

I already have 660M bios with UEFI but throughout my research, you should have initial boot screen if you have UEFI BIOS.

Thanks.
 
Any update on this i am very curious. Any one know of any other capable imac models doing this?
 
MichaelDT said:
Some photos, comparing the stock MXM-A card to an MXM-B card and pictures of the MXM-B card installed.
Click to expand...

hello, thank you for your posting and I just curious about the graphics card replacement, I want it so bad,
so here are some questions
if you replace the gtx680m will the power supply enough for it?
and again after the replacement, what should we do to lead the imac into MAC os X? (should we flash, how to deal with the uefi thing, and have fixed the 2nd display problem? does it use exactly like the native mac?)
thank you and really hope your response!!
 
I have ordered an Apple 6770M to upgrade my 6750M. It will be here Monday! The 6770M is just a 20% bump, but I didn't want to drop $500 on a Dell 680M or $300 on a Dell 675M if it may not work! A Dell 670M can be had for under $200 and performs similar to the 6790M. But Apple only shipped 675MX models in iMacs so I fear it could be unsupported, either driver wise or EFI wise. 6970Ms go for around $300. But, I'm game to test it, anyone want to split the risk with me? I'll try it, and if it works mail it on to you for the other half. If it doesn't, we both lose, or flip it on eBay. I'll have my 6750M for sale shortly, as well as the socket 1155 Core i5 2400S 2.5ghz/3.3ghz CPU as I am upgrading that to an ivy bridge i7 :) but the 2010 imacs are socket 1156 anyway...

I'll post my results nexy week.
 
DIY Fusion Drive: Working
6770M upgrade: Working
Core i7 3770S: Flop - won't post.

ATTN you 2010 iMac owners, I now have a Apple OEM 6750M MXM with for sale :D
 
I bought a 680m (N13E-GTX-A2) off ebay, but my iMac won't boot with it installed - and the diagnostic LED's point to the GPU being the issue. I'm guessing it didn't have the UEFI bios installed, so I think I'm stuck, since my iMac is the only machine with an MXM slot.

Anyone know of a place that would reflash it for a fee? Buying a MXM laptop to reflash is slightly out of my budget... :)
 
jezzy said:
how much!
Click to expand...

$100 seem fair? Do you have a 2010 iMac?

Also, the 3770S is for sale too, since i can't boot it. I paid $215 for it. Would ask $200 with the above card.

I will also be selling my 2011 mac Mini. 2.5ghz Core i5, 8gb DDR3, AMD Radeon 6630M, and 620gb Fusion Drive (500gb stock drive plus 120gb SanDisk Extreme SSD). This is a true fusion drive as enabled by 10.9 and not simply a core storage volume.
 
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yjchua95 said:
Anyone tried making a DIY eGPU with a whole lot of connectors and Thunderbolt like this guy who put a GTX 570 into an 11" MacBook Air? http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-...1-macbook-air-gtx570@x2-2-win7-bios-th05.html

So far, this guy only managed to get it to work on Windows (Boot Camp). If there's a way to make it work natively on OS X, do let me know.
Click to expand...

I've seen eGPU's function very well and I believe a guy got one to work in OS X with DaVinci Resolve to use dual 680's or something like that. Let me check my bookmarks and history. I've been keeping close tabs on this as I'd love to grab a 580 or maybe even just a 660 to speed up my rMBP's render times....although FCP X unfortunetly does not support dual graphics cards in the manner that would make it worthwhile yet.
 
nateo200 said:
I've seen eGPU's function very well and I believe a guy got one to work in OS X with DaVinci Resolve to use dual 680's or something like that. Let me check my bookmarks and history. I've been keeping close tabs on this as I'd love to grab a 580 or maybe even just a 660 to speed up my rMBP's render times....although FCP X unfortunetly does not support dual graphics cards in the manner that would make it worthwhile yet.
Click to expand...

Ahh, thank you :) I'm also trying to do this to my retina MBP (1GB of GT 650M just isn't enough sometimes, and I'm considering buying a 2GB GTX680 and concoct up an eGPU).
 
Michael plz help with choosing cards

Hi Michael plz can you provide some more details as to which all cards have uefi support ? thanks a lot for the thread. it gave me a reason to keep my 2011 imac which i love. please do reply

----------
gotofbi said:
Great work!!


I am aiming same upgrade but just with 660M.
Click to expand...

any success with the 660m ?
 
hey guys.
I'm thinking about upgrading my 27 imac mid 2011 with gtx 770m, 16gb RAM, ssd drive and a new i7 processor.
I know it would be easier to buy a new one, but... i wanna some engineering.

I know, that the only problem concerns GPU upgrade. I read this faq https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1440150/.

How do u think is it similar to iMac?
Can i buy any new mobile video card (something like this http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nvidia-GeFo...123?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item1e7f13fc73) and just... launch it "out of the box"?
 
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Yes, it would be great if you assist me.
Please!
I understand that upgrading my imac - here, in Russia - would cost me around 1,1k$. Of course it is easier (and cheaper as well) to sell my imac and buy another one. But... i wanna upgrades.)))
 
Does anybody know what the GPU max power consumption is the 21" iMac can handle? Because the 6770M is one of the most powerful MXM 3 Type-A cards and almost every other card is is MXM 3 Type-B. The difference is size (Type-B is bigger as shown in the pictures posted earlier in this post) and max power consumption a MXM 3 Type-A can draw. As stated here, Type-A can only draw 55w of power and Type-B can draw up to 100w. Aren't you guys worried that your power supply or the MXM slot or that some other component gets fried with the 75w or 100w of power usage? According to this review, the GTX 660m draws 75w and the 675m and 680m both draw 100w max.

I'm looking for a better MXM 3 Type-A card in the market for my 21" iMac 2011 and the FirePro M4000 looks like the next best thing to me or something like a GT 650m. The problem however is still that MXM 3 Type-A cards are really rare... So if anybody has any pointers about MXM 3 Type-A cards, I'm really interested because i'm not taking the risk of frying my PSU, motherboard or any other component in my iMac.
 
penname said:
Yes, it would be great if you assist me.
Please!
I understand that upgrading my imac - here, in Russia - would cost me around 1,1k$. Of course it is easier (and cheaper as well) to sell my imac and buy another one. But... i wanna upgrades.)))
Click to expand...

Hi! i'm Russian too :) maybe we can cooperate to solve that question about upgrade?
 
Hey guys, this is a topic that has remained on my mind but I have never done anything with it.

I have fixed and resold iMacs before but one day I realized that I had taken over my apartment with partially disassembled iMacs. I got rid of them but haven't forgotten.

UEFI isn't same EFI that Apple has been using. So a PC UEFI card is likely to not give boot screens.

If there is someone in LA area with an iMac that has replaceable MXM card I would be willing to work on a card.

More than likely new EEPROM will need to be placed on card.

NVIDIA EFI can typically be modded to init any other cards in same family.
 
MacVidCards said:
Hey guys, this is a topic that has remained on my mind but I have never done anything with it.

I have fixed and resold iMacs before but one day I realized that I had taken over my apartment with partially disassembled iMacs. I got rid of them but haven't forgotten.

UEFI isn't same EFI that Apple has been using. So a PC UEFI card is likely to not give boot screens.

If there is someone in LA area with an iMac that has replaceable MXM card I would be willing to work on a card.

More than likely new EEPROM will need to be placed on card.

NVIDIA EFI can typically be modded to init any other cards in same family.
Click to expand...

That be very good if you do this for us!
 
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