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

[Tobi_Jet]

Hey Guys,

Can anyone explain what is necessary to put a wx4170 in an 27"iMac mid 2010?
Does it need a vbios chip to get the iMac running or just for Bootscreen?
how can I flash the vbios to the chip when I solder one on it?
what vbios chip do I have to put on it?

Thanks for every answers

 

[highvoltage12v]

Hey Guys,

Can anyone explain what is necessary to put a wx4170 in an 27"iMac mid 2010?
Does it need a vbios chip to get the iMac running or just for Bootscreen?
how can I flash the vbios to the chip when I solder one on it?
what vbios chip do I have to put on it?

Thanks for every answers

You have to just find one with a VBIOS already on it, they supposedly exist somewhere, just not the cheap HP ones. No one has said the needed values of resistors or correct EEPROM chip.

 

[nathansz]

You are correct. My AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB that I modified is somehow damaged, but yet still working on my 21.5" imac. Will fix this ASAP. In the mean time here is a stock one.


Edit I am also attaching a corrected Modified for iMac Pro Board-ID (Mac-7BA5B2D9E42DDD94) to this post as well. Will also go back and correct post #3,271. Sorry everyone.

Thanks!

So far seems to be working flawlessly.

 

[highvoltage12v]

Thanks!

So far seems to be working flawlessly.

Yes, I'm learning two different versions of the kext need to be released one for Nvidia owners and one for AMD owners, simply adding the iMac Pro board ID to the kext will break it for the other user that does not use the iMac Pro board ID. I have updated the files on post #3,271 to reflect this issue. Thanks for bringing this up.

 

[nathansz]

Yes, I'm learning two different versions of the kext need to be released one for Nvidia owners and one for AMD owners, simply adding the iMac Pro board ID to the kext will break it for the other user that does not use the iMac Pro board ID. I have updated the files on post #3,271 to reflect this issue. Thanks for bringing this up.

no problem

I'm happy to help any way that I can

I don't really have any programming skills so all I can do is test and report

so far so good

if we could get brightness control everything would be perfect

 

[GreppMichaels]

Hey guys, new to this amazing thread and forum and looking to extend the life of my 2010 27 imac HD radeon 5750 1gb, last year I put in a ssd, I had a faulty power supply that I diagnosed and replaced the other day, and I'm looking to upgrade the GPU and CPU simultaneously (already have am i7 2.93 on hand) I'm 34 and grew up in the 90's/early 2000's programming and building computers so I feel comfortable with them in general. I'm not against modifying a heatsink or drill holes but that's where I'm not seeing a lot of specifics or guides. I also am kinda outta the graphic card game overall so I'm kinda nervous about buying the wrong graphic card.

Are there any specific guides or recommendations for video cards that require the least modification both bios/software and hardware wise? And is it possible to flash whatever card I end up getting from the imac itself? (From what I read that seems to be the case) I don't game much anymore besides starcraft 2, but given all the work I'm going to be putting in I'd want to get the most bang for my buck, but I'm not sure I need an 8gb power house card. There seems to be a ton of information here, just wondering if people can point me in the right direction.

Thank you all so much!

 

[Jforte]

Hey guys, new to this amazing thread and forum and looking to extend the life of my 2010 27 imac HD radeon 5750 1gb, last year I put in a ssd, I had a faulty power supply that I diagnosed and replaced the other day, and I'm looking to upgrade the GPU and CPU simultaneously (already have am i7 2.93 on hand) I'm 34 and grew up in the 90's/early 2000's programming and building computers so I feel comfortable with them in general. I'm not against modifying a heatsink or drill holes but that's where I'm not seeing a lot of specifics or guides. I also am kinda outta the graphic card game overall so I'm kinda nervous about buying the wrong graphic card.

Are there any specific guides or recommendations for video cards that require the least modification both bios/software and hardware wise? And is it possible to flash whatever card I end up getting from the imac itself? (From what I read that seems to be the case) I don't game much anymore besides starcraft 2, but given all the work I'm going to be putting in I'd want to get the most bang for my buck, but I'm not sure I need an 8gb power house card. There seems to be a ton of information here, just wondering if people can point me in the right direction.

Thank you all so much!

Read post #1

 

[GreppMichaels]

Read post #1

That's what I started with, I read it extensively and have been spending hours already reading through all the comments to see different issues people are having etc... however there's so much information that pertains to so many different setups it's hard for me to know where to start or what card to pick or what kind of modifications I'm going to need. I'm sorry if I didn't ask a more specific question, I'm just overwhelmed with all the choices and differences in how I'd need to approach it.

Can anyone at least answer what type of physical modifications I'd have to make for a Dell 308VY into my mid 2010 27 imac? And what is a backlight mod?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

You need a (2011) three pipe heat sink and then you have to put the card on the heat sink and you will see were you have to grind away the sink to avoid physical contact of components of the card and the sink.

There is no generic and no specific blue print for each type B card available.

You need no backlight mod since this card gets native backlight control with the latest BIOS. Use the search to find specific posts if you are interested in this topic.

You need only to read post one an direct links there, not the history of six years.

It will be difficult to get a working AMD card.

 

[GreppMichaels]

You need a (2011) three pipe heat sink and then you have to put the card on the heat sink and you will see were you have to grind away the sink to avoid physical contact of components of the card and the sink.

There is no generic and no specific blue print for each type B card available.

You need no backlight mod since this card gets native backlight control with the latest BIOS. Use the search to find specific posts if you are interested in this topic.

You need only to read post one an direct links there, not the history of six years.

It will be different to get a working AMD card.

Ok perfect, I already ordered a 3 pipe as I was going to go with the 6 series 2011 radeon initially and then found this thread and thought why not go all out. I'll ask more questions as I come across them but I"ll try to be more direct. Thanks!

 

[MacGero]

Hi guys, I'm running an iMac 27" 2011 with the GTX860 2GB.
Until Catalina 10.15.3 it was working perfectly with the Patcher from dosdude....
But when I try to update to 10.15.4 with the Patcher 1.4.3 I have a black screen.
the created bootable HDD with the Patcher will not work at all.
when I try to boot from a created bootable HDD with the Patcher on 10.15.3 it works....
What can I do to get 10.15.4 on my iMac??

 

[Jforte]

That's what I started with, I read it extensively and have been spending hours already reading through all the comments to see different issues people are having etc... however there's so much information that pertains to so many different setups it's hard for me to know where to start or what card to pick or what kind of modifications I'm going to need. I'm sorry if I didn't ask a more specific question, I'm just overwhelmed with all the choices and differences in how I'd need to approach it.

Can anyone at least answer what type of physical modifications I'd have to make for a Dell 308VY into my mid 2010 27 imac? And what is a backlight mod?

If i were you, i would not go for a wx7100. It is still very experimental.
You can go to dosdude1 webpage, he's have a good explanation of what is the backlight mod.
This is a small modification putting a pwm on iMac (or another mac) to allow brightness Control.
If you want to just give some more juice, try a NVIDIA card, easier to install and get it working.

 

[Tobi_Jet]

You have to just find one with a VBIOS already on it, they supposedly exist somewhere, just not the cheap HP ones. No one has said the needed values of resistors or correct EEPROM chip.

I just bought an hp card that's the problem but I've read in this thread that you can solder such an chip on the gpu an nick just showed the name of the chip but my question is do I need this chip for my iMac to boot or just for boot screen and brightness control?
Which direction the chip has to go on the GPU?
and how can I flash it, is it possible thru Mac or bootcamp or do I do that externally by the USB adapter and what Files I have to flash on it ?

 

[Berenod]

In GFXbench, when I compare my card with the benchmarks of the Nvidia Geforce GTX780m Mac edition, I seem to be getting on most tests around half the FPS compared to the original Mac GTX.

The only exception being the T-rex (on-screen) and the ALU2 on-screen tests, which come in about the same as the original MAC gtx card. Strangely enough the off-screen results for both thise tests my card again only achieves half of wath the mac GTX does...

Also, temperatures on the GPU heatsink barely go up (nor does the ODD fan spins faster, it's coupled to he GPU sensor through Mac's fan control) during the benchmarking (or whatever else I do with it), considering this is supposedly a 125W TDP chip it seems to me it is effectively working at a reduced speed or so...
Also using the standard two heatpipe heatsing which was in the imac...

Any guesses?

I am sort of thinking CPU bottleneck, but should this be an issue when benching with what basically are rather old tests?
I do have an i7-870 lying around, which should be a fair bit faster then the current dual core i5 in there, but, as the machine is plenty fast and smooth for what I use it for, I am a bit reluctant to pull the main board and swap out the cpu...

Thanks in advance!

----Update----

Did the upgrade to the i7-870, and can conclude that indeed these older CPU's are the bottleneck in GPU performance.
The increase in general computing is definitely noticeable, cinebench went from 287 to 394, an improvement of almost 36%!

The gpu performance also went up by anywhere between 50% and 90% depending on which test, bringing it rather close (but not completely there yet) with how most other gtx780m (mac edition) cards perform in obviously much more modern machines.
That gtx780m was back then (2013) the fastest mobile GPU on the market, so mating it with CPU technology 4 years older is obviously stretching it a bit...

I'd reckon for the i5 it would probaly best mated to the 765m and the i7 to a 770m. You probably won't see any gains using the faster 780m on the majority of cases. Talking about the 2010 iMacs like minde with the first gen i3-5-7 cpu's, the 2011 iMac's with the 2nd gen Intels will be a different story and can probably max out a 780m

Also very noticeable in that now a lot more heat is generated when benching the gpu, enough to actually start spooling up the ODD fan!

Happy to say that this old bugger still has some very usable life left in it, I'm using it mainly to display complex PDF or DWG drawings on that big screen, while doing engineering work on another windows PC (I know, our specilaized engineering software is simply not available on Mac).

Zooming and scrolling through those humongous drawings goes a whole lot smoother now, it definitely was a 130 US$ (cpu + gpu) very well spent!

 

[Ausdauersportler]

----Update----

Did the upgrade to the i7-870, and can conclude that indeed these older CPU's are the bottleneck in GPU performance.
The increase in general computing is definitely noticeable, cinebench went from 287 to 394, an improvement of almost 36%!

I assume you are using a 780M with a vBIOS provided by @Nick [D]vB? To my knowledge he has limited his versions to the 75W the original ATI cards were supposed to produce at max in order to avoid any burning in experiences here. Maybe @highvoltage12v or others can confirm this?

At least the description of the latest AMD vBIOS versions is pretty clear on this (writing from memory, just go back to page one and follow the links to @Nick [D]vB 's posts).

 

[Berenod]

I assume you are using a 780M with a vBIOS provided by @Nick [D]vB? To my knowledge he has limited his versions to the 75W the original ATI cards were supposed to produce at max in order to avoid any burning in experiences here. Maybe @highvoltage12v or others can confirm this?

At least the description of the latest AMD vBIOS versions is pretty clear on this (writing from memory, just go back to page one and follow the links to @Nick [D]vB 's posts).

Nope, running stock vBIOS, so without bootscreen and brightness control.

At the moment heat doesn't seem to be an issue during benchmarking (max about 50°C/122°F on the heatsink).

Exact same set-up before I swapped the i5-760 to the current i7-860 and the heatsink didn't get above 44°C/111°F, so the GPU load with an i7 is definitely higher.
[automerge]1587218313[/automerge]
I do recall reading somewhere that without proper MAC vBIOS the GPU boost (as Nvidia implemented on the 700 Kepler series) doesn't kick in...
Might explain the still lower bench results compared to original MAC versions of the 780m?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Is Cinebench R20 is a CPU benchmark, only? Do you have just measured the performance of the new CPU?

I just reran it on both of my mid 2011 i7 systems (780m with Nick's vBIOS and AMD WX4170 with 4150_GOP) and get nearly the same values of 1307 to 1358. Just reran on the with only 4 threads enabled on the AMD machine to see the gain of hyper threading in this particular benchmark and get exact the same value of 1358. Since my Nvidia system is my working platform running a dozen of other apps in parallel the lower value can be explained with this.

Rendering is called "trivial parallel" since there is no need to have any communication between different threads in order to get the work done, think of the monks in the library sitting and copying books. Each monk can do his work completely alone without talking and having a coffee or smoking break, a team meeting, or a conf call every 5 minutes.

To get an idea of the graphics performance you need other benchmarks, i.e. UNIGINE valley or heaven vor OpenCL and GeekBench 5 for Metal and OpenGL and OpenCL and others - this is definitively not my field of expertise.

P.S.:
I found some web links describing Cinebench as a CPU benchmark with an OpenCL part. So if your graphics card is not completely down sized you are likely to measure the CPU performance natively. And because of the "trivial parallel" design you are measuring the core count and the single core capacity. Hypterthreading add no performance since the CPU does not have to wait on any memory call, just the bare instruction count is measured....one could get this by reading the frequency and the number of cores of the CPU as long as you have the same CPU family....

 

[Berenod]

Is Cinebench R20 is a CPU benchmark, only? Do you have just measured the performance of the new CPU?

I just reran it on both of my mid 2011 i7 systems (780m with Nick's vBIOS and AMD WX4170 with 4150_GOP) and get nearly the same values of 1307 to 1358. Just reran on the with only 4 threads enabled on the AMD machine to see the gain of hyper threading in this particular benchmark and get exact the same value of 1358. Since my Nvidia system is my working platform running a dozen of other apps in parallel the lower value can be explained with this.

Rendering is called "trivial parallel" since there is no need to have any communication between different threads in order to get the work done, think of the monks in the library sitting and copying books. Each monk can do his work completely alone without talking and having a coffee or smoking break every 5 minutes.

To get an idea of the graphics performance you need other benchmarks, i.e. UNIGINE valley or heaven vor OpenCL and GeekBench 5 for Metal and OpenGL and OpenCL and others - this is definitively not my field of expertise.

P.S.:
I found some web links describing Cinebench as a CPU benchmark with an OpenCL part. So if your graphics card is not completely down sized you are likely to measure the CPU performance natively. And because of the "trivial parallel" design you are measuring the core count and the single core capacity. Hypterthreading add no performance since the CPU does not have to wait on any memory call, just the bare instruction count is measured....one could get this by reading the frequency and the number of cores of the CPU as long as you have the same CPU family....

Yes, Cinebench is indeed only CPU performance. The older versions could also bench GPU's but was apparently not very good, so they ended up leaving the GPU bench out...

For GPU performance I use GFXBench OpenGL.

Uses a bunch of different purely GPU bench tests, and after you can compare your results to a whole lot of other hardware.

But still, your system needs to feed the GPU with data etc, so if your system is to slow, you van never fully utilize the capabilities of your GPU, hence you won't see a gaming machine with super duper GPU and a celeron cpu!

 

[nathansz]

hello all

just tried plugging 770m (nick bios) in to my 4k tv with a cheap display port to hdmi adapter

I was only able to 1080p. tried Catalina and windows 10.

has anyone been able to get 4k with an active display port to hdmi adapter or does the monitor need to have a display port input?

thanks

EDIT: just looked up the cable I have. it specifically only supports up to 1920 x 1200. still wondering if anyone can confirm an active adapter will work before buying

 

[mrswede]

Just completed a successful K1100M GPU (HP card) upgrade on a mid-2011 27" I7 iMac.

IMPORTANT: As suggested in post #4,702 by tgaillar:

2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade

Guys, there's no need to remove the X-clamp nor to have the "screws" tapped/drilled out! :cool: Just notice: the inner-filet of the nut in a MXM card's X-clamp matches an M2 threaded rod (first picture below) the captive nuts in the heatsink have a hole in them that's wide enough for M2...

forums.macrumors.com

M2 (metric 2mm) screws fit PERFECTLY in my larger, 3-pipe heatsink that came with my original 6970M GPU. Just need to make sure they are long enough (12-15mm) to reach down through the top heatsink screws and springs (there is a hole in the middle of them for the original backside screws to enter from the bottom of the xbracket on the original GPU card) and screw into the xbracket of the new card. Should work for Dell K1100M's, too! Not sure if this works for the larger K2100M's or other Quadros. But a quick visit to your local hardware store to pick up the screws before you begin, is an easy & cheap investment.

NO removing xbracket, NO drilling, NO tapping out rivets! Easy-peasy!!

The only issue I ran into during this whole process was that my ODD temp sensor wire got caught/crunched between one of the motherboard screw posts when I was putting it all back together (well, that and the fact that I did have to remove the whole motherboard to get access to the GPU bracket screws from the other side). This must have shorted it somehow and the ODD fan was running at max. Install of HWMonitor app helped me figure this out, and un-crunching of the wire worked AOK.

And Xanderon's Linux-based SSH VBIOS flashing process worked great, too.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU to all who have contributed to figuring this all out. I'm now looking forward to running Catalina on my trusty 9-year-old iMac and to it serving me well for another few years! I was already finding software app's (next year's TurboTax for example) that have gone 64-bit, and would have no longer worked on High Sierra...

 

[RRPC]

so after some reading i have found that only 2 type of cards are the right one.


WX7100 Radeon Pro
Only the 00C and 00D are similar cards. And have the 14nm GPU, what is the Polaris architectuur.
the 00D is also sold as Dell 308VY. and have more components at the cards PCB.

Not working

The 00B have the 22nm GPU chip.
And is not the Polaris architectuur.
and need to be avoided. and is not the same, although a Alie seller told me that all 3 cards are the same.
there not !

the only thing i want to know?
it it better to look for a Dell version (00D). or a regular version (00C). sinds the board lay out is different
there are a few extra components on the Dell card. for what i can see.
ors should that not matter ?

i have read a few suc6 story's at this thread with the WX7100. that might be the 00C version.

i'm sorry that i caused some chaos lately with card numbers, in this way i hope to provide some good info.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

hello all

just tried plugging 770m (nick bios) in to my 4k tv with a cheap display port to hdmi adapter

I was only able to 1080p. tried Catalina and windows 10.

has anyone been able to get 4k with an active display port to hdmi adapter or does the monitor need to have a display port input?

thanks

EDIT: just looked up the cable I have. it specifically only supports up to 1920 x 1200. still wondering if anyone can confirm an active adapter will work before buying

Post #4530

 

[Ausdauersportler]

so after some reading i have found that only 2 type of cards are the right one.


WX7100 Radeon Pro
Only the 00C and 00D are similar cards. And have the 14nm GPU, what is the Polaris architectuur.
the 00D is also sold as Dell 308VY. and have more components at the cards PCB.

W7100 FirePro.
The 00B have the 22nm GPU chip.
And is not the Polaris architectuur.
and need to be avoided. and is not the same, although a Alie seller told me that all 3 cards are the same.
there not.

the only thing i want to know?
it it better to look for a Dell version (00D). or a regular version (00C). sinds the board lay out is different
there are a few extra components on the Dell card. for what i can see.
ors should that not matter ?

i have read a few suc6 story's at this thread with the WX7100. that might be the 00C version.

i'm sorry that i caused some chaos lately with card numbers, in this way i hope to provide some good info.

All the posts about AMD cards mentioned exactly the Radeon Pro (Polaris) WX series, you are the only one here to confuse people constantly with the older FirePro. Can we stop this now? 😏

 

[RRPC]

All the posts about AMD cards mentioned exactly the Radeon Pro (Polaris) WX series, you are the only one here to confuse people constantly with the older FirePro. Can we stop this now? 😏

I just Said that I want to rectify something.
And make up for for something

Don't miss understand me. Pleas I said sorry.

But oke. Ik wil not saying anything anymore about cards.
I just going to order a card and install it.

I only need to know 1 thing

 

[nathansz]

Post #4530

thanks,

I already read that post. no mention of hdmi