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

[Chronos376]

I have my doubts that this is going to work but you can try it. After installing Windows make sure that you get the right Bootcamp drivers for your iMac. Anyway in your case I would go for a virtualization solution. It also gives you the benefit of working seamlessly with two operating systems.

Can I play games in windows using VMWare..?

 

[DriveSlow]

Can I play games in windows using VMWare..?

Maybe you can, but the performance will not be good. The best VM for playing games is Parallels Desktop, but also with Parallels you won't get the performance like on a native installed Windows.

 

[jasper9395]

Has anyone tried the GTX 765M or GTX 860M yet?

 

[ninjamoz]

A cheap 1gig 6770m instead of a $400-500 dollar Apple version is better to get a 2011 iMac up and running does not need to be a gaming machine that's what Windows is for

do you have any new about cheap 6770m ?
[doublepost=1479816474][/doublepost]sorry for my bad english. i update cpu in 27" mid 2011. cpu works perfect (i7 2600). now i try to find cheap solution to fix my 21.5 mid 2011 gpu. which you believe is best ? no apple 6770m is cheap but i don't know if gonna works.

 

[Chronos376]

Maybe you can, but the performance will not be good. The best VM for playing games is Parallels Desktop, but also with Parallels you won't get the performance like on a native installed Windows.

oh i see... thank you for the reply =)
[doublepost=1479987115][/doublepost]Guys how can you access windows 7 via bootcamp after you upgraded your video card into nvidia 780m..? by selecting windows 7 in startup disk perhaps..? am i correct..? I was thinking of going to a store to have my hdd installed with a windows 7 via bootcamp and also with its drivers. will my idea work..? as of now my hdd has only a mac osx el capitan 10.11.6, I was able to install mac os by installing this hdd temporarily in my desktop by hackintosh.

 

[tiktok]

Hey .. is there a reason why I can't downgrade the GPU to a 2010 iMac Radeon i.e. 5670m or so? Like wrong kind of PCIe or whatever? I'm looking for a fast solution to get my machine running again and I am not doing much GPU intense stuff. iMac GPUs here are expensive too.

EDIT .. I haven't cleared up my GPU is dying fast. flickering screen, glitches and reboots.

 

[luke9511]

Hey .. is there a reason why I can't downgrade the GPU to a 2010 iMac Radeon i.e. 5670m or so? Like wrong kind of PCIe or whatever? I'm looking for a fast solution to get my machine running again and I am not doing much GPU intense stuff. iMac GPUs here are expensive too.

EDIT .. I haven't cleared up my GPU is dying fast. flickering screen, glitches and reboots.

I've been wondering the same thing

 

[Chronos376]

oh i see... thank you for the reply =)
[doublepost=1479987115][/doublepost]Guys how can you access windows 7 via bootcamp after you upgraded your video card into nvidia 780m..? by selecting windows 7 in startup disk perhaps..? am i correct..? I was thinking of going to a store to have my hdd installed with a windows 7 via bootcamp and also with its drivers. will my idea work..? as of now my hdd has only a mac osx el capitan 10.11.6, I was able to install mac os by installing this hdd temporarily in my desktop by hackintosh.

as of now, I also installed windows 7 ultimate 64bit by using my hackintosh pc. so the last thing to do is to be able to install the bootcamp drivers in windows 7 right..? but in my hackintosh pc when i tried to install the bootcamp driver it says this driver is not compatible with this system."
[doublepost=1480163478][/doublepost]update about my problem.. i was able to finally install bootcamp drivers in windows 7 here using my hackintosh and after that put back my hdd with el capitan and windows 7 64bit ultimate os in my imac with 780m.. and then I selected windows as startup disk and then restarts but still gets no display... so does this mean that an Imac 27" 2011 with a 780m will also lose the capability to run windows os.. besides the bootup screen and brightness adjustment? please can someone clarify this to me..? please.....

 

[Climber_FX]

Seeing that from time to time, the new video cards from Nvidia are working on iMac 2011 27", i will prefer to wait a more watts optimized one to have it's function enabled on it. Like the new Nvidia 1080 mxm. And hope that my current AMD 6770 keep it's life until then. (is the second video already).

So, i the mean time, if my video card can't hold it's life until them, i'm thinking in putting an Nvidia 765m with 4gb. Just because my already second video board on this machine start to have those little color squares on screen from time to time. Again! The first died starting this way. So, if i have the same time as before, i think it will hold more 3 to 6 months. Ow My God!!

 

[Lxixboss]

Has anyone tried the GTX 765M or GTX 860M yet?

Well, if the 6770m I baked yesterday is still wonky, I have a 765m from an Alienware laptop that will be going in this afternoon.

 

[Munin]

Hey guys,

I finally figured out why my GPU is not working properly. GPU-Z unveiled that it's running at 135MHz, VRAM at roughly 200MHz. As GMacUser stated in this post I'm not the only one facing this problem. I checked the VBIOS and it seems as if the drivers are not able to switch the 770m into a more powerful setting. Now I'm going to create a modified VBIOS in the next couple of days to proof this theory.

In the meantime it would be really interesting to see how other systems perform with GpuTest - especially the ones from @Thecoretechreview and @flszen as they use a 770m as well. When I run FurMark Benchmark on 1024x640 I'm getting daunting 5fps. Would be nice if you could grab your GPU temperature as well.

Hey everybody,

I just wanted to get back to you. Good news first: my upgrade to a 770m was successful. The system boots as expected with the known drawbacks. I use Shades to dimm the screen in darker conditions. The results are not as good as the real brightness control and I definitely wouldn't activate it during colour critical work. It's still fine to reduce the brightness by up to 50% without having too washed out images.

I realised though that my systems seems not to use the graphics card properly. Playing Youtube videos shows a significant jump in CPU load. I also benchmarked my system with GpuTest with, well, horrible results. Has anyone an idea how I can activate the card in my system? It seems a bit weird as it recognises the card properly. Latest nVidia Web Driver is installed as well.

@flszen: As you are using an 770m have you done anything special to get your system working or was it 'just' plug and play? I recognised that your VBIOS differs from mine.

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[Thecoretechreview]

Hi munin.

I am close to giving up on this upgrade path, I have now tried a 770m,880m and two 780m's!!!

I have never been able to get a card to work in bootcamp, most of the cards worked fine in OS X however I wanted the upgrade to allow me to game at a high res etc in Windows.

I purchased a 780m from drive slow, however it does not work in Windows.

Impressive scores in OS X, with geek bench scores tripling!

So if anyone can feedback, if they had similar problems with getting a 780m to work in Windows and how to fix it that would be great. I can't help but think it's something that I am missing.

Thanks

Phil

 

[Munin]

Hey Phil,

are you always facing the problem that your backlight is not turning on? I have the same with my 770m. Was hoping that a switch to a 780m would deal with it as Apple was producing an iMac with this graphics card. Your post leaves me with some doubts now...

Just for my personal curiosity: Did the 880m work?

Hi munin.

I am close to giving up on this upgrade path, I have now tried a 770m,880m and two 780m's!!!

I have never been able to get a card to work in bootcamp, most of the cards worked fine in OS X however I wanted the upgrade to allow me to game at a high res etc in Windows.

I purchased a 780m from drive slow, however it does not work in Windows.

Impressive scores in OS X, with geek bench scores tripling!

So if anyone can feedback, if they had similar problems with getting a 780m to work in Windows and how to fix it that would be great. I can't help but think it's something that I am missing.

Thanks

Phil

 

[Thecoretechreview]

I had the same issue with the 770m and the 880m.

Both booted in OS X fine but no illuminated screen in windows via boot camp. I had 8.1 installed but am going to try windows 10 today.... if it can be installed without refitting the original card.

Both cards we able to output via one of the thunderbolt ports to an external screen.

I would need to re-read the thread to confirm. But has anyone had a working 2011 iMac with a 780m in windows or only OS X? Drive slow has a 2010.

 

[matthiaswitt]

Hey guys,

I finally figured out why my GPU is not working properly. GPU-Z unveiled that it's running at 135MHz, VRAM at roughly 200MHz. As GMacUser stated in this post I'm not the only one facing this problem. I checked the VBIOS and it seems as if the drivers are not able to switch the 770m into a more powerful setting. Now I'm going to create a modified VBIOS in the next couple of days to proof this theory.

In the meantime it would be really interesting to see how other systems perform with GpuTest - especially the ones from @Thecoretechreview and @flszen as they use a 770m as well. When I run FurMark Benchmark on 1024x640 I'm getting daunting 5fps. Would be nice if you could grab your GPU temperature as well.

I only have a macbook and the imac. Therefore i can not check the vbios, right? You do this with a windows pc?

 

[tiktok]

Can anyone enlighten me what the lowest supported GPU for a 2011 iMac would be from nvidia or ATI?
They all are ****ing expensive as soon as they are coming from a Apple computer so I might be interested in a PC card (as long as it runs post boot screen).
I only need it to get the internal display to show me the desktop and run mail/safari etc.

 

[Chronos376]

any update on this..? hoping that someone can make a windows os run on this imac with 780m vidcard.

 

[iDaMax]

Change in iMac 27 2009 video on 5870m, flash bios from apple, all work with external monitor, but display in iMac dont turn on How fix it?

 

[Climber_FX]

i wanna know if some one could put the new video boards from 2015,16's iMac or similar into 2011 iMac 27"? Preferably the m290x, with Apple bios, or changed to apple bios? Is that work?

 

[frets]

Has anyone at all had any luck with upgrading MacOS sierra whilst using the GTX780m chip install?

27" iMac 2011

 

[flszen]

Has anyone at all had any luck with upgrading MacOS sierra whilst using the GTX780m chip install?

27" iMac 2011

I haven't had luck yet. Since the backlight works fine in safe mode, I tried disabling various kexts, but it didn't work out. Since I don't have a lot of free time to work on it, I've been sticking with El Cap on the iMac and trying a 10.12.x boot via my Air each time a new .x comes out. Last time I booted into Sierra, it still showed the iMac's screen as a "projector" in the display menu and and Displays System Preferences would crash. I assume there is a way to horse around with some kexts to have it power up the screen just like it does in safe mode, it's just a matter of finding it. I'm also mildly curious about switching out graphics and power-related kexts with ones from El Cap, maybe there is a solution there.

 

[BaronVonBehemot]

@Meleeman777 How is that quadro K3000M working after 1 y?
Did you update ur OS to Sierra??

 

[frets]

I haven't had luck yet. Since the backlight works fine in safe mode, I tried disabling various kexts, but it didn't work out. Since I don't have a lot of free time to work on it, I've been sticking with El Cap on the iMac and trying a 10.12.x boot via my Air each time a new .x comes out. Last time I booted into Sierra, it still showed the iMac's screen as a "projector" in the display menu and and Displays System Preferences would crash. I assume there is a way to horse around with some kexts to have it power up the screen just like it does in safe mode, it's just a matter of finding it. I'm also mildly curious about switching out graphics and power-related kexts with ones from El Cap, maybe there is a solution there.

The new patch just came out on sierra, i wonder if it has made any impact on using the 780m card

 

[padams35]

Just dropping in to to report eGPU success using an RX 460-2GB on my mid-2011 21.5" iMac with Sierra 10.12.2. Preliminary tests with Uniqine Heaven and Valley at 1080p medium suggest ~8% frame rate loss vs Thunderbolt-2 with this card. This did require kext edits to enable IO-PCI Tunnel compatibility and only provided graphical acceleration to an external monitor, but I was already using an external monitor as part of a dual display setup.

I don't think this helps the majority trying to work around faulty GPU issues, but I thought it was an interesting alternative for those of us watching the thread in hopes of simply finding a way to gain some extra performance.

Edit: Internal display acceleration also works for windowed applications which are started on the external display and then dragged to the internal. However the performance loss when doing so is high (>30% frame rate loss TB1).

 

[Climber_FX]

Just dropping in to to report eGPU success using an RX 460-2GB on my mid-2011 21.5" iMac with Sierra 10.12.2. Preliminary tests with Uniqine Heaven and Valley at 1080p medium suggest ~8% frame rate loss vs Thunderbolt-2 with this card. This did require kext edits to enable IO-PCI Tunnel compatibility and only provided graphical acceleration to an external monitor, but I was already using an external monitor as part of a dual display setup.

I don't think this helps the majority trying to work around faulty GPU issues, but I thought it was an interesting alternative for those of us watching the thread in hopes of simply finding a way to gain some extra performance.



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Great! The only sad part is the one that won't work with internal monitor. For me it's crucial that it work with 27 iMac internet monitor (mid 2011), and that it work bootcamp for windows 10 too. I can stay on El Capitan for a little longer...