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

[inano]

I found this on ifixit, might help

To make a non-apple provided Nvidia graphics card work in macOS Sierra you need to do the following…

Start the computer in safe mode by holding shift.

Get your BoardID by running this command in terminal

echo "<result>$(ioreg -rd1 -c IOPlatformExpertDevice | awk -F'["|"]' '/board-id/{print $4}')</result>"

Open the AppleGraphicsControl Kext using this command

sudo nano /System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext/Contents/Info.plist

Use the arrow keys to go down until you see <key>ConfigMap</key> followed by a bunch of keys and strings.

LOOK FOR YOUR BOARD ID…

IF IT IS LISTED: Change the string to <string>none</string>

IF IT IS NOT LISTED: Add it in the same format as the ones listed.

Save the file by pressing Ctrl+O, then enter.

Exit by pressing Ctrl+X

Rebuild the kernel cache using the following two commands:

sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel

AND

sudo kextcache -system-caches

 

[mhafeez]

I found this on ifixit, might help

To make a non-apple provided Nvidia graphics card work in macOS Sierra you need to do the following…

Start the computer in safe mode by holding shift.

Get your BoardID by running this command in terminal

echo "<result>$(ioreg -rd1 -c IOPlatformExpertDevice | awk -F'["|"]' '/board-id/{print $4}')</result>"

Open the AppleGraphicsControl Kext using this command

sudo nano /System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext/Contents/Info.plist

Use the arrow keys to go down until you see <key>ConfigMap</key> followed by a bunch of keys and strings.

LOOK FOR YOUR BOARD ID…

IF IT IS LISTED: Change the string to <string>none</string>

IF IT IS NOT LISTED: Add it in the same format as the ones listed.

Save the file by pressing Ctrl+O, then enter.

Exit by pressing Ctrl+X

Rebuild the kernel cache using the following two commands:

sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel

AND

sudo kextcache -system-caches

Have anyone tried this?

 

[kavaliotis]

25 pages later and still there is confusion. Can someone confirm a BUDGET GPU for an upgrade and a GAMER'S CHOICE for an iMac 27" 2011? i would love to install the cheapest GPU available since i have my iMac for work only and don't care about games performance. My 6970 1GB died several times and reboiling just isnt an option again (150$ each time and did three already...).

 

[luke9511]

25 pages later and still there is confusion. Can someone confirm a BUDGET GPU for an upgrade and a GAMER'S CHOICE for an iMac 27" 2011? i would love to install the cheapest GPU available since i have my iMac for work only and don't care about games performance. My 6970 1GB died several times and reboiling just isnt an option again (150$ each time and did three already...).

so heres my take on this, an imac or any mac out there will never been a gaming machine thats a fact no matter what video card etc it was not built for that, what this thread needs to get back too and which is the reason i follow it, is looking for a BUDGET replacement gpu that does not cost an arm and a leg,

all the ones suggested over the last 5 or more pages cost 300 dollars or more,

i have a 27 inch 2011 imac with a dead gpu, is there one for $150usd or less that can be made to work or flashed to work to get these machines up and running?

 

[BaronVonBehemot]

so heres my take on this, an imac or any mac out there will never been a gaming machine thats a fact no matter what video card etc it was not built for that, what this thread needs to get back too and which is the reason i follow it, is looking for a BUDGET replacement gpu that does not cost an arm and a leg,

all the ones suggested over the last 5 or more pages cost 300 dollars or more,

i have a 27 inch 2011 imac with a dead gpu, is there one for $150usd or less that can be made to work or flashed to work to get these machines up and running?

Some1 was successful with Quadro K3000M GDDR5 2GB MXM

 

[BaronVonBehemot]

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.

Did you try K4000M or K5000M?

 

[Actarus123]

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.

Hi Munin,

i have exactly the same but with GTX 880m (8g DDR5) on my iMac 27 2011 under Sierra build 16C67.
Performances are "not really good" (see benchmark comparison with GTX 980m).
i have managed the info.plist by adding the board id.

BR
Actarus

Edit:

Here the performances of the graphic board:

CUDA-Z Report
=============
Version: 0.10.251 64 bit http://cuda-z.sf.net/
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.12.2 16C67
Driver Version: 10.14.20 355.10.05.15f03
Driver Dll Version: 8.0
Runtime Dll Version: 6.50

Core Information
----------------
Name: GeForce GTX 880M
Compute Capability: 3.0
Clock Rate: 993 MHz
PCI Location: 0:1:0
Multiprocessors: 8 (1536 Cores)
Threads Per Multiproc.: 2048
Warp Size: 32
Regs Per Block: 65536
Threads Per Block: 1024
Threads Dimensions: 1024 x 1024 x 64
Grid Dimensions: 2147483647 x 65535 x 65535
Watchdog Enabled: Yes
Integrated GPU: No
Concurrent Kernels: Yes
Compute Mode: Default
Stream Priorities: No

Memory Information
------------------
Total Global: 8191.81 MiB
Bus Width: 256 bits
Clock Rate: 2500 MHz
Error Correction: No
L2 Cache Size: 48 KiB
Shared Per Block: 48 KiB
Pitch: 2048 MiB
Total Constant: 64 KiB
Texture Alignment: 512 B
Texture 1D Size: 65536
Texture 2D Size: 65536 x 65536
Texture 3D Size: 4096 x 4096 x 4096
GPU Overlap: Yes
Map Host Memory: Yes
Unified Addressing: Yes
Async Engine: Yes, Unidirectional

Performance Information
-----------------------
Memory Copy
Host Pinned to Device: 6339.17 MiB/s
Host Pageable to Device: 2439.6 MiB/s
Device to Host Pinned: 6281.4 MiB/s
Device to Host Pageable: 2455.58 MiB/s
Device to Device: 53.7525 GiB/s
GPU Core Performance
Single-precision Float: 2469.78 Gflop/s
Double-precision Float: 119.52 Gflop/s
64-bit Integer: 126.97 Giop/s
32-bit Integer: 505.607 Giop/s
24-bit Integer: 505.988 Giop/s

Generated: Sun Dec 25 10:51:21 2016

Here comparison with GTX 980m:
ps: i use CompuBenchCL from Apple store, you have to select your graphic board on the home page of the application instead of your CPU

 

[BaronVonBehemot]

Hi Munin,

i have exactly the same but with GTX 880m (8g DDR5) on my iMac 27 2011 under Sierra build 16C67.
Performances are "not really good" (see benchmark comparison with GTX 980m).
i have managed the info.plist by adding the board id.

BR
Actarus

Edit:

Here the performances of the graphic board:

CUDA-Z Report
=============
Version: 0.10.251 64 bit http://cuda-z.sf.net/
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.12.2 16C67
Driver Version: 10.14.20 355.10.05.15f03
Driver Dll Version: 8.0
Runtime Dll Version: 6.50

Core Information
----------------
Name: GeForce GTX 880M
Compute Capability: 3.0
Clock Rate: 993 MHz
PCI Location: 0:1:0
Multiprocessors: 8 (1536 Cores)
Threads Per Multiproc.: 2048
Warp Size: 32
Regs Per Block: 65536
Threads Per Block: 1024
Threads Dimensions: 1024 x 1024 x 64
Grid Dimensions: 2147483647 x 65535 x 65535
Watchdog Enabled: Yes
Integrated GPU: No
Concurrent Kernels: Yes
Compute Mode: Default
Stream Priorities: No

Memory Information
------------------
Total Global: 8191.81 MiB
Bus Width: 256 bits
Clock Rate: 2500 MHz
Error Correction: No
L2 Cache Size: 48 KiB
Shared Per Block: 48 KiB
Pitch: 2048 MiB
Total Constant: 64 KiB
Texture Alignment: 512 B
Texture 1D Size: 65536
Texture 2D Size: 65536 x 65536
Texture 3D Size: 4096 x 4096 x 4096
GPU Overlap: Yes
Map Host Memory: Yes
Unified Addressing: Yes
Async Engine: Yes, Unidirectional

Performance Information
-----------------------
Memory Copy
Host Pinned to Device: 6339.17 MiB/s
Host Pageable to Device: 2439.6 MiB/s
Device to Host Pinned: 6281.4 MiB/s
Device to Host Pageable: 2455.58 MiB/s
Device to Device: 53.7525 GiB/s
GPU Core Performance
Single-precision Float: 2469.78 Gflop/s
Double-precision Float: 119.52 Gflop/s
64-bit Integer: 126.97 Giop/s
32-bit Integer: 505.607 Giop/s
24-bit Integer: 505.988 Giop/s

Generated: Sun Dec 25 10:51:21 2016

Here comparison with GTX 980m:
ps: i use CompuBenchCL from Apple store, you have to select your graphic board on the home page of the application instead of your CPU

Nice congrats any overheating problems??

 

[Actarus123]

No real overheat but performances are not here... lags if I play to CSgo for example...
[doublepost=1482759737][/doublepost]

Nice congrats any overheating problems??

I suppose problem is due to OpenCL.
I will reinstall sierra

 

[zardoz81]

Hi guys,
I've ordered a Alienware/Dell GTX 780m (with the VBIOS known to work) and will try to upgrade my imac. I'm not very experienced with the technical aspects, so I'd appreciate your help.

My biggest question is, should I get a specific heatsink for the GTX 780m? If so, which one will fit?

Also, my mac runs with Win7 only, is it possible to, and should I set up some sort of screen sharing for trouble-shooting? Or is it useful if I set up an external Monitor?
Thanks, I'll report back with my results in a while.

 

[Actarus123]

I will be attempting to upgrade the MXM card in my 2011 21.5 iMac from the factory 6770m 512mb to a NVidia 675m 2GB. I choose this card because the chipset already has support from 10.8.3 onwards and affordability for an experiment. I am hoping that it will work without flashing like many of the other non MXM modern graphics cards (UEFI support) do in 64bit EFI Mac Pros ( I may loose the initial boot screen). But if all else fails I will attempt a flash. I will report back my findings when the card arrives (from Hong Kong). Wish me luck hopefully this will give those of us with the last modular iMac a path forward.

 

[BaronVonBehemot]

And what is your question ??

 

[zardoz81]

You will have to adapt it. Remove few part of the aluminum

Could you be more specific? What kind of tool would I need for that, a saw?

 

[Actarus123]

Could you be more specific? What kind of tool would I need for that, a saw?

There is two type of heatsink, the small one and the big one (depending of the current card you have).
For the small one, nothing to do but it will not cover part of the RAMs.
For the big one, it will cover the RAMs but some components of the card will prevent you to have 100% contact with the GPU, so You will have to remove few part of the aluminium of the heatsink.
I used a motorized tool with specific tip/wick for that, nothing complicated...

 

[mhafeez]

No real overheat but performances are not here... lags if I play to CSgo for example...
[doublepost=1482759737][/doublepost]
I suppose problem is due to OpenCL.
I will reinstall sierra

May I know how do you able to run the GPU with Sierra? Did you add the BoardID into the device policy?

 

[Actarus123]

May I know how do you able to run the GPU with Sierra? Did you add the BoardID into the device policy?

Yes I did have to disable SIP with command line on boot step to be able to edit info.plist to add board Id.

 

[frets]

Yes I did have to disable SIP with command line on boot step to be able to edit info.plist to add board Id.

Actarus - If you could so kindly build a small user guide on how to do this. I would so profoundly for indebted

 

[Actarus123]

Actarus - If you could so kindly build a small user guide on how to do this. I would so profoundly for indebted

to disable SIP (found on google):

1. Reboot your Mac into Recovery Mode by restarting your computer and holding down Command+R until the Apple logo appears on your screen.
2. Click Utilities > Terminal.
3. In the Terminal window, type in csrutil disable and press Enter.
4. Restart your Mac

to add board id, it s clearly explained in a post above (from ifixit):

To make a non-apple provided Nvidia graphics card work in macOS Sierra you need to do the following…

Start the computer in safe mode by holding shift.

Get your BoardID by running this command in terminal

echo "<result>$(ioreg -rd1 -c IOPlatformExpertDevice | awk -F'["|"]' '/board-id/{print $4}')</result>"

Open the AppleGraphicsControl Kext using this command

sudo nano /System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext/Contents/Info.plist

Use the arrow keys to go down until you see <key>ConfigMap</key> followed by a bunch of keys and strings.

LOOK FOR YOUR BOARD ID…

IF IT IS LISTED: Change the string to <string>none</string>

IF IT IS NOT LISTED: Add it in the same format as the ones listed.

Save the file by pressing Ctrl+O, then enter.

Exit by pressing Ctrl+X

Rebuild the kernel cache using the following two commands:

sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel

AND

sudo kextcache -system-caches

Have Fun!

Jason - 18/10/2016

 

[mhafeez]

Yes I did have to disable SIP with command line on boot step to be able to edit info.plist to add board Id.

Thank you so much Actarus123. Cheers!

 

[flszen]

Well, I was all set to get my 770M up and running in Sierra with the steps to add the board ID to the Info.plist. I updated from El Cap to Sierra 10.12.0, then I figured I'd install the 10.12.2 update before editing the file. Much to my pleasant surprise, after installing 10.12.2, the display worked fine with the default OS X driver and no modification was made to the Info.plist. I went ahead and let the Nvidia web driver install its update and switched to that driver anyway, though. It certainly didn't work nicely in 10.12.1, so perhaps they changed something in .2 that makes it work for my configuration.

 

[mhafeez]

I just ordered a Dell/Alienware GTX980M and will intend to install it on my iMac 27" 2011. I'll let you guys know within a week.

 

[hibbertd1]

Well, I was all set to get my 770M up and running in Sierra with the steps to add the board ID to the Info.plist. I updated from El Cap to Sierra 10.12.0, then I figured I'd install the 10.12.2 update before editing the file. Much to my pleasant surprise, after installing 10.12.2, the display worked fine with the default OS X driver and no modification was made to the Info.plist. I went ahead and let the Nvidia web driver install its update and switched to that driver anyway, though. It certainly didn't work nicely in 10.12.1, so perhaps they changed something in .2 that makes it work for my configuration.

is that the gtx 770m 3gb

 

[anekelea]

Low end imac 9.1 24 emc2267 with a defective geforce gt120 256mb.
Imac works only in safe mode.
I was search new graphic card with lowest costs . My friend give me quadro 1000m.


I tested the card with two different bios : Dell (no efi sup.) and HP BIOS 70.08.AE.00.0A.uefi capatbility.


1. OSX El Capitan ,Nvidia web drv instaled,no any other changes.
Imac start : startup chime boot (only two leds on xx--) internal screen black but on the external mini display port all workings and looks good.
On OSX dafault driver the same situation.



2. OSX El Capitan ,Nvidia web drv instaled,and ad board ID in AppleGraphicsControl.kext,no any other changes.
Imac start : startup chime boot (only three leds on XX-X)internal screen is on but as you can see the image is distorted.
On the external mini display port all workings and looks good.
On OSX dafault driver the same situation.


When i rebuild kernel get error:
iMac-Andrzej:~ anekelea$ sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel
kext-dev-mode allowing invalid signature -67030 0xFFFFFFFFFFFEFA2A for kext AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext

I tested on two BIOSes (dell,hp) and no difference.
On bootcamp w7 looks like on 6,7 pictures

Thank you for any advice

 

[saxonthebeach908]

Well, I was all set to get my 770M up and running in Sierra with the steps to add the board ID to the Info.plist. I updated from El Cap to Sierra 10.12.0, then I figured I'd install the 10.12.2 update before editing the file. Much to my pleasant surprise, after installing 10.12.2, the display worked fine with the default OS X driver and no modification was made to the Info.plist. I went ahead and let the Nvidia web driver install its update and switched to that driver anyway, though. It certainly didn't work nicely in 10.12.1, so perhaps they changed something in .2 that makes it work for my configuration.

What vbios does your 770m have? When you say the display worked fine do you mean backlight and boot screen also worked as if it was a stock apple gpu?

 

[anekelea]

Low end imac 9.1 24 emc2267 with a defective geforce gt120 256mb.
Imac works only in safe mode.
I was search new graphic card with lowest costs . My friend give me quadro 1000m.


I tested the card with two different bios : Dell (no efi sup.) and HP BIOS 70.08.AE.00.0A.uefi capatbility.


1. OSX El Capitan ,Nvidia web drv instaled,no any other changes.
Imac start : startup chime boot (only two leds on xx--) internal screen black but on the external mini display port all workings and looks good.
On OSX dafault driver the same situation.



2. OSX El Capitan ,Nvidia web drv instaled,and ad board ID in AppleGraphicsControl.kext,no any other changes.
Imac start : startup chime boot (only three leds on XX-X)internal screen is on but as you can see the image is distorted.
On the external mini display port all workings and looks good.
On OSX dafault driver the same situation.


When i rebuild kernel get error:
iMac-Andrzej:~ anekelea$ sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel
kext-dev-mode allowing invalid signature -67030 0xFFFFFFFFFFFEFA2A for kext AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext

I tested on two BIOSes (dell,hp) and no difference.
On bootcamp w7 looks like on 6,7 pictures

Thank you for any advice

Maybe display routing in the vrom isn't correct for imac 9.1? Can someone look at this bios ?