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iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
- Thread starter MichaelDT
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Stuck how?
Are you saying opencore will ignore holding down alt at startup to select the boot device???
How would that even be possible???
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Sorry, i am talking about an iMac with WX7100. With AMD cards and GOP bios we do not have Apple bootpicker, only Opencore bootpicker.
I found these on Taobao, if someone has a bunch of money to spend, feel free to try these... Especially nice, since all of these are mxm-a and looks like a single-side card, so no memory on the back thats tricky to cool down. The RX560 looks really good and not that expensive i think.
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?sp...y52uFX&id=543709735120&ns=1&abbucket=5#detail
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?sp...y52uFX&id=529430960243&ns=1&abbucket=5#detail
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?sp...y52uFX&id=560931870718&ns=1&abbucket=5#detail
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?sp...y52uFX&id=543709735120&ns=1&abbucket=5#detail
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?sp...y52uFX&id=529430960243&ns=1&abbucket=5#detail
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?sp...y52uFX&id=560931870718&ns=1&abbucket=5#detail
Yes and also 😂😂😂 put an Ivy Bridge i7 3770(S) processor in my iMac 2011😅, 32 GB of memory in 1600Mhz, 2 SSDs of 500GB, one which will replace my HDD or there is Windows 10 and the other SSD a Linux distribution, but I don't know not yet which one.
Next who know a new graphics card, but just for fun I think. 😉
Just for your information, a lot of people do not trust the benchmarks of your card or future card, most of our machines are limited to PCIe 2.0 while many cards are PCIe 3.0. (in theory)
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Dear StephN999,
Trust or not trust that the question, someone said.
It's a fair community and we rely to trust each others, there are absolutely no reasons to behave differently than that.
If you have some interrogations i will be glad to answer you, everybody will be glad to answer you.
And concerning WX7100 benchmarks, they are quite good, yes. It's a good news, for people who wanna go for this card, so in short, i really do not understand your point.
Best Regards,
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If you talk about my "Native" brightness I'm just "too" perfectionist and a little obsessive (on the psychic side of the definition). 🤪
I obviously trust the community, I am more than impressed by the work of many people.
I hope I have not offended you, I am French and I use Google translation a lot, I would not like it to be misinterpreted. 😓
My friendships. 😉
Edit: Apparemment tu est également Français, j'avais pas fait attention...
Did you ever get anywhere with writing IvyBridge microcode to your iMac to see if it will boot? I'm not sure where to find the Microcode from. A 2012 a1286 dump doesn't appear to have the necessary Desktop Microcode needed.
I finally found what I was looking for following your post.
I needed information that I find here (the CPUID)
I am preparing my firmware with this new microcode and will flash it soon.
Voilà!
I needed information that I find here (the CPUID)
I am preparing my firmware with this new microcode and will flash it soon.
Voilà!
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If you actually succeed in getting an Ivybridge CPU to work in the 2011 iMac... I think I may need to lie down!
Agggghhhhhhhhh
Now I can understand why this is a pain in the butt to do this,
So I pulled the whole 2011 iMac apart made the heatsink adjustments and seated the new WX7100 video card into the heatsink and made sure it had the thermal paste on it and all, I reasembled the entire computer hooking up all wires necessary,
I don't install any drives at all, just the screen and put in the linux flash drive, power on and fans spin and shut off and can't tell if the system is booting or not, as i don't hear a chime.
look in my router and can't find any new ip addresses,
so how am i to know if my system is booted or not? and even if its on and staying on?
do i attach the backlight screen or just keep that part off till after the flashing portion so i can install the drives??
[automerge]1590120757[/automerge]
I like these, but i don't speak chinese to even read that page, so not sure what 1200 in chinese would equate to in us dollars but might be do able if its the right price and i could get the info in English
Now I can understand why this is a pain in the butt to do this,
So I pulled the whole 2011 iMac apart made the heatsink adjustments and seated the new WX7100 video card into the heatsink and made sure it had the thermal paste on it and all, I reasembled the entire computer hooking up all wires necessary,
I don't install any drives at all, just the screen and put in the linux flash drive, power on and fans spin and shut off and can't tell if the system is booting or not, as i don't hear a chime.
look in my router and can't find any new ip addresses,
so how am i to know if my system is booted or not? and even if its on and staying on?
do i attach the backlight screen or just keep that part off till after the flashing portion so i can install the drives??
[automerge]1590120757[/automerge]
I like these, but i don't speak chinese to even read that page, so not sure what 1200 in chinese would equate to in us dollars but might be do able if its the right price and i could get the info in English
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Couple of thoughts:
No point reinstalling the screen or drives until after then card is flashed.
Do a pram reset & see if it bongs on power up.
Plug in a bootable usb thumb/hd with an activity light & see if it tries to boot.
With the sd card, give it a few mins to boot, hit enter a few times, then blindly type this command to set the ip address
ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.238 (or whatever ip you want to give it)
then try pinging that address or ssh into it from another machine.
No point reinstalling the screen or drives until after then card is flashed.
Do a pram reset & see if it bongs on power up.
Plug in a bootable usb thumb/hd with an activity light & see if it tries to boot.
With the sd card, give it a few mins to boot, hit enter a few times, then blindly type this command to set the ip address
ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.238 (or whatever ip you want to give it)
then try pinging that address or ssh into it from another machine.
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It seems the system is not even staying on to pass through the power up sequence.
I'm not sure what is causing that to happen, as soon as i press the power button the fans spin then shut off and don't even try to boot?
So a little more testing, reinstalled the original GPU and i get the boot gong, and the LED's on the mainboard light up and seems the system is wanting to boot with no hard drives,
so now I'm trying to know may very well be the problem will try swapping one more time to the new card and be meticulous on every cable plug and try to fire it again, if it doesn't boot, i'll let you know, and look forward to anyone else's insight into what may possibly be the problem?
am i looking at a possible dead new card, or would i need to run more diagnostics ??
thanks again and will keep you posted.
Thanks
John
Update,
Well the New WX7100 is installed once again, all cables, power and everything is plugged in, push the power button fans spin and no power is being given to the entire system past the power button push not trying to even fire the system up, do i have a locked firmware or something that needs to be addressed first? why swapping to a mxm b board being slightly bigger but same not want to even power up at all?
is there anything else i need to do to trouble shoot this problem now?
thanks.
John
so now I'm trying to know may very well be the problem will try swapping one more time to the new card and be meticulous on every cable plug and try to fire it again, if it doesn't boot, i'll let you know, and look forward to anyone else's insight into what may possibly be the problem?
am i looking at a possible dead new card, or would i need to run more diagnostics ??
thanks again and will keep you posted.
Thanks
John
Update,
Well the New WX7100 is installed once again, all cables, power and everything is plugged in, push the power button fans spin and no power is being given to the entire system past the power button push not trying to even fire the system up, do i have a locked firmware or something that needs to be addressed first? why swapping to a mxm b board being slightly bigger but same not want to even power up at all?
is there anything else i need to do to trouble shoot this problem now?
thanks.
John
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Can you flash the WX7100 using a clip/ch341a prior to installing it? Have you tried a PRAM reset to see if that changes boot behavior. That would be my suggests, but perhaps @Pascal Baillargeau or others with first hand experience will chime in. My only experience is with K2000M and K2100M which is admittedly less involved.
I look forward to hearing of your success. Ideally one would have access to the Dell laptop this card was intended so it could be verified to work prior to starting, but most just have to trust the seller.
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Not perfect but better then no boot screen. And having brightness control is a bliss, especially at night!
John, I went through the same symptoms, but was not persistent and lacked some information. Please check my post 6541 > provides some insight as to what you can attempt to do. Don't give up. SMC reset/I know you can't NVRAM reset, but do the reset with a working card then shut down before the actual start-up, use one memory stick only, one drive only, connect only necessary cables (leave out WiFi, BT, SD, Mic etc) connected, I would attempt even without the 2 fans (HDD and ODD) for a short time. See for possible shorts, contacts with the heatsink (use electrical tape on sections of the card). Make sure it is seated properly.
I have a theory (maybe completely wrong) that the card might initially draw more power than the limit of the PSU/MB which causes the POST to fail. A person who has deeper insight might be able to tell us if this is related, and if perhaps under-clocked vbios on the card might help somehow?
In Catalina Loader original image, AppleBackightFixup is not checked. It needs to be to control backlight.
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i was about to write some same thoughts on maybe the power draw is a bit to high for some PSU's.
maybe there is less watt PSU installed in some Imac's.
the radeon WX7100 mobile draw's around 130Watt (max).
AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 Mobile Specs
AMD Ellesmere, 1243 MHz, 2304 Cores, 144 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR5, 1250 MHz, 256 bit
it don't say idle power, but i read that the Regular (pc card) version is drawing 20Watt in idle.
what combinations do we know about succes installs.
such as.
(screen size)
Original GPU?
and CPU, and upgrade. (from i5 2400 to >i7 2600)
amount of ram.
not sure on how to test this
its ticked by default. but still not working. also I get instant reboots IF I check AppleIntelHD3000 + AppleIntelSNB don't know y.
BUT I see its working more or less because I see the iMac and not a monitor under System Settings > Monitors
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I assume you did not reinstall the MacOS and your have installed the HD3000/AppleIntelSNB/Lilu/Whatevergreen on disk?
You cannot inject via OpenCore and install the very same kexts on disk at the same time. Deselect everything from the OC config what you have on already on your disk.
If this does not work start over with a clean install, it is impossible to keep track of all the things you possibly did before.
To get the H.264 iGPU acceleration working you need all the @highvoltage12v kexts on disk, do not inject any of them.