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

[ZenSurfeur]

Hello
My iMac runs like a charm with a K2100M 2Go

I may get a K3100M or K5000M both 4Go and both from dell precision, will they work?

 

[highvoltage12v]

Hello
My iMac runs like a charm with a K2100M 2Go

I may get a K3100M or K5000M both 4Go and both from dell precision, will they work?

It will probably be a Kx100 card not a kx000 card. So a k3100 not a k5000.

 

[ZenSurfeur]

Then I may try a K3100M and give a feedback

 

[Yellum]

Just a quick thank you to you all that have worked on this and made this happen.
I ordered a card to have a go 1st card was gtx 765 2GB nvidia this worked well in both my 2010 and 2011 imac both are 27 inch so as I was happy with the results from the nvidia I wanted to try the wx7100 so I ordered the card as pictured below on from ebay.
It was listed as AMD Radeon Pro WX7100 8GB DDR5 MXM 3.0 Type B For Dell Precision 7710 7720 7730
The card I received is as pictured. Not sure if this helps in any way.

Thank you once again.

 

[BadBiscuit]

Just a quick thank you to you all that have worked on this and made this happen.
I ordered a card to have a go 1st card was gtx 765 2GB nvidia this worked well in both my 2010 and 2011 imac both are 27 inch so as I was happy with the results from the nvidia I wanted to try the wx7100 so I ordered the card as pictured below on from ebay.
It was listed as AMD Radeon Pro WX7100 8GB DDR5 MXM 3.0 Type B For Dell Precision 7710 7720 7730
The card I received is as pictured. Not sure if this helps in any way.

Can you clarify which of your 27" iMacs this WX7100 card is installed and working in? Is it in the 2010, or 2011? Also did you install the ROM with a clip and then it just worked, or were there any obstacles? Inquiring minds.

Edit: It appears to be the 2011, for the last screen grab shows i7-2600, and only the 2011 supports that, right?

 

[highvoltage12v]

Can you clarify which of your 27" iMacs this WX7100 card is installed and working in? Is it in the 2010, or 2011? Also did you install the ROM with a clip and then it just worked, or were there any obstacles? Inquiring minds.

Edit: It appears to be the 2011, for the last screen grab shows i7-2600, and only the 2011 supports that, right?

It is very hit or miss with these cards and the 2011 iMac. Yes a 2600 would make it a 2011 iMac.

 

[MikkelF]

Does anyone here have this specific iMac Configuration: 2011 21.5" iMac with a k2100M (maybe k1100m?/K610M) And notice that performance in Valley benchmark is about half (Score:667) in Catalina as what it should be in Mac OS High Sierra?(Score:1208)

Yes.
Im Mojave I got 1253/29.4 right after booting and 980/23.4FPS after letting the computer idle for a while.
In Catalina I currently getting 437/10.5 (I haven't tested systematically though).

I just I'noticed that the GPU clock is high right after boot and then lowered to 270 MHz after some time.
When running the Valley benchmark the GPU clock does not rise beyond these 270 MHz though it's rated at 667 MHz...however the CPU throttles happily from 1.6 GHz idle to 3.1 GHz.
So my issue seem related to GPU power management and not CPU PM.
I'm a bit confused as to whether the power management patches you just posted are made for specific configurations and therefore I haven't tried them.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Just a quick thank you to you all that have worked on this and made this happen.
I ordered a card to have a go 1st card was gtx 765 2GB nvidia this worked well in both my 2010 and 2011 imac both are 27 inch so as I was happy with the results from the nvidia I wanted to try the wx7100 so I ordered the card as pictured below on from ebay.
It was listed as AMD Radeon Pro WX7100 8GB DDR5 MXM 3.0 Type B For Dell Precision 7710 7720 7730
The card I received is as pictured. Not sure if this helps in any way.

Thank you once again.

HI!
Do you have by any chance saved the original vBIOS stored in the card initially. Please zip and post here
Thanks in advance

 

[slowsafari]

Hello guys,

could anyone tell me, how good target display mode works for this combination:
iMac 2011 27", K2100M, macOS 10.14.6
MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018), macOS 10.15.5

Does it even work?

 

[ZenSurfeur]

Hello guys,

could anyone tell me, how good target display mode works for this combination:
iMac 2011 27", K2100M, macOS 10.14.6
MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018), macOS 10.15.5

Does it even work?

same config imac 27, k2100m, target display is fully fonctional only in the second thunderbolt port (the closest one from usb)

 

[NOTNlCE]

Hello guys,

could anyone tell me, how good target display mode works for this combination:
iMac 2011 27", K2100M, macOS 10.14.6
MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018), macOS 10.15.5

Does it even work?

5. Target Display Mode is available on the K1100M, K2100M, WX4170, and WX7100 when using both custom VBIOS and OpenCore. Target Display Mode is *only* stable under High Sierra and should not be used in later OS's.

Your answer is in the wiki! You would probably need to adapt the Thunderbolt 3 signal down to a 2 or 1, and your iMac would need to run High sierra. TDM is not stable beyond High Sierra. This is why many of us have very small APFS volumes with a copy of 10.13.6, just in case.

 

[Yellum]

Can you clarify which of your 27" iMacs this WX7100 card is installed and working in? Is it in the 2010, or 2011? Also did you install the ROM with a clip and then it just worked, or were there any obstacles? Inquiring minds.

Edit: It appears to be the 2011, for the last screen grab shows i7-2600, and only the 2011 supports that, right?

Hi yes its the 2011 27 inch iMac its in I flashed it from within windows 10 on the iMac, no obstacles I used a clean install of windows 10 and this was the only hard drive attached IE I unplugged the OSX drive and made sure the machine booted direct to Windows

Can you clarify which of your 27" iMacs this WX7100 card is installed and working in? Is it in the 2010, or 2011? Also did you install the ROM with a clip and then it just worked, or were there any obstacles? Inquiring minds.

Edit: It appears to be the 2011, for the last screen grab shows i7-2600, and only the 2011 supports that, right?

Hi yes its in the 27 inch 2011 12,2 imac I unplugged ssd drive with OSX installed and plugged in an SSD with Windows 10 booted to that and flashed the card from there, no obstacles just used the info from this post.
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HI!
Do you have by any chance saved the original vBIOS stored in the card initially. Please zip and post here
Thanks in advance

Please see attached file is that what your after ?

 

[highvoltage12v]

This morning I did another benchmark with my 2100M, the card crashed on scene 16/18 and hasn't worked properly since. I am removing the patched AppleGraphicsPowerManagement kext. I do not know if this is a bad card or a AppleGraphicsPowerManagement over boosting the card causing damage to the card. I haven't taken the iMac apart either to test the card in a PC.

 

[GreppMichaels]

Hey Guys,

I have a mid 2010 27 Imac with High Sierra and an alienware quadro k2100m ready to install, I have Jojawu's windows install ready (I cant SSHP nor would a ch4231 clip correctly read or hookup to my card, want to just stick with the windows method) however I'm just wanting to cover all my bases before I put in the card.

So once the card is in and before the bios has been flashed, am I basically only able to choose a boot partition at start And then no screen? When I boot to the windows image will it basically be a blank screen? Just asking because I'm trying to understand why I need team view, I have it ready to go on my macbook pro and plan to do a dry run of team view before I put the card in, just confirming that once I have my imac running with the new card I merely have to run NVFlash Rom remotely via my macbook pro because i'd have no image, is it as simple as that or am I missing something? (I know I need to disable SIP and install opencore afterwards) this just seems too good to be true! Literally just remote view into the desktop and run NV Flashrom?!

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hey Guys,

I have a mid 2010 27 Imac with High Sierra and an alienware quadro k2100m ready to install, I have Jojawu's windows install ready (I cant SSHP nor would a ch4231 clip correctly read or hookup to my card, want to just stick with the windows method) however I'm just wanting to cover all my bases before I put in the card.

So once the card is in and before the bios has been flashed, am I basically only able to choose a boot partition at start And then no screen? When I boot to the windows image will it basically be a blank screen? Just asking because I'm trying to understand why I need team view, I have it ready to go on my macbook pro and plan to do a dry run of team view before I put the card in, just confirming that once I have my imac running with the new card I merely have to run NVFlash Rom remotely via my macbook pro because i'd have no image, is it as simple as that or am I missing something? (I know I need to disable SIP and install opencore afterwards) this just seems too good to be true! Literally just remote view into the desktop and run NV Flashrom?!

No, you will not be able to choose a boot partition and you might face a situation where the screen after boot of windows remains black. You connect just one bootable device having windows on the first partitions and have configured TeamViewer to overcome the black screen situation.

 

[ZenSurfeur]

My feedback
with the same card k2100m, I only got a black screen, and diag led only 2/4 ie no detection, with a usb key nvflash ... no detection at all, the only and best way to succes is using a usb bios flasher.
Now it works like a charm

 

[GreppMichaels]

No, you will not be able to choose a boot partition and you might face a situation where the screen after boot of windows remains black. You connect just one bootable device having windows on the first partitions and have configured TeamViewer to overcome the black screen situation.

Ok perfect, I'm doing a dry run of team viewer and making sure its set to go without me having any visual, I have REFIT installed so I automatically get to choose my boot partition at start so if I have a blank screen I just need to do one keyboard click right and I should be good to go then, but my windows partition is ready to go and has everything I need on it, doing some dry runs thru my macbook pro and then I'm disassembling and installing the gpu.
[automerge]1591895107[/automerge]

My feedback
with the same card k2100m, I only got a black screen, and diag led only 2/4 ie no detection, with a usb key nvflash ... no detection at all, the only and best way to succes is using a usb bios flasher.
Now it works like a charm

Understandable, sadly the clips on the usb flasher i got won't connect with my card and I've seen others with the same issue especially with the k2100m and don't want to keep ordering random parts from amazon that don't end up working or end up spending more on the accessories than the card itself.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Understandable, sadly the clips on the usb flasher i got won't connect with my card and I've seen others with the same issue especially with the k2100m and don't want to keep ordering random parts from amazon that don't end up working or end up spending more on the accessories than the card itself.

We were talking about the "Linux USB boot stick flash method" - this works without clip, without windows. Although you need to disconnect the internal drives, too. Or you know some secret key strokes on boot to make the USB devices to boot first

 

[toucharcade]

Okay, now we have at least two people sharing the very same problem. When I upgraded my 21.5 iMac two days ago I was adding like you a SSD and a HDD using both SATA 0 and SATA 1 ports - because I had no power cable I used a power splitter cable. Disconnecting the HDD does not solve the problem.

@highvoltage12v just told my he had cleaned his thermal paste and was getting better values later.

May be we face a thermal issue with the card here, too. The CPU refuses to boost while the internal system reports this issue back to the CPU. I do not know. I see the problem within three different MacOS versions so I am pretty sure it is not a software problem.

With my 27 iMac 2011 using a K2100M I had never seen such a problem so far. But if you watch the Valley score list I get the feeling we are not alone, here.

Piękny wieczór! (translate.google.com)

@Ausdauersportler you changed your tune? When i pointed out the same you dismissed it. Though my original suspicion was OpenCore , its actually catalina and the behaviour is due to GPU power management it seams, like other users are reporting also. Just after the fresh reboot i get expected scores , after awhile GPU clock is pegged to 270Mhz and FPS drops to about 10, CPU clock is working fine.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

@Ausdauersportler you changed your tune? When i pointed out the same you dismissed it. Though my original suspicion was OpenCore , its actually catalina and the behaviour is due to GPU power management it seams, like other users are reporting also. Just after the fresh reboot i get expected scores , after awhile GPU clock is pegged to 270Mhz and FPS drops to about 10, CPU clock is working fine.

No, no, my friend! We may face the same symptoms, but we (may) have a different problem. My system cannot boost the CPU, it is not first handed the GPU. Do not turn the words in my mouth.

We have running 21.5 systems around with a K2100M delivering nearly 30 FPS. So in principle these little machine get the same power out of this particular card.

We cannot declare a common problem if only a few users face it. It is even worse: If you have a single 21.5" system performing well we must assume that all the not performing ones have (probably different) problems. This is two valued logic basics...

My iMac 21.5 does not boost the CPU in High Sierra, Mojave, and Catalina...which is not your problem!

What I do not know: The reason for your problem and the reason causing my problem. The OWC HD temperature sensor changed nothing, disconnecting the second HDD, too. Now I will go back to a 6750M and later to another K2100M. First I have to see my CPU boost, again.

 

[toucharcade]

No, no, my friend! We may face the same symptoms, but we (may) have a different problem. My system cannot boost the CPU, it is not first handed the GPU. Do not turn the words in my mouth.

We have running 21.5 systems around with a K2100M delivering nearly 30 FPS. So in principle these little machine get the same power out of this particular card.

We cannot declare a common problem if only a few users face it. It is even worse: If you have a single 21.5" system performing well we must assume that all the not performing ones have (probably different) problems. This is two valued logic basics...

My iMac 21.5 does not boost the CPU in High Sierra, Mojave, and Catalina...which is not your problem!

What I do not know: The reason for your problem and the reason causing my problem. The OWC HD temperature sensor changed nothing, disconnecting the second HDD, too. Now I will go back to a 6750M and later to another K2100M. First I have to see my CPU boost, again.

"
We have running 21.5 systems around with a K2100M delivering nearly 30 FPS. So in principle these little machine get the same power out of this particular card." - Yes , i get 29.6 at times after fresh reboot with the same system.

"We cannot declare a common problem if only a few users face it. It is even worse: If you have a single 21.5" system performing well we must assume that all the not performing ones have (probably different) problems. This is two valued logic basics..." - I pointed out to google sheet results in my earlier post saying that i see others with exact same setup getting 10FPS which lead me to believe others might be experiencing the same issues i am. You dismissed the results saying "No, this list indicates nothing because first we both do not know under what circumstances theses results may have been produced." then pointed to same results as argumentation in your post i replied to "But if you watch the Valley score list I get the feeling we are not alone, here." - Hence me saying that you changed your tune. Not turning anyones words.

Anyhow no need to get defensive, merely pointing my observations and in no way trying to undermine your awesome contributions here. I see the current GPU PM behaviour as minor annoyance as it does not really affect me. Casually hoping it gets solved if others see it also. Thats all..

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Anyhow no need to get defensive, merely pointing my observations and in no way trying to undermine your awesome contributions here. I see the current GPU PM behaviour as minor annoyance as it does not really affect me. Casually hoping it gets solved if others see it also. Thats all..

Sorry, my contributions are more communication than (vBIOS) engineering...

But to come back to our problem: Yes, several users have serious problems after this upgrade. And it is really helpful to collect every voice. But you came now a second time referring to the benchmark table and other users declaring a common problem where I can only see - right now - several single and unrelated problems.

When we try to solve such problems we must be sure that it is not a simple broken cable (local problem) because we cannot rebuild such a scenario. We can focus and help only on general problems, please help me to understand why your problem is a general one. BTW: With the 4170 we have a Malaria issue, after sleep the performance went down to half of the valley values. We could share this experience in the group of three known owners and found a solution

@highvoltage12v just discovered that his problem was most likely caused by a broken K2100M. I have a second 21.5" 2011 with an even more powerful video card with identical HW (SSD and HDD) settings which is performing absolutely fine. Jumping on the train I was searching for others with my boost problem hoping to solve this in this small group.

Edit:
Can we assume that you too face what I called Malaria, i.e. after boot the GPU performs well and after the first sleep the GPU core frequency locks down as we have seen with the AMD GPUs, too?

 

[toucharcade]

Can we assume that you too face what I called Malaria, i.e. after boot the GPU performs well and after the first sleep the GPU core frequency locks down as we have seen with the AMD GPUs, too?

Yes, thats at least what i am facing. Recently @MikkelF described the same. @Conney describes it also but AFAIR his is more closer to what you are observing - CPU clock related. Few weeks back i have came across few posts describing the similar symptoms (too many pages to trawl trough for references). Worthwhile saying that my behavior was observed even before 10.15.5 update, so there i tend to agree with what you said earlier, it does not appear to be OS related. For me the problem was not introduced by the latest update to Catalina. The fact that HS seamed to work better is that i haven't spent much time testing it, usually it was just after fresh boot that I ran Valley bench. HS is my alt installation , Catalina being primary. Thanks again for all your meaningful insights and help to the community.

Edit: Wanted to clarify that I observe it even without sleep. It just happens after some time/// Probably should look at logs but catalina is notorious for chattiness and spewing crap in the logs so not sure if looking at those is very obvious/helpful...

 

[GreppMichaels]

Hey Guys,

Successfully got both my i7 2.93 and my k2100m installed in my 2010 27imac, now I'm wondering if I should be concerned performance wise. Thank you all for your help and for anyone who's ever posted on this thread.

I tried running starcraft 2 which performed decently well on medium to low settings on my radeon hd 1gb, however I'm getting not even 25-30 fps on low setting and am a bit concerned, I understand my processor might be running a bit hot as the thermal paste is cooking on it, the temp has been slowly lowering and is down to about 67 celsius, but I am worried about why my performance has gotten worse.

I'm running High Sierra, should I update my OSX? Is my video card underperforming because I don't have opencore on yet? Kinda worried as I put a ton of work in and I'm not getting the results I hoped..

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hey Guys,

Successfully got both my i7 2.93 and my k2100m installed in my 2010 27imac, now I'm wondering if I should be concerned performance wise. Thank you all for your help and for anyone who's ever posted on this thread.

I tried running starcraft 2 which performed decently well on medium to low settings on my radeon hd 1gb, however I'm getting not even 25-30 fps on low setting and am a bit concerned, I understand my processor might be running a bit hot as the thermal paste is cooking on it, the temp has been slowly lowering and is down to about 67 celsius, but I am worried about why my performance has gotten worse.

I'm running High Sierra, should I update my OSX? Is my video card underperforming because I don't have opencore on yet? Kinda worried as I put a ton of work in and I'm not getting the results I hoped..

Please run valley at 1920x1080, medium, no AA and try got get approximately 30 FPS - than your card is working fine. Cannot comment on games...
Try to install OpenCore on SD card and enable temp sensors, may be your system is throttled down. Check with HW Monitor if your CPU is boosting and finally install the internal LCD, of not done.
Did you install everything back including the LCD and all thermo sensors?