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

[Ausdauersportler]

meggle - Thanks for your close look at the cards - it gives me hope that I will get mine working soon. Which of Nick's VBIOS files did you use to flash your WX7100? There are 3 different versions in this thread - Beta 3, Beta 4, and the GOP. Curious which you (or anyone else) used to get your system working?

I finally got time to try upgrading my mid-2011 High Sierra 27" iMac to the WX7100. I can confirm that my card (00D variant) does NOT have the chips mentioned in meggle's post above. However, I do not yet have mine working in MacOS. EDIT: The High Sierra on this iMac has not been updated since June 2019.

I successfully flashed the card with the Nick's VBIOS from post #4921 using a CH341a programmer and reset the PRAM/NVRAM, but I cannot get anything past a black screen. I do get the startup chime, and I think the system completes its boot cycle due to getting a gentle 'beep' when I press a key on the keyboard. I think it is probably at the logon screen waiting for a password, but I have no way to tell this. I can't SSH into the iMac because it currently has remote logon disabled. Anyone know a way around that?

I am able to boot the iMac successfully into Ubuntu via USB drive (all internal drives disconnected) and the display works great. So, the video card is functional. (Ubuntu correctly identifies it as a WX7100)

You should use the WX7100_GOP.ROM version also available from the Catalina Loader image. When you have a chime and a booting system it is most likely only the misconfiguration of the MacOS. I do not understand why you did not open screen sharing, remote login and file sharing in advance.

Now you are locked out completely sitting in front of a black screen. Did you configure the OpenCore on a SD card in advance?

 

[abbotsford1980]

The last upgrade to 5.8 did not work - for me, too. I am afraid it is not possible to upgrade the OC version on the Catalina Loader without recompiling or rebuilding the complete loader.

The only way around I see currently is - for a really experienced user - to install OC on the boot disks EFI partition, probably in a 2011 with two disks installed on the seconds disk1 EFI. You need bootable partitions on both disks then, i.e. Catalina as standard on disk1 and High Sierry as a fall back on disks0.

I any case of trouble with the EFI (or more precisely with the OC config there) on disk1 you can zap the NVRAM and reboot into disk0 directly to fix this. Otherwise you will have to open the iMac and disconnect the internal cables to force the boot from a selected drive. Not a situation I would like to see.

Nevertheless it might be a good idea to upgrade Lilu and Wharevergreen on the current OC to the latest version available. I did this on all of my machines.

Thanks the response - that make sense - I've updated my kexts as suggested thanks again.

 

[Pascal Baillargeau]

meggle - Thanks for your close look at the cards - it gives me hope that I will get mine working soon. Which of Nick's VBIOS files did you use to flash your WX7100? There are 3 different versions in this thread - Beta 3, Beta 4, and the GOP. Curious which you (or anyone else) used to get your system working?

I finally got time to try upgrading my mid-2011 High Sierra 27" iMac to the WX7100. I can confirm that my card (00D variant) does NOT have the chips mentioned in meggle's post above. However, I do not yet have mine working in MacOS. EDIT: The High Sierra on this iMac has not been updated since June 2019.

I successfully flashed the card with the Nick's VBIOS from post #4921 using a CH341a programmer and reset the PRAM/NVRAM, but I cannot get anything past a black screen. I do get the startup chime, and I think the system completes its boot cycle due to getting a gentle 'beep' when I press a key on the keyboard. I think it is probably at the logon screen waiting for a password, but I have no way to tell this. I can't SSH into the iMac because it currently has remote logon disabled. Anyone know a way around that?

I am able to boot the iMac successfully into Ubuntu via USB drive (all internal drives disconnected) and the display works great. So, the video card is functional. (Ubuntu correctly identifies it as a WX7100)

You should try booting via opencore.

 

[SubDriver]

You should use the WX7100_GOP.ROM version also available from the Catalina Loader image. When you have a chime and a booting system it is most likely only the misconfiguration of the MacOS. I do not understand why you did not open screen sharing, remote login and file sharing in advance.

Now you are locked out completely sitting in front of a black screen. Did you configure the OpenCore on a SD card in advance?

Ausdauersportler - Thanks for the reply. I did use the WX7100_GOP.ROM from the Catalina page as I figured that was the best version. I couldn't change the settings for screen sharing, file sharing, and remote login because the video card on the iMac died in July 2019 after a couple years of baking the 6970M card every 2-3 months.

Ausdauersportler and Pascal - I did not create an OpenCore SD card in advance. I will do that now using one of my other Macs and give it a try. If that doesn't work, I will try baking the 6970M again to see if it will work long enough for me to change the settings so I can use SSH to connect.

 

[Pascal Baillargeau]

Ausdauersportler - Thanks for the reply. I did use the WX7100_GOP.ROM from the Catalina page as I figured that was the best version. I couldn't change the settings for screen sharing, file sharing, and remote login because the video card on the iMac died in July 2019 after a couple years of baking the 6970M card every 2-3 months.

Ausdauersportler and Pascal - I did not create an OpenCore SD card in advance. I will do that now using one of my other Macs and give it a try. If that doesn't work, I will try baking the 6970M again to see if it will work long enough for me to change the settings so I can use SSH to connect.

Do not forget to use AMD config.plist, default one is for NVIDA cards in iMac OpenCore Loader.dmg, if not you may have black screen reaching desktop with High Sierra.

 

[SubDriver]

Do not forget to use AMD config.plist, default one is for NVIDA cards in iMac OpenCore Loader.dmg, if not you may have black screen reaching desktop with High Sierra.

Pascal - Thanks. I am running into difficulty getting the OpenCore Loader to flash to a USB drive via Balena Etcher per the Catalina Loader instructions. I keep getting a "Missing Partition Table" warning. If I ignore the warning, the USB drive does not flash to become bootable. Any suggestions?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Pascal - Thanks. I am running into difficulty getting the OpenCore Loader to flash to a USB drive via Balena Etcher per the Catalina Loader instructions. I keep getting a "Missing Partition Table" warning. If I ignore the warning, the USB drive does not flash to become bootable. Any suggestions?

You can safely ignore this warning as mentioned in the original docs. The usb drive only becomes bootable if activated! Plug and reinsert to let the MacOS remount it. You can also habe only one Catalina Loader inserted and bootable - the mount point is important.
The complex thing is to get the iMac booting from the card, now.
Disconnect internal drives. Insert card, start system, if you get a boot picker choose the Catalina Loader with crtl + enter, switch off, reconnect boot drive, restart and hope the card boots again and shows you now the boot drive, too. Now the LCD is already switched on and you shall be able to boot into the High Sierra. (Option key on start does not help since the video card has no native boot picker unlike modded Nvidia cards - but never tried this myself). Open remote login immediately

 

[SubDriver]

Ausdauersportler - Thanks. Missed that in the docs. Will give it a try.

 

[roscho]

Hi!
While I was checking the WorkLoad on 4170 and could not see any difference @Pascal Baillargeau tested the 7100.
You are better of than others having working cards in Dell laptops while not bootable in an iMac.
I bet there must be parameters to inject which will make your card working. This cannot be a hardware problem. Most help I found on the github pages of whatevergreen and hackintosh sites.
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You chose the correct chip, the upper one near the VRAM?

Hi!
While I was checking the WorkLoad on 4170 and could not see any difference @Pascal Baillargeau tested the 7100.
You are better of than others having working cards in Dell laptops while not bootable in an iMac.
I bet there must be parameters to inject which will make your card working. This cannot be a hardware problem. Most help I found on the github pages of whatevergreen and hackintosh sites.
[automerge]1591391165[/automerge]

You chose the correct chip, the upper one near the VRAM?

Hi,

spent the last two weeks studying WEG, hackintosh sites and messing around with settings for AMD9500Controller.kext without real success.

On the other hand RadeonBoost associated Settings like the ones suggested by CMMChris had no success:

Kext must appears selected in kernel section too, to be loaded at boot.

I know but you should not use it with other cards. Orinoco has a fixed output configuration which depending on the card you are using might be incompatible. I will publish RadeonBoost 1.6 today. Maybe try it to see if it gives you the same results. You can of course also grab my parameters and inject them via bootloader if you want.

<dict>
    <key>PP,PP_Falcon_QuickTransition_Enable</key>
    <integer>1</integer>
    <key>CFG,CFG_NVV</key>
    <integer>2</integer>
    <key>CFG,CFG_USE_CP2</key>
    <true/>
    <key>PP,PP_EnableLoadFalconSmcFirmware</key>
    <integer>1</integer>
    <key>CFG,CFG_PTPL2_TBL</key>
    <data>ggAAAHwAAAB2AAAAcAAAAGoAAABkAAAAXgAAAFgAAABSAAAATAAAAEYAAABAAAAAOgAAADQAAAAuAAAAKAAAAA==</data>
    <key>ATY,EFIVersionB</key>
    <string>RadeonBoost</string>
</dict>

Those parameters are reduced to the absolute minimum necessary and aim at compatibility with all Polaris cards. Also fixes issues of some cards where the clocks are wrong after sleep or OpenGL performance is limited after sleep.

As usual, needs to be used with WEG.

Maybe CFG_PTPL2_TBL has to be adjusted according to the card settings. UNfortunately neither adjusting the Base64 Values for TDP nor trying CFG_PTPL2_CNT / CFG_PTPL2_MAX / CFG_PTPL2_MIN changed anything.
Correct injection was verified by IORegistry_Explorer, no injection/kexts loading conflicts according to kextstat.

One thing worked: CFG_FORCEMAXDPM forces the card to work in Max Mem Clock of 1250MHz. CFG_FORCE_MAX_DPS does not work though.

Kind of frustrating.

By the way: amdtweak reports a missing PowerPlayTable version in WX7100_GOP.rom, does this matter?

./amdtweak --read-file-pp /Volumes/Catalina\ Loader/AMD_ROMS/WX7100_GOP.ROM --print --verbose

Card -1 selected [implicit as --read-file-pp had no cards to associate with]
Card -1: '[root]': Couldn't find versioned type 'PowerPlayTable$118'
Card -1: PP data loaded from '/Volumes/Catalina Loader/AMD_ROMS/WX7100_GOP.ROM'
Card -1: {
  "StructureSize": 43605,
  "TableFormatRevision": 118,
  "TableContentRevision": 233
}

EDIT:
Tried again under Ubuntu (AMDGPU Driver)
Attached is the output ./amdtweak --extract-bios-pp text.txt

How do these values might help us creating a PP Table ?

Cheers,

R.

 

[SubDriver]

You can safely ignore this warning as mentioned in the original docs. The usb drive only becomes bootable if activated! Plug and reinsert to let the MacOS remount it. You can also habe only one Catalina Loader inserted and bootable - the mount point is important.
The complex thing is to get the iMac booting from the card, now.
Disconnect internal drives. Insert card, start system, if you get a boot picker choose the Catalina Loader with crtl + enter, switch off, reconnect boot drive, restart and hope the card boots again and shows you now the boot drive, too. Now the LCD is already switched on and you shall be able to boot into the High Sierra. (Option key on start does not help since the video card has no native boot picker unlike modded Nvidia cards - but never tried this myself). Open remote login immediately

Ausdauersportler - I tried what you suggested above. I was able to get the boot picker with only the Catalina Loader available (all other drives disconnected) and followed your steps above. Unfortunately, upon restart I did not get a boot picker with the boot drive re-connected. Is there anything else I should try before I use a baked HD 6970M to try to enable the remote features on the iMac so I can SSH? Appreciate the help.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Ausdauersportler - I tried what you suggested above. I was able to get the boot picker with only the Catalina Loader available (all other drives disconnected) and followed your steps above. Unfortunately, upon restart I did not get a boot picker with the boot drive re-connected. Is there anything else I should try before I use a baked HD 6970M to try to enable the remote features on the iMac so I can SSH? Appreciate the help.

This is not listed or posted or proven somewhere:

I was able to force my iMac/WX4170 (having all disks internally connected) once to boot from the SD card pressing cmd + T on boot.

Could be imagination, too.

(single T on boot is target disk mode, may be that will work, too)

Another option may be to boot your Macbook from the iMac internal disk using target disk mode on the iMac and option (boot selection) on the MacBook. Now you have access to the internal disk of your iMac and may enable remote access, screen sharing and file sharing and startup volume - or reboot the iMac and chose the boot volume then.

You need a firewire cable and the fitting MacBook to boot from the disk...

 

[SubDriver]

This is not listed or posted or proven somewhere:

I was able to force my iMac/WX4170 (having all disks internally connected) once to boot from the SD card pressing cmd + T on boot.

Could be imagination, too.

(single T on boot is target disk mode, may be that will work, too)

Another option may be to boot your Macbook from the iMac internal disk using target disk mode on the iMac and option (boot selection) on the MacBook. Now you have access to the internal disk of your iMac and may enable remote access, screen sharing and file sharing and startup volume - or reboot the iMac and chose the boot volume then.

You need a firewire cable and the fitting MacBook to boot from the disk...

Thanks. Will give what you suggest a shot. I don't know if I have the correct firewire cable to support your second suggestion. If this doesn't work, I will give my just finished baking 6970M a chance to see if I can boot into the iMac to reset the remote login features to get SSH up and running.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Thanks. Will give what you suggest a shot. I don't know if I have the correct firewire cable to support your second suggestion. If this doesn't work, I will give my just finished baking 6970M a chance to see if I can boot into the iMac to reset the remote login features to get SSH up and running.

⌘ Cmd+⌥ Alt+⇧ Shift+DEL

ignore default boot volume and boot from external device or CD/DVD (ignore default volume)

 

[Pascal Baillargeau]

Thanks. Will give what you suggest a shot. I don't know if I have the correct firewire cable to support your second suggestion. If this doesn't work, I will give my just finished baking 6970M a chance to see if I can boot into the iMac to reset the remote login features to get SSH up and running.

Another option, if you have a spare hdd or ssd could be to install on it Mojave (with dosdude installer) and swap this Mojave disk with high sierra disk, you should succeed to reach desktop without opencore. And then make opencore flash drive your default boot option. You are very close to succeed.
You have to find a way to avoid the hassle to swap graphic card.
What you can do too is taking out your High Sierra disk and boot on it on another Mac to make the necessary changes regarding sharing, teamviewer configuration, going to desktop directly without password. Then put it back in your iMac and boot.

 

[SubDriver]

Another option, if you have a spare hdd or ssd could be to install on it Mojave (with dosdude installer) and swap this Mojave disk with high sierra disk, you should succeed to reach desktop without opencore. And then make opencore flash drive your default boot option. You are very close to succeed.
You have to find a way to avoid the hassle to swap graphic card.
What you can do too is taking out your High Sierra disk and boot on it on another Mac to make the necessary changes regarding sharing, teamviewer configuration, going to desktop directly without password. Then put it back in your iMac and boot.

Thanks Ausdauersportler and Pascal!! More stuff to try before swapping the card again. Somewhat ashamed I didn't think of swapping HDD with spares. Will try those later and report back.

 

[MysticIce]

Hi folks, I’ve recently bought a nvidia k1000m, flashed using nicks rom into a 27” 2010 iMac. However, when using the exact same card on a 2011 iMac gets a black screen.

My question is, during the flashing process, does it take in some details of the computer its in? Or is the card compatible between all models.

 

[MarKur78]

Hi,
I´ve have updated my iMac 27 (2010) with a k2100m GPU and installed Catalina. The Mac is booted via OpenCore. Actually the Brightness-Control worked in High-Sierra, but in Catalina it is not anymore .. It is not supported in Catalina ?

Thanks ..

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hi,
I´ve have updated my iMac 27 (2010) with a k2100m GPU and installed Catalina. The Mac is booted via OpenCore. Actually the Brightness-Control worked in High-Sierra, but in Catalina it is not anymore .. It is not supported in Catalina ?

Thanks ..

It works with all MacOS versions - no brightness control means no OpenCore boot or bad configuration.
[automerge]1592206638[/automerge]

Hi folks, I’ve recently bought a nvidia k1000m, flashed using nicks rom into a 27” 2010 iMac. However, when using the exact same card on a 2011 iMac gets a black screen.

My question is, during the flashing process, does it take in some details of the computer its in? Or is the card compatible between all models.

Black screen issue - go back to page one and post one and read the installation instructions.

 

[herrdude]

It works with all MacOS versions - no brightness control means no OpenCore boot or bad configuration.
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Black screen issue - go back to page one and post one and read the installation instructions.

I think he is saying that it works on his iMac 2010 but when he installs the same card on his 2011 it doesn't work.

He should reset the PRAM to start off. Make sure all 4 diagnostic LEDs are coming on. Check all the connections, etc.

 

[dn325ci]

Go with the Linux bootable USB option (instructions are in the first post). It is easy. If you boot without changing the BIOS, you will get a black screen.

When you advise doing this, is this the process you're speaking of? Link here. I've never done it before and want to do the right thing. Thanks.

 

[herrdude]

When you advise doing this, is this the process you're speaking of? Link here. I've never done it before and want to do the right thing. Thanks.

Yessir!

 

[Inspiring]

Hi All, I have a question regarding external displays - I have K1100M on iMac 27 2011, running Dosdude1's Catalina Patch, custom bios and OpenCore loader all working fine, when connecting to an external HDMI monitor, the mini-dp to HDMI cable works fine, graphics shows.

However when used with Apple's LED Cinema Display (27-Inch)(non thunderbolt), I can only get Bootcamp Windows to show up on the Cinema Display. When in Catalina 10.15.4 (With OpenCore or not), the Cinema Display remains undetected (either from OpenCore or not). When in High Sierra with or without OpenCore, it works fine.

This is really strange as it is only Catalina that it is having problem with.

Any one can shed some light? Thanks.

 

[Skytracker]

Hey guys! Big thanks to everyone who made these upgrades possible! I successfully upgraded mine to a 780m but the GPU heatsink temps seems a bit high at idle and wanted to compare them with the rest of you. I have the optical drive removed, maybe that is the issue? I also have an issue with connecting a second display, it doesn't work in MacOS but it works in Windows weirdly enough. Any advice please?

Update: Doing a PRAM and SMC reset seems to have solved the high GPU temps for now but i still have the issue with the second display not working in MacOS.

 

[Charbelbodo]

so guys, I have a little gift for you to give back after such an incredible thread
hope you like it, the headaches to get it running were immens for me as a newb.

I couldn't stand it to use fckin windows to flash the cards and so I prepared this ~350mb drive

I created a Linux Live USB (based on grml.org) Thumb Drive with nvflash_linux and Nicks Bioses preloaded. and its booting by itself so you can work blind with a new unpatched nvidia card plugged in. Also, its starting a ssh daemon and using DHCP to get an IP so you can remote login

Steps

Download
14 days left to download, uploaded here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/cztz4xqj2sru9gj/2011_imac_usb.zip/file

mirror by NOTNICE, thnx: https://cloud.notnlce.com/index.php/s/xkJP34GD6a9WziE/download


Prepare USB Drive or SD Card
so, you take a small usb thumb drive, partition it with disk utility on a Mac: GPT + FAT32
and just unzip the files structure onto the drive, no dd or etcher or something. just copy paste it. folder structure see attached screenshot. (you can remove the .roms I downloaded and download itself if you want to be sure about the correct file size. I did not verify them at all. use/flash at your own risk please)

Test & Try
test your thumb drive with a more or less working GPU/ external Screen or just have faith in me

Swap Hardware
swap your GPU to NVIDIA and (!) disconnect every SSD/HDD, makes it easier to boot blindly from one USB or SD Card, connect the ETH Cable (!)

Find IP
let the iMac boot, everything is black, the boot loader is waiting 20s before booting, so give the whole process 1min time, then head over to your Router Page and find the right IP that the iMac got through DHCP

SSH to the iMac
now fire up your terminal on a Win/Mac/Linux Machine of your choice and ssh to your iMac with
ssh root@YOURIP
Password: flash
Confirm the ssh id with yes and you should be in your iMac

Working Directory
cd /lib/live/mount/medium/flash

read the RADME in there… I will enjoy my brand new k2000m in my 27" 2011 iMac with Catalina 10.15.3
… and because this is so easy, I rebuild it to a K1100M and flashed that also

(someone could write some fancy scripts but I thought its saver that everyone is doing it command by command and don't stop thinking and trusting some scripts)

Hi I did exactly that, but the imac does not boot from the usb, although i tried it on another imac it works, but on the one with nvidia gpu, ever boots from usb... but it connects to my os x user, although i have removed the hdd.. Any help??

 

[phonetappa]

Hello everyone. I was recently gifted a non-working 2011 iMac with a completely wiped HDD and no OS installed. The person that gifted it to me said the GPU is faulty. I am getting the flashing ? folder icon once I boot it up. After trying the Internet Recovery mode, I am just getting a black/grey screen, which leads me to believe that the GPU is indeed faulty. As a result, I am looking to upgrade the GPU on this machine as frugally as I can.

I found a relatively cheap K610M on ebay, and it is currently in the mail. I will attempt to flash the GPU with nikey22's custom VBIOS. I am planning on purchasing the following kit from Amazon in order to flash the GPU with my Windows PC.

Is this the proper kit for this particular chipset (the K610M)? Also does anyone know which chip to attach the clamp to, or how I could figure that out? I have never done anything like this and I do not want to mess it up. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!