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iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
- Thread starter MichaelDT
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I'm going to upgrade to K2100M and i7-2600S on this 2011 21.5 iMac soon but I'll also be adding a brand new SSD. I can plug the SSD into my USB thing to install OSX now while I wait for the thermal paste and cables to arrive. I also maxed the RAM out at 32gb.
Can anyone suggest which version of OSX will be best for fast overall performance? Will Catalina be good with these specs? And should I just follow the instructions for Catalina on this SSD, then install the GPU/CPU/SSD and then flash it and boot from it? Or should I start from an earlier OS and then once it's flashed and working upgrade later?
Thanks!!
Can anyone suggest which version of OSX will be best for fast overall performance? Will Catalina be good with these specs? And should I just follow the instructions for Catalina on this SSD, then install the GPU/CPU/SSD and then flash it and boot from it? Or should I start from an earlier OS and then once it's flashed and working upgrade later?
Thanks!!
If you have problems with the hardware it is most likely bad seating of cables, of the MXM card, broken cables, missing temp sensor cables or the GPU itself. But is is not the flash image or a bad flash. You can wear out the BIOS chip by writing 300 times a new BIOS, but this does not happen in reality.
And we cannot solve hardware problems, you are sitting alone in front of your machine. Just flash the card using the latest @nikey22 version and check your hardware, again!
Just reinstalled everything with 10.15.6 and it's a no go. I don't have brightness control under Catalina. Which loader did you exactly use?
The one I posted some pages ago
and is linked from the first post. But this iMac with this card works with both versions of the loader, as I changed it some days, ago.[automerge]1596134861[/automerge]
The latter method is it!
Maybe I'm missing something. The catalina you use is a totally unpatched system or it is a dosdude patched one without legacy video kext?The one I posted some pages ago
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The latter method is it!
OK thank you ! So the OS on the current HDD is El Capitan but which one should I install on the SSD? High Sierra? I'm trying to start fresh so I don't need to be restoring things or anything like that. After I install the SSD I'll boot from that one and just use the HDD as extra storage for pictures and things.
Mac OS Mojave/Catalina is always Dosude1 patched, but skipping Legacy video driver's since we are installing Metal supported cards
You need to do the High Sierra installation before you can use the Catalina Loader and before you can install Catalina. You need the latest firmware. You need to read the guide @dosdude! provides!
Already had HS, I have used dosdude directions. After install I went back to the installer for the post patches excluding legacy video. Everything is perfectly working except brightness. I know that also fakesmc is working because I have GPU temp as well.
Finding NVIDIA Quadro Cards for a good price is like finding success
as "The chicken catcher"... God bless America !
After tear off the slot for the MXM thermal sensor on the mainboard I try to order
1.25 kOhm Resistors for soldering a permanent simulation of 85 degree Fahrenheit
or 30 degree Celsius - because my original AMD card which I use at the moment is
stepping down the frequency / speed without thermal sensor (contacts open) !
Anyone can give me macOS Terminal instructions to edit the frequency
steppings of a MXM card while override the temperatures ?
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I installed the flashed K2100m and after 30 minutes of all working fine, the display got black and after that it stayed like that after every reboot. Like you said - the chime, OSX working, can SSH/VNC to it but the internal display is not visible, no 4th LED and no image on the external display either. I replaced the new card back with the original failing Radeon, and got 4th LED on and an image on the display (with vertical green strips
).I'm going to check again the K2100m tomorrow, and eventually return it to the seller. The fact you are getting the image when booting with linux may be due to the GPU being not fully initialized in this case. I'll give it a try tomorrow as well.
Are you sure the card you purchased was not baked or resurrected in any other way and is simply faulty?
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Have you flashed it with modified BIOS as described in the first post?
I've flashed the new nikey22 ROM, it works like a charm, the two most noticeable changes are the much cooler temperature and that the 100% brightness doesn't burn the eyes. In the performance side, there's no noticeable changes.
Thanks a lot to @nikey22, @highvoltage12v, @Ausdauersportler and @Nick [D]vB you people have brought a lot of life to this aging machines.
Thanks a lot to @nikey22, @highvoltage12v, @Ausdauersportler and @Nick [D]vB you people have brought a lot of life to this aging machines.
See if holding the Letter T when turning your iMac ON will bring up the Target disk mode screen, if so then you need to boot Mac OS with the AppleBootPicker (alt/option key) and install the patched AppleGraphicsControl.kext
@nikey22 newest ROM has always on boot screen, which will help people's issues alot
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I finally got my K4100M card in my 2011 27" iMac working. First card was not correct. The second card I got which was a Dell turned out to be bad. Third time was a charm and the replacement card worked the first time.
Here are the lessons learned from this experience:
Thanks to this thread and all who helped me through this process. I really appreciate it. I think I had this thread bookmarked for well over a year waiting for a card that worked better than the existing cards did. Finally the K4100M came to the working list and I was all over it. Thanks again to everyone and @nikey22 for the firmware that allowed this to happen!
Special thanks to @highvoltage12v for answering so many questions in this thread along with all the others that replied. You all rock!
Here are the lessons learned from this experience:
- Do not use HP versions of the K4100M card. Something is different about them and they don't work.
- The Dell version of the K4100M cards work.
- I learned how to completely disassemble this iMac having taken it apart and reassembled it about 18-22 times in total.
- Just put a little pile of K5 compound on the tall square areas, just enough to fill the gaps.
- Don't do this work when you're exhausted - too many opportunities to make mistakes which causes more problems.
- On the bootable USB image, the scp command - that is to be run from your local machine, not the target iMac that you ssh'd into. Run it in a terminal on your local machine.
- This took about three days to do, don't take up kitchen space if you don't want your wife to be pissed off at you.
- I love my iFixit toolkit. It came in so handy for this job.
- The Linux USB image is the way to go. Super convenient and pretty easy if you're familiar with ssh and such.
- Did I mention to stay away from HP versions of the K4100M? Steer clear of them, they don't work.
Thanks to this thread and all who helped me through this process. I really appreciate it. I think I had this thread bookmarked for well over a year waiting for a card that worked better than the existing cards did. Finally the K4100M came to the working list and I was all over it. Thanks again to everyone and @nikey22 for the firmware that allowed this to happen!
Special thanks to @highvoltage12v for answering so many questions in this thread along with all the others that replied. You all rock!
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I remove 500GB HDD so there is now only 250 SSD.
Reboot Catalina installer and wait about 10 minutes -> it still reboot
no, I did not flash the BIOS. my original graphics card burned out. I bought a msi gtx 770 from a laptop, there is a gong on imac, I understand that the system has booted (if you press the keyboard, system sounds are heard) but the screen is black!I installed the flashed K2100m and after 30 minutes of all working fine, the display got black and after that it stayed like that after every reboot. Like you said - the chime, OSX working, can SSH/VNC to it but the internal display is not visible, no 4th LED and no image on the external display either. I replaced the new card back with the original failing Radeon, and got 4th LED on and an image on the display (with vertical green strips
I'm going to check again the K2100m tomorrow, and eventually return it to the seller. The fact you are getting the image when booting with linux may be due to the GPU being not fully initialized in this case. I'll give it a try tomorrow as well.
Are you sure the card you purchased was not baked or resurrected in any other way and is simply faulty?
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Have you flashed it with modified BIOS as described in the first post?
Now that I got the K4100M installed and working along with Mojave, I just wanted to report a couple of observations:
- Pressing CMD-F2, did enter Target Display Mode and it appeared to be working fine - at full brightness
- Pressing CMD-F2 again did not exit Target Display Mode. I had to unplug the cable to end it.
- While in Target Display Mode, pressing the brightness on the other computer would control the brightness on the iMac. Now it only controls the brightness on the other machine. Looks like Target Display Mode is limited to full brightness at this point. Is there something I can use to reduce the brightness while only in Target Display Mode?
This is exactly what I found using Target Display Mode on a K2100m and a 2010 iMac (on High Sierra). I don't recall the brightness issue, but just CMD+F2 was very unreliable in exiting TDM, and I had to unplug the cable to exit. Perhaps its a limitation of these Quadro ROMs.
Looking at the first post you may find out that Target Display Mode works only with High Sierra. Using Mojave or Catalina ends up in the mess you just described. Apple pulled off the support for TDisplayM from the recent MacOS versions and nobody found a way to bring it back until, now.
Please, please read the posts #1 first and post later
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It has a black screen likely because the BIOS of your card currently does not provide the capabilities needed by MacOS. Go back to the first post of this thread, grab the BIOS linked there and flash it using one of the methods described in the very same post.
After more testing, I've noticed that some small glitching in the form of horizontal lines appear and disappear at the right side of the screen for short periods since bootscreen, flashing back to Nick [D]vB Kepler beta 3 resolves this issue for me, so I could discard the possibility of a hardware problem.
The card is not running hot (GPU Heatsink is 40 ºC) and the area surrounding the card is cool, this could be because of my inusual setup? (21.5" 2010 + 780m). Is there a problem if I keep running this new firmware? I don't mind seeing some glitching if the backlight could be saved from frying.
PD: if someone could please lead me to some ROM hacking learning resources, it would be much appreciated, I'm very interested in this topic and have some spare time right now.
The card is not running hot (GPU Heatsink is 40 ºC) and the area surrounding the card is cool, this could be because of my inusual setup? (21.5" 2010 + 780m). Is there a problem if I keep running this new firmware? I don't mind seeing some glitching if the backlight could be saved from frying.
PD: if someone could please lead me to some ROM hacking learning resources, it would be much appreciated, I'm very interested in this topic and have some spare time right now.