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

[nikey22]

@jay508
The GTX870M rom was based on the MSI card Vbios version: 80.04.EF.00.A2 , because it was the only ROM we could find on the Techpowerup website at the time.

I have since found the Clevo/Nvidia based rom for the GTX870M similar to the one you have. This might be more compatible for your card. I don't know. It will need to be tested. I will send it to your private messages. Vbios version: 80.04.F3.00.01 was the base version.

3rd LED light means efi-rom is good/loaded. 2 Lights only means efi-rom didn't load. If this mod doesn't work, it means the UGA rom modification is not workable for the GTX870M based cards (possibly due to odd memory confirmation of 3GB). But we shall see, and we will adjust the ROM-post as necessary. Please look at your personal messages for beta-testing.

Thank you.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

OK, the second picture is different. The second time the cards are more complete. It's very confusing that Clevo gtx78m 3G can't be used on IMAC 2011 27. How can I contact @ nikkey22 for advice? Thank you.

We are all not good at inspecting cards by visual examination. You may open a private conversation with him. Or just wait until he answers. He is very responsive.

 

[ZenSurfeur]

K5100M 8GB SUCCESS

The card was in a dell M6800 laptop.

I Flashed the card using @xanderon method with Linux over SSH as it's written in page 1, I used the modded vBios by @nikey22 (thanx again)

HEATSINK MODIFICATIONS

Due to its TDP about 100W it requires the heatsink with 3 pipes and it needs to be"dremelized" like this
In order to fit the heatsink's screws, I separate the X-Clamp using a hair dryer then a plastic spudger then drilling.
Measurements should be ok for others cards.

THERMAL COMPOUNDS

GPU > Grizzly Kryonaut,
FRONT CHIPS (memories and others) > K5 Pro,
BACK MEMORIES > thermal pad (were with the card).

THE K5100M FLASHED, TEMPERATURES, LUMINOSITY AND SECOND SCREEN

​

BENCHMARK UNIGINE VALLEY, GEEKBENCH 5 (OpenGL and Metal)

​

The card perfectly works, thanx for all that make this possible

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Talking about Big Sur Potential​

After waiting a long time for explorations on the Big Sur thread I gave the micro patcher by @Barry K. Nathan a run and installed Big Sur on one iMac 2011, BCM943602CDP, K4100M by @nikey22 and have a running and sleeping system.

Long story short: I published all the changes needed to use the micro patcher on the other thread. All the credits go to @highvoltage12v - he is the men who patches and finds the extensions!

So it is pretty clear that for now the fine work @nikey22, @Nick [D]vB, @internetzel, @stephle spent into the BIOS development may give us another new OS version for these machines....

Fair warning:
You have to read the docs @Barry K. Nathan provided step by step and you need to be able to enter terminal commands. This is not a "just click on colored buttons" solution. It does not need OpenCore!

Please discuss you Big Sur successes on this thread - we will focus here on the GPU changes

 

[shasen1235]

Man, I want to thank all the devs who contribute to this project.
I bought this iMac 2011 27' with broken Ati graphics with just $130.
And another $130 for GTX 880M.
So total $260 for a computer with 2K display, i5-2400, 8G Ram and Speakers, Wifi , BT...etc all built-in is a steal!
Now it serves as my main PC when I'm back to my parents' house.

Here are some experience I want to share, so it might be helpful if someone has similar config like me.
1. Keyboard with macro or any fancy feature may not work during boot up.
Mine is Corsair K70 SE. Thanks to this bad boy I wasted days wondering why boot up key combination doesn't work.
I looked up on the net and found that someone said these kinds of keyboard initialize slower than the normal ones.
Even slower than the combo window.
So I picked up a trash keyboard and it finally works!!!
And guess what, after I got my boot screen back, I found that this keyboard still won't work even in the selection menu.
Arrow, enter, no, nothing works. So my trash keyboard will stay instead of going to trash can(sigh

2. Best way to guarantee to boot into Linux is to remove the hard drive.
Some people might have recovery partition in their HD or not having a working keyboard to for boot menu.
In this condition, it's hard to do this step blindly.
Remove all the bootable drives except Linux live CD/Drive can save you tons of time in trouble shooting.

Now my next goal is to upgrade CPU to i7 2600.
(2600K doesn't seems to be a better option since they have same base clock and there's barely any headroom for OC in this iMac? Anyone has experience please share!)
Upgrade Ram to 16G and this baby can go for another 5 more years!

 

[ZenSurfeur]

Man, I want to thank all the devs who contribute to this project.
I bought this iMac 2011 27' with broken Ati graphics with just $130.
And another $130 for GTX 880M.
So total $260 for a computer with 2K display, i5-2400, 8G Ram and Speakers, Wifi , BT...etc all built-in is a steal!
Now it serves as my main PC when I'm back to my parents' house.
View attachment 942465

Here are some experience I want to share, so it might be helpful if someone has similar config like me.
1. Keyboard with macro or any fancy feature may not work during boot up.
Mine is Corsair K70 SE. Thanks to this bad boy I wasted days wondering why boot up key combination doesn't work.
I looked up on the net and found that someone said these kinds of keyboard initialize slower than the normal ones.
Even slower than the combo window.
So I picked up a trash keyboard and it finally works!!!
And guess what, after I got my boot screen back, I found that this keyboard still won't work even in the selection menu.
Arrow, enter, no, nothing works. So my trash keyboard will stay instead of going to trash can(sigh

2. Best way to guarantee to boot into Linux is to remove the hard drive.
Some people might have recovery partition in their HD or not having a working keyboard to for boot menu.
In this condition, it's hard to do this step blindly.
Remove all the bootable drives except Linux live CD/Drive can save you tons of time in trouble shooting.

Now my next goal is to upgrade CPU to i7 2600.
(2600K doesn't seems to be a better option since they have same base clock and there's barely any headroom for OC in this iMac? Anyone has experience please share!)
Upgrade Ram to 16G and this baby can go for another 5 more years!

i5 to i7 you won't see so much difference, the most valuable upgrade is an SSD

 

[Ausdauersportler]

I suppose you have an i5, the most valuable upgrade is an SSD

More memory and in any case a SSD instead of rotating rust will accelerate your machine more than the i7-2600. Changing the CPU is wasted money and time...unless you want to refresh the thermal paste after 9 years

 

[shasen1235]

i5 to i7 you won't see so much difference, the most valuable upgrade is an SSD

More memory and in any case a SSD instead of rotating rust will accelerate your machine more than the i7-2600. Changing the CPU is wasted money and time...unless you want to refresh the thermal paste after 9 years

I've already done the SSD upgrade, that's the first upgrade I did on this machine😄
A 2600 here in my country is about 30 bucks and I can still resell my 2400 for 10 or something.
So it won't cost me much on this part.
I know old gen i5 and i7 on a laptop doesn't make much of difference. But the story on desktop is different.
Currently my main PC is running on 6700K and I do a lot of multitasking so hyper threading can really benefit my use
Thanks for the advice!!

 

[Ausdauersportler]

I've already done the SSD upgrade, that's the first upgrade I did on this machine😄
A 2600 here in my country is about 30 bucks and I can still resell my 2400 for 10 or something.
So it won't cost me much on this part.
I know old gen i5 and i7 on a laptop doesn't make much of difference. But the story on desktop is different.
Currently my main PC is running on 6700K and I do a lot of multitasking so hyper threading can really benefit my use
Thanks for the advice!!

The i7-2600 hyperthreading is known as (probably) the worst ever implementation of such a technology. In real world tasks you have effectively the four real existing cores to do the work, not more...

 

[randomdamage]

Hi All - Any tricks to getting brightness controls working on a 2010 21.5" iMac? I replaced the failed AMD GPU with a K1100M and flashed it with the VBIOS attached to this thread. That gave me a boot screen and seems to work great with Catalina, yay!. As I understand it, I need OpenCore to get brightness controls, so I grabbed the 0.59 iMac Catalina loader image and put that on an SD card. I renamed the default config.plist to something else and renamed the supplied NVIDIA config.plist as appropriate. I'm able to boot from the Catalina Loader image just fine, but can't seem to get brightness controls to show. The attached screenshot shows the OpenCore extensions that I'm loading, including the AppleBrightnessFixUp KEXT. Am I doing something obviously wrong here?

Thanks!

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hi All - Any tricks to getting brightness controls working on a 2010 21.5" iMac? I replaced the failed AMD GPU with a K1100M and flashed it with the VBIOS attached to this thread. That gave me a boot screen and seems to work great with Catalina, yay!. As I understand it, I need OpenCore to get brightness controls, so I grabbed the 0.59 iMac Catalina loader image and put that on an SD card. I renamed the default config.plist to something else and renamed the supplied NVIDIA config.plist as appropriate. I'm able to boot from the Catalina Loader image just fine, but can't seem to get brightness controls to show. The attached screenshot shows the OpenCore extensions that I'm loading, including the AppleBrightnessFixUp KEXT. Am I doing something obviously wrong here?

Thanks!

My Dad uses the same configuration with the old Catalina Loader working fine. No idea...
Cannot cross check now. The new loader works with all cards I checked recently.

 

[Randalf]

I'm new on the boat; first of all, thanks to all devs and tinkerers that have made this thread possible.
I have rescued an i7 2009 imac, (after baking the failed 4850), put 16g and a ssd on it, and now i'm waiting for a k3100m and a 3-pipe heatsink to arrive from China.
Currently, i' ve got catalina installed with dosdude1 patcher.
Question is: Have i to do a complete reinstall when the new card arrives, or if a launch the patcher and deselect the legacy graphics option, will it work?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

I'm new on the boat; first of all, thanks to all devs and tinkerers that have made this thread possible.
I have rescued an i7 2009 imac, (after baking the failed 4850), put 16g and a ssd on it, and now i'm waiting for a k3100m and a 3-pipe heatsink to arrive from China.
Currently, i' ve got catalina installed with dosdude1 patcher.
Question is: Have i to do a complete reinstall when the new card arrives, or if a launch the patcher and deselect the legacy graphics option, will it work?

No, will not work! And trust me, you can safely just install the Catalina newly onto the same disk, user data will not be touched. But you may also start reading on page 1 and post #1 where all this has been documented, too.
There is a complicated way to ged rid of the legacy video patches, but IMHO it is not worth the trouble.

 

[Randalf]

No, will not work! And trust me, you can safely just install the Catalina newly onto the same disk, user data will not be touched. But you may also start reading on page 1 and post #1 where all this has been documented, too.
There is a complicated way to ged rid of the legacy video patches, but IMHO it is not worth the trouble.

Thank you for the info and all your work!

 

[stephle]

.

 

[Mixpower]

** NVIDIA Quadro K5100M Mac Edition ROM **
Genuine Native Boot Screen & Brightness Control


​

View attachment 942192

I put together this UGA rom for the K5100M:

• Does not require a 3rd party bootloader like OpenCore
• Needs modification of the AppleBacklight.kext [AppleIntelPanelA/ApplePanels/F10Ta007] brightness stepping
• Stock Quadro K5100M GPU clock/RAM speeds

Thanks to @ZenSurfeur for his very thorough testing and successful implementation. He is very pleased with the ROM and has done extensive tests.

"insanely Great!"
-Steve Jobs


View attachment 942216 View attachment 942217

View attachment 942218

Awesome!
Hope the K610M get's the same functionality.

 

[luke.g.johnson]

k2100m success! It feels good to have Catalina running smoothly on a base specs 2011 21.5" (not exactly base specs now though as I swapped in an SSD and boosted the RAM a couple of months back).

I mainly followed the guide by @Ausdauersportler & co, and many thanks to them.

The fixes for sleep etc. in step 10 left me unable to boot (endlessly stuck on apple screen with loading bar) both with and without opencore. Cue a Time Machine restore. I'm not losing sleep over this (heh) cause these aren't huge priorities, but if anyone has solved similar problems I'd love to know.

My first Unigine Valley benchmark was pretty abysmal, but that's because I hadn't set up Macs Fan Control and so it was running HOT. Don't leave this out, folks. The benchmarks are now in line with similar hardware (score 1229 ave FPS 29.4)

Thanks a lot!

 

[Ausdauersportler]

k2100m success! It feels good to have Catalina running smoothly on a base specs 2011 21.5" (not exactly base specs now though as I swapped in an SSD and boosted the RAM a couple of months back).

I mainly followed the guide by @Ausdauersportler & co, and many thanks to them.

The fixes for sleep etc. in step 10 left me unable to boot (endlessly stuck on apple screen with loading bar) both with and without opencore. Cue a Time Machine restore. I'm not losing sleep over this (heh) cause these aren't huge priorities, but if anyone has solved similar problems I'd love to know.

My first Unigine Valley benchmark was pretty abysmal, but that's because I hadn't set up Macs Fan Control and so it was running HOT. Don't leave this out, folks. The benchmarks are now in line with similar hardware (score 1229 ave FPS 29.4)

Thanks a lot!

Meanwhile there is another version of the OpenCore loader published and a shorter guide, mainly because I decided to direct to the author of this special sleep topic.

Go and check this, again. Of course it is just a copy from the first post:

Q: Sleep is broken in Catalina, how do I fix this?
A: Similar to the above issue in Mojave, the SandyBridge kexts are missing in Catalina. Installing them like Mojave fixes sleep, but causes extended boot times. @highvoltage12v has provided a patched IOSurface.kext containing the SandyBridge kexts in THIS POST which can be installed using the same method as above to resolve both issues.

The latest version of the Catalina Loader image containing the 0.5.9 version of OpenCore and preconfigured configurations files hast been published. No more configuration, just select your config file!

The latest version can be found visiting the first post and the OpenCore section there!

 

[Barry K. Nathan]

Alright, here is a basic Big Sur kext pack for the 2009-2011 iMac. It includes a patched AppleGraphicsControl.kext, Patched @nikey22 /@Nick [D]vB specific AppleBacklight.kext HD3000 kexts Airport and HD audio. If going with the micro patcher from @Barry K. Nathan You don't need to install the HD3000*/IO8211Family.kext kext/AppleHDA.kext as his --2011 command will fix this.

@Barry K. Nathan If you read this you should maybe include an "--iMac" option to your patch-kexts.sh script. You mostly have everything, us iMac users need a Patched AppleGraphicsControl to enable DisplayPort Output on boot. Also AppleMCCSControl from Mojave fixes the garbled graphics output in Safari. Thanks your script has been amazing so far!

I'll try to do these updates soon. Probably not happening for v0.0.21, but hopefully .22 or .23 or so. (I haven't been reading this particular thread so @-mention me again if there are any changes to the 2009-2011 iMac kext patches.)

 

[coops312]

Somebody wrote it somewhere: Just be sure to have a customer friendly return policy. At least I would recommend to check the installation on the sink. 50% of the hardware problems are related to this. A lot of users on the thread tend to ignore this fact - but trust me, I tried all cards on nearly all kind of heat sinks available in the 27" late 2009 to mid 2011. And not every card fits on any sink without adding some isolating strips of tape.

Thanks, I'll have a good look and try with some insulating tape.

If I'm to attempt a return on the card I should probably try to put the original firmware back onto it. I was sure I saved it with the flash tool, but looking at the SD card now I can't seem to find it. Is there some non-obvious place it might be?

 

[DJRath]

** NVIDIA Geforce GTX880M Mac Edition ROM **
** NVIDIA Geforce GTX870M Mac Edition ROM **
** NVIDIA Geforce GTX860M Mac Edition ROM **
Genuine Native Boot Screen & Brightness Control​

View attachment 942200


The following are the UGA equipped roms I put together for:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880M
N15E-GX-A2, MXM-B (3.0)
8GB VRAM

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M
N15E-GT-A2, MXM-B (3.0)
3GB VRAM

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M
N15P-GX-A1, MXM-B (3.0)
2GB VRAM

The GTX880M is the first 8GB VRAM card to work in our machines! I now have as much vram as system ram. I'm happy to report that macOS sees all the ram. It is boosting fully even at base clock speeds. When I purchased this card, the rivets were very long and kept too much of the GPU away from the heatsink surface. It was thermal throttling early as it sensed an overheat situation. When I removed the rivets, and used screws to secure it, I was able to get a much tighter seal and the card boosted properly.

Tested on a 2011 iMac using High Sierra 10.13.6. Please feel free to test on other MacOS versions, I will update this post as necessary with success/failures.

• These ROMs do not require a 3rd party bootloader like OpenCore.
• They will require a modification of the base AppleIntelPanelA/ApplePanels/F10Ta007 brightness stepping.
• The frame-buffer depth issues remains for now, and can be temporarily corrected by entering a sleep cycle.

As previous, these roms should bring back:

⦁ Genuine native brightness control
⦁ Genuine ‘gray’ early-boot screen (stage 1 & 2 progress bar)
⦁ Genuine macOS bootloader compliance



**update**
870M rom corrected to Clevo vbios base and currently testing with jay508

"insanely great!"
-Steve Jobs

View attachment 940773 View attachment 940774

Wow - great job
Bootscreen and autobrightness working in catalina
running kinda hot - but seems stable - no crashes yet!!
I will carry on testing with games...may need to reseat the heatsink
thank you very much

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Wow - great job
Bootscreen and autobrightness working in catalina
running kinda hot - but seems stable - no crashes yet!!
I will carry on testing with games...may need to reseat the heatsink
thank you very much

Before you burn your card to death PLEASE install Macs Fan Control and control the ODD fan following the heat sink temperature. The stock Apple smc does not work after changing the GPU or HDD or both.

 

[pintaf]

Hi there.

I'm pretty new here. I read in details OP. It seems the set of compatible cards is limited, even more with a 21 inch, which I own.
Personally I like the mac hardware but prefer running linux.

When some cards are marked as incompatible, is it materially incompatible, or is it with the OS? or maybe it's incompatible with the imac bios.

Are there some people arround here that have got working machines with other cards on linux ?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hi there.

I'm pretty new here. I read in details OP. It seems the set of compatible cards is limited, even more with a 21 inch, which I own.
Personally I like the mac hardware but prefer running linux.

When some cards are marked as incompatible, is it materially incompatible, or is it with the OS? or maybe it's incompatible with the imac bios.

Are there some people arround here that have got working machines with other cards on linux ?

Did you read the first post? Then you may have seen the seven problems. This is what we mean when we write about incompatibility. Linux will have the drives for a lot of more MXM cards, but the booting will be blind without any boot picker or even with a black screen until the OS comes in and has the drivers loaded. There is even a comment about not listed cards, you are free to check them out. Recently I bought a K3100M which worked in this way even with Catalina. Blind booting, not brightness control, but after boot completely compatible with the running OS. Meanwhile @nikey22 made a BIOS for this card - fully compatible with the original cards.

Here the people are seeking for cards with a customised BIOS allowing them to have video support before the OS has been loaded.

MacOS is Darwin is Unix - you must have very special needs to use a Linux on this machines...

 

[DJRath]

Before you burn your card to death PLEASE install Macs Fan Control and control the ODD fan following the heat sink temperature. The stock Apple smc does not work after changing the GPU or HDD or both.

Thanks for the advice - I have been running the 880m since December with macsfancontrol and underclocking for stability. With Nikey22's rom the card performs more stable at higher clocks - which of course means it will generate more heat... to get the best performance I will probable need to mod my cooling - I am thinking of adding an extra fan.