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

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The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
herrdude said:
Too much or not enough beer. 🤪
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Update, issue on driver load.. tested on Debian, Windows 10, and OS X... everything works until driver I loaded, Linux gives something more than white screen
 

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Just to confirm if I will get HEVC with e.g. a GTX 880M? Thanks.

[EDIT: Sorry but no Kepler card supports HEVC, but I can't find any delete button.]
 
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Help
My nvidia 780m working on a half of her power. Firmware from nikey
What can I do? Games freezing
 

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Yesterday I got me (another) iMac 27 2011 with failed GPU for cheap, just for the parts but on the other hand it's still in good condition so at first I will try to get it running again.

A mate gave me a GTX570m. Have been searching for some hours but couldn't find much info about these cards in an iMac. If I inderstood well the Fermi arch is not supported at all? Or have there been some mods by the year 2020 to get it running? If it ain't going to work I can save some time by skipping the install of this card and start cleaning the machine & look out for a supported card soon.

edit: just found that it might work on Sierra (it does on hackintoshes so it might work on the imac too?)
 
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I understand there is no-request policy...but is it possible to modify the 870m 3GB rom for a Clevo 870m 6gb card? Would it work? I can even try my hands if i got some pointers. Thanks


nikey22 said:
** 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
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Updated post #8452 to include a ROM for:

GTX 870M 6Gb
Please note: this is an experimental ROM. It may not boost appropriately, but this will have to be tested by members that have it and are willing to do it. The memory map for the 6Gb looks a little unusual, as does the ram latencies, but the Nvidia-class roms init cards nicely all the time, so that is what I used. I kept it at 100W target, but we've had difficulties with these in the past not reaching max due to an unoptimized power topology. Good Luck!
 
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You da man! I will be the guinea pig since I just bought this :) https://www.ebay.com/itm/184432061900
Whats the difference between a "Clevo" based and "UGA" based rom?

If this doesn't work for whatever reason, can I try the Clevo 3gb on this? hoping that it would just limit memory to 3gb but still works? Thx.
 
Guys Im super greatful for this site as the level of info has had me upgrade my 2010 iMac 27 Core i3 to Core i7-870 24Gb ram 500Gb SSD Broadcom 4.2 update. I have re-applied thermal paste to factory GPU and acquired a Nvidia K1100m but stupid me read briefly in the data table it was native boot screen and brightness control and no mods I had plug and play in my head for some reason and didnt read about the EP Rom flashing. Im totally uneducated in this area is this something you thnk I can tackle as I fit the card in the chassis fine. Its the programming I havent done before. Any thoughts or options?
 
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GCtravellerguy said:
Guys Im super greatful for this site as the level of info has had me upgrade my 2010 iMac 27 Core i3 to Core i7-870 24Gb ram 500Gb SSD Broadcom 4.2 update. I have re-applied thermal paste to factory GPU and acquired a Nvidia K1100m but stupid me read briefly in the data table it was native boot screen and brightness control and no mods I had plug and play in my head for some reason and didnt read about the EP Rom flashing. Im totally uneducated in this area is this something you thnk I can tackle as I fit the card in the chassis fine. Its the programming I havent done before. Any thoughts or options?
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Why would you reapply thermal paste to the GPU when you are going to replace it. Unless you mean CPU?

All of your questions can be answered in detail from the first post.

Good luck!
 
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herrdude said:
Why would you reapply thermal paste to the GPU when you are going to replace it. Unless you mean CPU?

All of your questions can be answered in detail from the first post.

Good luck!
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Just cleaning it all while apart always good to reapply
 
NOTNlCE said:
Which VBIOS is on your WX7100? In my experience, AMD cards will only ever have a black screen without OpenCore when using the GOP VBIOS, and if using the EP2 VBIOS, a hardware level mod is required for any screen backlight. I strongly recommend the OpenCore implementation over soldering. Before booting OpenCore with my WX4130, I also had nothing but a black screen, but once OC booted, all fine.
Click to expand...

What are you using for your open core settings? I have a 27" mid 2010 iMac - seems to be the same as you have, but have had no luck getting OpenCore running. I'm guessing it's a matter of setting the right plist file?

edit: WX4310 graphics card
 
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