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

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

An observation of the WX7100 4G vBIOS for RX480.

In booting Catalina, the internal LCD panel is switched on at either the OC Bootpicker screen (with OC as the Startup Disk) or much later when the graphic driver is loaded by the OS (with the Catalina Disk chosen as Startup Disk without OC). Patched AGC is applied to the Catalina volume to avoid black screen on loading the OS login page.

However, the behaviour is a little different for High Sierra. When booting into High Sierra via OC chosen as Startup Disk, the internal display works flawlessly from the OC Bootpicker. But when booting directly into High Sierra as Startup Disk from System Preferences without OC, a black screen is displayed. The internal LCD panel will light up only when the mini-Displayport is connected to an external display which does NOT necessarily have to be switched on. Even just a mini-DisplayPort to DVI/HDMI dongle won't work. The patched AGC specifically for High Sierra has been applied but it is aiming to address the other black screen problem as far as I know.

So, is that a known issue for the WX7100, or just related to the RX480 ?

I got the same issue with WX4150 4GB. I haven't applied the patch yet.
As I prefer the hardware solution: using 2 monitors. It works on both miniDisplayPort to D-Sub adapter => D-SUB cable => monitor; or miniDisplayport to HDMI cable => TV.

Another cheap option you may try, is the dummy load instead of a real monitor: mDP => D-Sub adatper => VGA dummy plug.

FUERAN VGA Dummy Plug,Headless Ghost, Display Emulator （Fit Headless-1920x1080@60hz

Setting the screen resolution as a higher value while controlling the computer under the remote condition instead of setting the minimum resolution under the blank screen condition. Supported resolutions: 1920x1080@60hz 1680x1050@60hz 1600x1200@60hz 1600x900@60hz 1440 x 900@60hz 1366 x768@60hz 12...

www.amazon.com

 

[KennyW]

I got the same issue with WX4150 4GB. I haven't applied the patch yet.
As I prefer the hardware solution: using 2 monitors. It works on both miniDisplayPort to D-Sub adapter => D-SUB cable => monitor; or miniDisplayport to HDMI cable => TV.

Another cheap option you may try, is the dummy load instead of a real monitor: mDP => D-Sub adatper => VGA dummy plug.

FUERAN VGA Dummy Plug,Headless Ghost, Display Emulator （Fit Headless-1920x1080@60hz

Setting the screen resolution as a higher value while controlling the computer under the remote condition instead of setting the minimum resolution under the blank screen condition. Supported resolutions: 1920x1080@60hz 1680x1050@60hz 1600x1200@60hz 1600x900@60hz 1440 x 900@60hz 1366 x768@60hz 12...

www.amazon.com

Thanks for your info.

I don't have the desk space nor a big external monitor for dual monitor setting.

I will take your hardware route by plugging in a dummy mini-DisplayPort adapter.

EVanlak Mini DisplayPort Headless Ghost Display Emulator for PC 4K DP Dummy Plug (fit Headless 1080-3840x2160@17hz)

EVanlak Mini DisplayPort Headless Ghost Display Emulator for PC 4K DP Dummy Plug (fit Headless 1080-3840x2160@17hz)

www.amazon.com

You still stay in High Sierra for your iMac 2010 ? I have now migrated to Catalina for my daily work. It is stable enough after sorting out most of the kinks.

 

[luk2018egpu]

Sorry, I have an out of place comment,Please if I need a correct place please do so,But, I do have a 2011 ,to soon "open",Anyways , I have Been using m-pcie egpu with 2009 iMac since 10.8 with old and new ati and Nvidia..ANYWAYS...only AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext ,,was the problem for kernel panics ..I just removed using kext wizard and permission...with every osx update... Peace

 

[Fran Frin]

Catalina Loader With OpenCore 0.6.3 work in Big Sur??, I Have a k610m+ in a 2011 iMAC 21,5"

 

[Leon der Student]

So I did everything possible (with my IMac 2011 27" Intel i7 2600 and the GTX 780m with nick's vbios) to get native brightness control. With highvoltages's guide to install the backlightfixup.kext but its simply not woking for me. I did disable gatekeeper with hackintool and in kextutility im getting 0 errors. does anyone have a clue what may be the problem? Btw im neither able to boot into recovery (it results in an endless white screen) nor to boot after a PRAM reset (also with an endless loading screen).
I really read the whole tread and tried (probably) everything. Also my bootscreen doesnt show up but i gues thats the case with a ssd, because of its short boottime. But if you would help me with this one out, too i would appreciate it.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

So I did everything possible (with my IMac 2011 27" Intel i7 2600 and the GTX 780m with nick's vbios) to get native brightness control. With highvoltages's guide to install the backlightfixup.kext but its simply not woking for me. I did disable gatekeeper with hackintool and in kextutility im getting 0 errors. does anyone have a clue what may be the problem? Btw im neither able to boot into recovery (it results in an endless white screen) nor to boot after a PRAM reset (also with an endless loading screen).
I really read the whole tread and tried (probably) everything. Also my bootscreen doesnt show up but i gues thats the case with a ssd, because of its short boottime. But if you would help me with this one out, too i would appreciate it.

Just by chance:

Did you read the first post and did you flash the correct BIOS published by @nikey22? This give you native brightness. Boot screen comes up (after flash) and by pressing alt/option on boot.

The BIOS @Nick [D]vB published never gave a native brightness, only boot screen on alt/option.

If this does not work you probably have another hardware problem I do not want to discuss.

 

[motorm3]

how to install this back light fix to big sur in Catalina Hackintool did work in Big Sur I get this message

spctl --master-disable
mount -uw /
mount_apfs: volume could not be mounted: Permission denied
mount: / failed with 66
killall Finder

 

[Ausdauersportler]

how to install this back light fix to big sur in Catalina Hackintool did work in Big Sur I get this message

spctl --master-disable
mount -uw /
mount_apfs: volume could not be mounted: Permission denied
mount: / failed with 66
killall Finder

Please, please read this...

The time of Hackintool is gone and will never come back. If you use this download you will get a fully configured and installed iMac with Big Sur....

It is a fork of the @Barry K. Nathan original patchers.

P.S.:
And double posting is against the forum rules, you drive a lot of people on different threads to look into your private problem.
And it is off topic - it is Big Sur!

 

[motorm3]

Please, please read this...

The time of Hackintool is gone and will never come back. If you use this download you will get a fully configured and installed iMac with Big Sur....

It is a fork of the @Barry K. Nathan original patchers.

P.S.:
And double posting is against the forum rules, you drive a lot of people on different threads to look into your private problem.
And it is off topic - it is Big Sur!

I'm running Big Sur so there is no other way to get full brightness unlocking the drive to write to it just to make a change in apple backlight kext and adjusting the info plist

 

[motorm3]

Please, please read this...

The time of Hackintool is gone and will never come back. If you use this download you will get a fully configured and installed iMac with Big Sur....

It is a fork of the @Barry K. Nathan original patchers.

P.S.:
And double posting is against the forum rules, you drive a lot of people on different threads to look into your private problem.
And it is off topic - it is Big Sur!

I installed Big Sur from here. https://github.com/BenSova/Patched-Su...

 

[Ausdauersportler]

I installed Big Sur from here. https://github.com/BenSova/Patched-Su...

The BenSova Patched-Sur is just a GUI front end and it uses the @Barry K. Nathan micro patcher to do the real patching.

I posted for you only now two times the page where you can read how to change the contents of an Big Sur root file system and how to add kernel extensions. Please follow this link, please.

Now you come the third time back and ask the very same question. Do you know how links work?

There is a second way:

You can drop your complete installation and reinstall using this installer, but you need to follow a link again and you need to read instructions on a website. Which did not work well during the last 24h here.

 

[motorm3]

The BenSova Patched-Sur is just a GUI front end and it uses the @Barry K. Nathan micro patcher to do the real patching.

I posted for you only now two times the page where you can read how to change the contents of an Big Sur root file system and how to add kernel extensions. Please follow this link, please.

Now you come the third time back and ask the very same question. Do you know how links work?

There is a second way:

You can drop your complete installation and reinstall using this installer, but you need to follow a link again and you need to read instructions on a website. Which did not work well during the last 24h here.

so that will be only clean install I will loose all my files

 

[herrdude]

so that will be only clean install I will loose all my files

You really are in the wrong thread. Please take these questions to the Big Sur thread. This discussion is about upgrading the GPU in 2009-2011 iMacs.

 

[Dent_]

I had a weird situation today. I have a 2011 iMac with K1100M, Catalina 10.14.7 was working just fine, until a reboot today and there was just a blank screen. I could Remote into it just fine, but no video on the screen. Video card showed up properly in the System Profiler, but the Display showed up as a 21.5" display.

I had something similar when I first installed Catalina, so I thought there must have been an update that replaced some kexts. I copied over the patched versions and rebooted, but the issue persisted.

Next I decided I would try to boot OpenCore (have the SD Card, just never used it before). Anyway, I booted the SD Card and found I could not boot my System Drive from the second boot menu (but the boot menu did show up! - not the first one...). Instead, I booted Windows, which worked flawlessly (although there were many updates queued).

After rebooting again (removing the SD Card because I have a crappy Logitech keyboard that does not work pre-boot), My High Sierra backup partition booted - flawlessly again. After setting the startup disk to my Catalina drive, it booted without any issue.

Maybe a PRAM reset would have fixed things, but who knows - not really sure what was happening.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Big Sur on (metal enabled) iMacs Late 2009 to 2011​

That was not an easy decision. During the last weeks I waited for the author of the micro patcher to include my changes into his own development. But yesterday I decided to create a fork (copy) of his public development an put my changes directly and completely into it.

The patcher has a GPU detection and will also (experimental) white list the board-ID of your iMac if a new WiFi card has been detected (with is not necessary with AMD card using!!)

You can download the complete iMac aware micro patcher (until further notice). The docs remain the same.

Spoiler: Details about OpenCore and this patcher

The patcher is aware of the different GPUs possibly installed into your (different) iMacs which are:

1. Nvidia ++ GPU (not needing OpenCore in iMac 12,x 2011 models)
2. Nvidia K610M, K1100M, K2100M (needing OpenCore for Brightness Contro, any iMac)
3. AMD GPU (needing OpenCore for 4K HEVC, 4K H.264, any iMac)

and

4. Any GPU in a 11.x iMac Late 2009 and Mid 2010 (needing OpenCore to boot Big Sur at all).

But:

The patcher assumes that an iMac owner is using OpenCore in exactly this way and depends on the kernel extension injection to guarantee the functionality described in the list above.

Download OpenCore from as described in the first post.

Note:

If @Barry K. Nathan decides to continue his development I will step back and hope to get everything we need included into the main fork, soon.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Is the K3000M (1st Gen. Kepler) not as fast as the K2100M (2nd Gen. Kepler) ?
So it need surely more than 55W...

It does not based on my measurements (approx. 50W on average during Valley). From that I assume that even a 2009/2010 MXM-B heat sink will be suitable using this card. But I am not a 24h gamer - who knows what happens then....

 

[KennyW]

Big Sur on (metal enabled) iMacs Late 2009 to 2011​

That was not an easy decision. During the last weeks I waited for the author of the micro patcher to include my changes into his own development. But yesterday I decided to create a fork (copy) of his public development an put my changes directly and completely into it.

The patcher has a GPU detection and will also (experimental) white list the board-ID of your iMac if a new WiFi card has been detected (with is not necessary with AMD card using!!)

You can download the complete iMac aware micro patcher (until further notice). The docs remain the same.

Spoiler: Details about OpenCore and this patcher

The patcher is aware of the different GPUs possibly installed into your (different) iMacs which are:

1. Nvidia ++ GPU (not needing OpenCore in iMac 12,x 2011 models)
2. Nvidia K610M, K1100M, K2100M (needing OpenCore for Brightness Contro, any iMac)
3. AMD GPU (needing OpenCore for 4K HEVC, 4K H.264, any iMac)

and

4. Any GPU in a 11.x iMac Late 2009 and Mid 2010 (needing OpenCore to boot Big Sur at all).

But:

The patcher assumes that an iMac owner is using OpenCore in exactly this way and depends on the kernel extension injection to guarantee the functionality described in the list above.

Download OpenCore from as described in the first post.

Note:

If @Barry K. Nathan decides to continue his development I will step back and hope to get everything we need included in the main fork, soon.

Thanks for your efforts in looking after specifically the iMacs 2009-2011 👍
I can feel your passion in moving us to Big Sur, not wasting the efforts in upgrading to Metal GPUs.

 

[m0bil]

Hi all, a quick question about BIOS rom selection for a WX4170:

I know there are two ways, GOP or EG2 bios, I've decided to try the GOP way first. On the first page I see the BIOS link for the WX4170 is the one posted by @Nick [D]vB on march, but I also found another GOP bios post by @internetzel on july for the WX4150 (Dell RX 560 4GB.ROM).

As far as I've read, WX4170 uses same bios as WX4150, so which one should I use ?, are there any known preferences or differences ?

thanks in advance!

 

[KennyW]

Two observations with the WX4130.

The benchmark readings with OC is consistently ~8-10% higher than without OC.
I can only suppose that would be the effect of the PolarisBoot.kext loaded by OC.

I also do some testing in my game of Diablo III in Catalina. While there is no graphic glitches and all video options can be set to high now from its auto-setup, I notice that sometimes graphic update can be very slow.
Say in bringing up the inventory windows of the character, you can see that all the icons are gone and won't update for 10 to 15 sec on the right side of the screen:



This happens with or without OC.

One more strange thing not related to the GPU but OC. My 3 internal SSDs are named differently as shown on rightmost:


Their names are correctly shown in Startup Disk:


However, when boots in OC, the Bootpicker gives me different names and duplicate names !
During installation of Catalina to the Apple_Cat SSD, it was originally named Samsung_Cat.
Later I renamed the SSD but it seems not picked up by OC.
Crucial_Cat is a Carbon Copy clone of my Catalina install on an external SSD named Samsung_Cat. After the cloning I changed it from Samsung_Cat to Crucial_Cat. The same happens and OC doesn't recognise its new name.
So, I am confused with two Samsung_Cat in the Bootpicker.

 

[motorm3]

can get some help

1. Run /Volumes/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur\ Beta/remount-sysvol.sh. Due to a bug which will be fixed in a future patcher release, it must be run like that, with the full pathname.what is the path name I don't understand this.

 

[KennyW]

Deleted wrong post ...

 

[motorm3]

For Nvidia Users booting with OpenCore(k1100M/k2100M/ETC)/ native booting K3100M/K4100M & 780M

I have Updated the ApplebacklightFixup.kext to include the proper Backlight stepping-levels for the 2009-2011 27" iMac. You can replace the one in your OpenCore loader with this or install it Natively to System/Library/Extensions. This actually makes my Previous guide irrelevant unless you really like the Native Kext feeling.

Lilu.kext will be needed for the kext to be listed as 'loaded' but it's still working for me without it.
Usual Verbiage below....
If installing to System/Library/Extensions. Catalina users need to Unlock their System Partition using Hackintool first. Then install with Kext Utility. Finally Open Terminal and enter "sudo reboot" as sometimes Catalina will hang on the Desktop.

so this works with Big Sur how do I install it I have quadro k3100m Big Sur from Micropatcher

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Two observations with the WX4130.

The benchmark readings with OC is consistently ~8-10% higher than without OC.
I can only suppose that would be the effect of the PolarisBoot.kext loaded by OC.

I also do some testing in my game of Diablo III in Catalina. While there is no graphic glitches and all video options can be set to high now from its auto-setup, I notice that sometimes graphic update can be very slow.
Say in bringing up the inventory windows of the character, you can see that all the icons are gone and won't update for 10 to 15 sec on the right side of the screen:
View attachment 1684249

View attachment 1684250
This happens with or without OC.

One more strange thing not related to the GPU but OC. My 3 internal SSDs are named differently as shown on rightmost:
View attachment 1684255

Their names are correctly shown in Startup Disk:
View attachment 1684260

However, when boots in OC, the Bootpicker gives me different names and duplicate names !
During installation of Catalina to the Apple_Cat SSD, it was originally named Samsung_Cat.
Later I renamed the SSD but it seems not picked up by OC.
Crucial_Cat is a Carbon Copy clone of my Catalina install on an external SSD named Samsung_Cat. After the cloning I changed it from Samsung_Cat to Crucial_Cat. The same happens and OC doesn't recognise its new name.
So, I am confused with two Samsung_Cat in the Bootpicker.
View attachment 1684289

Known issue with refind used with OC to show the picker, it does not update the name changes made during your configuration and sticks for all times with the first given name. Somewhere in the net somebody may have already found a solution or fix...

Spoiler: Somewhere....

You can remove redundant, non-functional, or otherwise undesired entries in several ways, as described in the documentation:

http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/configfile.html#hiding

Renaming entries is trickier. You have some control in the form of the name of the boot volume, which you can edit in most OSes. (rEFInd uses a filesystem label or, if that's not present, the GPT partition label. If neither is found, rEFInd uses a description, like "200 GiB ext4 volume.")

If you don't want to change the volume label or if you want to do more than this, your only option is to create a manual boot stanza:

http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/configfile.html#stanzas

This is both a pain and tricky; a small error in the specification (like a typo) can cause the entry to fail to work, typically with a "file not found" error. IMHO, it's not worth the bother just to change the name shown in the menu; but of course you might disagree.

When setting up a new system I choose my volume (APFS container) names mostly like "Mojave", "Catalina", "Big Sur" etc...

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hi all, a quick question about BIOS rom selection for a WX4170:

I know there are two ways, GOP or EG2 bios, I've decided to try the GOP way first. On the first page I see the BIOS link for the WX4170 is the one posted by @Nick [D]vB on march, but I also found another GOP bios post by @internetzel on july for the WX4150 (Dell RX 560 4GB.ROM).

As far as I've read, WX4170 uses same bios as WX4150, so which one should I use ?, are there any known preferences or differences ?

thanks in advance!

An educated guess would be there might exist a good reason to post new versions. Go with the latest and try EG only after fully understanding the implications...

 

[herrdude]

can get some help

1. Run /Volumes/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur\ Beta/remount-sysvol.sh. Due to a bug which will be fixed in a future patcher release, it must be run like that, with the full pathname.what is the path name I don't understand this.

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