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

[Ausdauersportler]

Hi,
First off, I need to say thanks for giving me the impetus to complete the upgrade. I did my CPU whilst I had the mac opened up, and all good.
Now, my GTX880M is registered by my 2010 iMac, but I have the black screen at boot, and no audio or backlight. I did pre-install windows and the nvidia drivers in Win10, but this hasnt fixed the issue in HighSierra. I can boot either OS.
My issue is that I cannot install this package as I cant get into recovery mode to disable SIP due to black screen. Do I need to set up target mode and use another mac for the display to achieve this, or am I missing something obvious?

Thanks in advance for any help.
Mark.

If you can get an external monitor to connect to the miniDP port it will be the most easy way. Otherwise you can log in remotely, use TDM, get the SSD out an connect to another Mac and a bunch of other methods. This is basic system administration.

You should have installed the package in advance (unless you have already a dead GPU) while having a running system on High Sierra. You all know what will come with Nvidia cards installed to these systems.

EDIT:
You may use OpenCore in your EFI partition using the standard NVIDIA config to avoid the black screen. The nice thing is it works even on the 2009 and even after a PRAM reset the system will boot automatically into OpenCore and then into your macOS and switch on the LCD, again!

 

[jorges4lu2]

Hi,

Suddenly the FaceTime camera stopped working. Under system report it says there is no installed camera. A few days ago I used it in some meet sessions.

Do you know what could happened?

Thanks in advance

 

[eskimofisherman]

If you can get an external monitor to connect to the miniDP port it will be the most easy way. Otherwise you can log in remotely, use TDM, get the SSD out an connect to another Mac and a bunch of other methods. This is basic system administration.

You should have installed the package in advance (unless you have already a dead GPU) while having a running system on High Sierra. You all know what will come with Nvidia cards installed to these systems.

Thanks for confirming using TDM. Im trying not to have to open it up again to take out the SSD, but thats my last resort. My GPU had almost died, the screen was definitely unusable.

 

[Cordonblu]

i have disassembled the imac numerous time and run diagnostics. i found out my hdd fan was blocked by dust and cleaned it. i thought that was it, but it was not i am still stuck on p5 and sometimes it powers down to p8
using nvidia inspector i managed to overclock the p5 state and run it at p0 clocks with immediate result in benchmark. although this does not work in OSX of course as all settings are reset with a reboot.
i have even re-installed my original i5 2500s to make sure the psu has enough power for the card, but still no cigar

so i basically followed all your troubleshooting except with vbios tweaking with the kepler tweaker as i have never done anything like that before and tutorials are a bit too technical for me.

although i have a few questions:
did you flash the vbios from windows 10? i only did it through the linux boot disk posted in this thread.
also do you remember which switches/options did you use with nvflash? i only used the -6 switch with nvlash as it is not really clear to me what the other ones do (for example -f -4 -5)
did you uninstall the drivers or disabled the card in device manager before using nvflash?

@nikey22 do you have any suggestions about reflashing?

For flashing I used always @xanderon usb method every time with the recommended options, never flash from windows, always use a linux or dos based method to flash. I was using windows 7 only to check the values with nvidia inspector and read the vbios values, all the final/relevant tests/benchmarks where done in macOS.
Also recheck if ALL the sensor and fan cables are fully seated and correctly plugged as some can seem visually as correctly plugged in but the may not be fully plugged in.
By the error that you shared I will also suggest you to reflash the card following the contents inside the readme file found in the linux usb that @xanderon wrote.
Good luck.

 

[plasticpippo]

For flashing I used always @xanderon usb method every time with the recommended options, never flash from windows, always use a linux or dos based method to flash. I was using windows 7 only to check the values with nvidia inspector and read the vbios values, all the final/relevant tests/benchmarks where done in macOS.
Also recheck if ALL the sensor and fan cables are fully seated and correctly plugged as some can seem visually as correctly plugged in but the may not be fully plugged in.
By the error that you shared I will also suggest you to reflash the card following the contents inside the readme file found in the linux usb that @xanderon wrote.
Good luck.

Thanks. i sorted some of the problems out. i Nikey messaged me and i installed the new ROM for the k5100m he updated recently.
things are much better now

 

[Lady Titan]

Ausdauersportler​

nikey22​

hi! please tell me, is it possible to increase the purity of the gtx880m video card??? and how to do it? I figured out how to cool the card, according to tests, the temperature does not rise above 63 degrees!!! i want to increase the power so that the gtx880m works at maximum! I want to make sure of its capabilities and then publish my cooling system )

it was 80 degrees it became 63

 

[StephN999]

Bonjour,

Kepler BIOS Tweaker with your rom, on the other hand I hope you have something to reflash if your system doesn't start anymore.

Of what I could see with my Quadro K2100m, the interest is very limited, except to make benchmark...

 

[plasticpippo]

Ausdauersportler​

nikey22​

hi! please tell me, is it possible to increase the purity of the gtx880m video card??? and how to do it? I figured out how to cool the card, according to tests, the temperature does not rise above 63 degrees!!! i want to increase the power so that the gtx880m works at maximum! I want to make sure of its capabilities and then publish my cooling system )

it was 80 degrees it became 63

i would be very curious to see your alternative cooling solution!
Please keep me posted

 

[LyleRR]

there is the patched OSX graphic driver coming with Metal support for the HD6x in circulation for testing.

Would this testing (if successful) mean that, i might be able to upgrade a stock 2011 imac to Catalina? Thanks in advance for your response. i am new here but have searched to find details on the HD6x testing before asking this. .. i would like to learn more about this test and possibly how to help with the testing, can you direct me to where i can find more information on this?

 

[Lady Titan]

friends!

who can write a command for the terminal,
1) what would be before the computer fell asleep, the command turned off the internet for 5-10 seconds before the mac automatically goes to sleep?

2) and also when manually starting sleep???
are there people who can do this?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Would this testing (if successful) mean that, i might be able to upgrade a stock 2011 imac to Catalina? Thanks in advance for your response. i am new here but have searched to find details on the HD6x testing before asking this. .. i would like to learn more about this test and possibly how to help with the testing, can you direct me to where i can find more information on this?

No one can tell. Out of nowhere a guy came in some weeks ago and promised to be able to program such a driver (kernel extension). It should have been released by yesterday but nothing appeared so far. Do you remember how this site is named?

Sometimes we should rename it to vaporware.com or microsoft.com - the latter promised more than three decades to come up with a superior desktop OS.

We should stop this now and discuss based on facts. This is not facebook...

I would be happy to see me corrected, but even then it will be a Catalina topic and not one belonging to this thread. We replace dead HD Radeon 6xxx cards...

 

[Pascal Baillargeau]

No one can tell. Out of nowhere a guy came in some weeks ago and promised to be able to program such a driver (kernel extension). It should have been released by yesterday but nothing appeared so far. Do you remember how this site is named?

Sometimes we should rename it to vaporware.com or microsoft.com - the latter promised more than three decades to come up with a superior desktop OS.

We should stop this now and discuss based on facts. This is not facebook...

I would be happy to see me corrected, but even then it will be a Catalina topic and not one belonging to this thread. We replace dead HD Radeon 6xxx cards...

Maybe for Christmas?

 

[KennyW]

Maybe for Christmas?

Or even a bigger present (new vBIOS) that we all long for from our Santa (developers)

 

[highvoltage12v]

Hi,

Suddenly the FaceTime camera stopped working. Under system report it says there is no installed camera. A few days ago I used it in some meet sessions.

Do you know what could happened?

Thanks in advance

Been a while since I noticed this issue, but it's likely the Legacy USB Kext from the Dosdude1 patcher needing to be reinstalled.

 

[MrZupp]

Hi guys, I'm having a lot of trouble with Target Display Mode on my iMac, just fixed it ( my iMac, not TDM )by replacing a sensor inside it and now fans don't spin at max speed when booting up. I wanted to use it as a monitor for my Ryzen PC, and I have also bought a GC-Titan-Ridge card for my pc to output thunderbolt video signal to my PC. I have made a separate thread here.

 

[KennyW]

Hi guys, I'm having a lot of trouble with Target Display Mode on my iMac, just fixed it ( my iMac, not TDM )by replacing a sensor inside it and now fans don't spin at max speed when booting up. I wanted to use it as a monitor for my Ryzen PC, and I have also bought a GC-Titan-Ridge card for my pc to output thunderbolt video signal to my PC. I have made a separate thread here.

Is this the answer you are looking for ?

2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade

If you use Open Core and Fake "PWM-Info" like I talked about so many times now, you can enable Target Display Mode over thunderbolt. It's not specific to the card, it's enabled if the display is set to "internal".

forums.macrumors.com

I jut search in this thread.

 

[MrZupp]

Is this the answer you are looking for ?

2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade

If you use Open Core and Fake "PWM-Info" like I talked about so many times now, you can enable Target Display Mode over thunderbolt. It's not specific to the card, it's enabled if the display is set to "internal".

forums.macrumors.com

I jut search in this thread.

I don't think that I do, I searched up and saw that but I couldn't find it in OpenCore, also I tought since that card is not saying that it's compatible with any iMac on the video cards list that it was just a tought of @highvoltage12v .

 

[pinetree1231]

Hello:

Last week, I installed K4100m on my imac 12,2 (2011 mid 27'') on High Sierra 10.13.6 ( Bootrom 87.0.0.0). I absolutely used nikey22 vBIOS(July 20,2020). BrightControl also worked well with default High Sierra Setting. I didn't edit AppleBacklight.kext file because Brightcontrol worked well. But, I encountered one issue and wake from deep sleep wasn't working at all.

After entering deep sleep, I should power off/on for iMAC re-booting.
Could I get any help from this Forums? Actually, I think I read most posts for this issue but I failed to find my solution.

After that, I also tried to update iMac-Nvidia-patch.pkg but it didn't work.

Thank you for your help in advance.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hello:

Last week, I installed K4100m on my imac 12,2 (2011 mid 27'') on High Sierra 10.13.6 ( Bootrom 87.0.0.0). I absolutely used nikey22 vBIOS(July 20,2020). BrightControl also worked well with default High Sierra Setting. I didn't edit AppleBacklight.kext file because Brightcontrol worked well. But, I encountered one issue and wake from deep sleep wasn't working at all.

After entering deep sleep, I should power off/on for iMAC re-booting.
Could I get any help from this Forums? Actually, I think I read most posts for this issue but I failed to find my solution.

After that, I also tried to update iMac-Nvidia-patch.pkg but it didn't work.

Thank you for your help in advance.

Within High Sierra there are no known issues (and therefore solutions) for sleep/wake. If you experience this I assume you have a faulty card or faulty logic board. Have seen such issues rarely, changing the card solved this usually.

For sleep/wake on unsupported macOS versions with 2011 systems take a look at the first post.

 

[pinetree1231]

Within High Sierra there are no known issues (and therefore solutions) for sleep/wake. If you experience this I assume you have a faulty card or faulty logic board. Have seen such issues rarely, changing the card solved this usually.

For sleep/wake on unsupported macOS versions with 2011 systems take a look at the first post.

I really appreciate for your prompt help. Actually, My issue is 100% and I didn't see this on my earlier card(HD6970m).

 

[Ausdauersportler]

I really appreciate for your prompt help. Actually, My issue is 100% and I didn't see this on my earlier card(HD6970m).

We have no solution for your problem! Normally a good card does not cause sleep/wake issues.
There is no way to patch bad hardware.

Since your old card works fine the root cause will be most likely your new card or less likely an yet unknown BIOS issue.

There is no way to debug this remotely. I added recently a comment to the first post about used cards...

 

[MrZupp]

Hi guys, I'm having a lot of trouble with Target Display Mode on my iMac, just fixed it ( my iMac, not TDM )by replacing a sensor inside it and now fans don't spin at max speed when booting up. I wanted to use it as a monitor for my Ryzen PC, and I have also bought a GC-Titan-Ridge card for my pc to output thunderbolt video signal to my PC. I have made a separate thread here.

Can someone help me please? I'm really desperate since I paid well over what I should have paid just for some cables and a PCI-E card just for Target Display Mode to work on this iMac...

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Can someone help me please? I'm really desperate since I paid well over what I should have paid just for some cables and a PCI-E card just for Target Display Mode to work on this iMac...

This is off-topic, but 70$ is the cost of the LCD driver board to completely convert the 27" iMac to a stand-a-lone monitor. Why do you need to spend more?

 

[pinetree1231]

We have no solution for your problem! Normally a good card does not cause sleep/wake issues.
There is no way to patch bad hardware.

Since your old card works fine the root cause will be most likely your new card or less likely an yet unknown BIOS issue.

There is no way to debug this remotely. I added recently a comment to the first post about used cards...

Hello:
Thank you for your help. I tried to do further debugging and tried to change pmset values on terminal. My default value of 'gpuswitch' was 2(Auto Switch). I changed this value to 0(integrated) and it worked well on my card. I'm not sure that this change will affect my video performance or not.

Thanks for your help.

 

[MrZupp]

This is off-topic, but 70$ is the cost of the LCD driver board to completely convert the 27" iMac to a stand-a-lone monitor. Why do you need to spend more?

I have spent around 110$ for the Titan Ridge, 95$ for the thunderbolt adapters and around 80$ for the k1100m just because I'm changing PCs frequently and I needed something stationary that can also be a computer that's capable of basic photo editing, scripting, etc. So far the iMac hasn't let me down regarding performance, but my money was for the most part on TDM, which doesn't work...