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

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

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...

If the usage of your iMac is mostly TDM, then it'd better be installed with the stock GPU.

 

[MrZupp]

If the usage of your iMac is mostly TDM, then it'd better be installed with the stock GPU.

I would put it back if it still worked, was reliable and wasn't so expensive to buy another one, and I had some major problems with sleep and windows right before it broke down, and the k1100m promised TDM and good performance.

 

[Schprecher]

someone know Nick working on k3000m?

 

[BadBiscuit]

someone know Nick working on k3000m?

Please do not tap on the glass.

 

[plasticpippo]

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?

can i have a link for this device?
i may need it in the future

 

[MrZupp]

can i have a link for this device?
i may need it in the future

Here u go

 

[shasen1235]

Hello, do any one get Windows 10 bootcamp working after upgrading the card?
Mine is iMac 2011 27 with 880M.
I'm able to install Win10 on an external drive through VM then boot on it no problem
But all needs to be done offline, otherwise Windows will automatically find driver for iGPU HDMI audio output then leads to BSOD igdkmd64.sys.
I've seen a post saying I should disable device with id 8086.
Problem is, 8086 is company id for intel and I don't find anything looks like iGPU HDMI audio.
Soon the driver got installed, the whole system crashes.

 

[mdgm]

That problem happens with the stock card too when you install UEFI Windows 10 rather than legacy using the DVD drive.

You need to boot into Safe mode in Windows to uninstall the Intel HD Graphics Driver in Device Manager.

If you can get to the login screen, hold down shift whilst selecting restart from the power menu.

You may also need to disable a Microsoft update to install a driver for the Intel HD Graphics.

 

[mheathcote]

​

** NVIDIA Quadro K4100M Mac Edition ROM **
Genuine Native Boot Screen & Brightness Control
​

View attachment 942198


After much testing and research, I've put together a ROM for the NVIDIA Quadro K4100M which will allow:

• Genuine native brightness control
• Genuine ‘gray’ early-boot screen
• Genuine macOS bootloader compliance

Requirements:
iMac12,2 (27-inch Mid 2011) Mac-942B59F58194171B (Tested machine)
iMac11,3 (27-inch Mid 2010) Mac-F2238BAE
BootROM: 87.0.0.0. Please use High Sierra to update your BootROM to latest version.

GPU Variant: N15E-Q3-A2
Dell K4100M vbios: 80.04.E8.00.1D
HP K4100M vbios: 80.04.E8.00.22

This ROM does not require a 3rd party bootloader like OpenCore.
This is an alternative ROM and mainly for the audience that just want a “drop-in” answer to upgrading their video card on the iMac 2011. I appreciate the ongoing ROM testing done by @Ausdauersportler, @highvoltage12v. With their efforts we can expand its utility across multiple macOS versions and peripherals.

Brightness Control Stepping Modifcation:
-Turn computer on, hold down Command(⌘)-R
-Choose Utilities > Terminal
-Enter:csrutil disable
-Reboot
-Download and open 'Kext Utility v2.6.6'

-Navigate to S/L/E (System/Library/Extensions)
-Copy "AppleBacklight.kext" to Desktop
-Edit: AppleBacklight.kext/Contents/Info.plist
-Scroll down to: IOKitPersonalities > AppleIntelPanelA > ApplePanels
-There you find several Apple LCD profiles.
-For the iMac 2011 27" machine locate:
<key>F10Ta007</key> <data> ABEABgALABQAHAAnADMAPwBOAFwAZwBzAIEAkQClAL8A 2wD/ </data>

-Change the <data> section to:
ABEAAgA3AF8AigCzAOsBJAFnAakB1AIJAlQCogL4A00DlgRpBGk=

-Drag your modded kext into Kext Utility, allow it correct permissions
-Applebacklight.kext.bak folder will be created
-Reboot

The above data pattern will allow for a wider span of steppings for the brightness control and utilizes more of the capacity of the HD3000. If you have a different machine, your panel ID can be found by going to System Preferences > Displays > Color > Open Profile > mmod

This rom does not require the use of an external EDID parser or a separate graphics core-console stack module, but I’ve left them in there for now. It uses a built in EDID_override_Protocol, a UGA_protocol and GOP_protocol. The rom is based on a TianoCore EDK2 build which houses its own generic video driver. During bootup, the efiROM is responsible for video rendering before the control is seamlessly transferred off to a different handle, the macOS video drivers. This is known as pre-boot configuration.

warning: as stated previously these cards are based on a WSON flash package and therefore are much more difficult to recover from a bad flash. Please take precautions and verify flashing.

Features (testing in progress):

• Target Display Mode: testing
• Target Disk Mode: functional via both TB ports
• External Monitor: 1 DP/Thunderbolt port functional only
• iGPU: H.264 with usual highvoltage12v HD3000/Framework Kexts mods
• dGPU temp sensor: testing
• Internet Recovery: present
• Apple Hardware Test: n/a

In the words of Steve Jobs, “this is insanely great!”


******
UPDATE
******
09 08 2020: working on BigSur!
21 07 2020: working on Mojave 10.14.6, security update 2020-004 (18G6020)
20 07 2020: working on High Sierra 10.13.6, security update 2020-004
20 07 2020: working on Catalina 10.15.4
20 07 2020: working on Catalina 10.15.6 + kext mods

Huge thanks to everyone on these forums for the monumental effort to breath life into these old iMacs.

Specific shout out to @nikey22 for the faultless ROM for the K4100M, after flashing everything just worked on High Sierra.

Question to the community - has anyone got external monitor support on NVIDIA cards on Big Sur 11.1? I've got it up and running using Catalina Loader and OC but no external monitor support - simply not recognised.

Anyone had any luck?

 

[nikey22]

Nvidia Quadro K2100M - 2Gb Elpida VRAM​

The following is a K2100M vbios for those of you that have the Elpida based GPU. The K2100M came with 3 different memory vendors: Hynix, Elpida and Samsung. By far the least common type was Elipda.

• The original K2100M_EG2.rom did not have entries specific for initializing -Elpida vram based cards and therefore defaulted to a incorrect vram size of 1024Mb (1Gb). Many posts by members have identified this issue. @kuoshen <post>
• MacOS applications addressing anything above 1Gb (1024Mb) could cause a hang in the GPU controller code or <artifacts>. If you were lucky, it just produced lower performance. Many of you returned the cards to the original Ebay sellers suggesting a fault in the hardware. We know this not to be true now.
• The memory clock currently run at 2000Mhz. While this is good from a performance perspective and likely okay for Samsung & Hynix based cards, I have noticed some individuals who have reported some blown cards which run very hot and have short life expectancies. For the -Elpida based cards, I have chosen to keep the mem boost to 1700Mhz and the base clock to 705.5Mhz. This still represents about a 200Mhz overclock. However, it should be more stable and produce less heat and less fan noise. Possibly for those of you with the -7A (7.0Gbps) varient cards, you may indeed tolerate higher frequencies as those ram chips would be top end Micron/Elpida.
• You still will need to use OpenCore for your boot screen and brightness parameters with this vbios.

Thank you to @BadBiscuit for doing the testing & screenshots:

2000Mhz mem VRAM:


1700Mhz mem VRAM addressing full range 2048Mb:



BigSur 11.0.1


insanely great!
- Steve Jobs

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Huge thanks to everyone on these forums for the monumental effort to breath life into these old iMacs.

Specific shout out to @nikey22 for the faultless ROM for the K4100M, after flashing everything just worked on High Sierra.

Question to the community - has anyone got external monitor support on NVIDIA cards on Big Sur 11.1? I've got it up and running using Catalina Loader and OC but no external monitor support - simply not recognised.

Anyone had any luck?

Works as expected on my 2010 with AMD RX480 and on two 2009 test systems with several NVIDIA cards, too.

 

[shasen1235]

That problem happens with the stock card too when you install UEFI Windows 10 rather than legacy using the DVD drive.

You need to boot into Safe mode in Windows to uninstall the Intel HD Graphics Driver in Device Manager.

If you can get to the login screen, hold down shift whilst selecting restart from the power menu.

You may also need to disable a Microsoft update to install a driver for the Intel HD Graphics.

Thank!
I'll give it a try!

 

[mheathcote]

Works as expected on my 2010 with AMD RX480 and on two 2009 test systems with several NVIDIA cards, too.

That's good to know. Maybe I just need to keep tinkering and see what I can find. Big Sur wasn't that smooth of an install, but as long as I know others have done it, then I'll invest the time to try and find out why it's not working. Probably missing a kext or something. Is the RX480 really worth the extra money? best deals I found were over £250 which was a bit much to spend on a 10 year old iMac.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

That's good to know. Maybe I just need to keep tinkering and see what I can find. Big Sur wasn't that smooth of an install, but as long as I know others have done it, then I'll invest the time to try and find out why it's not working. Probably missing a kext or something. Is the RX480 really worth the extra money? best deals I found were over £250 which was a bit much to spend on a 10 year old iMac.

RX480 is basically WX7100 4GB - fastest card you can get.
Big Sur - first post is your friend an my fork of the micro patcher. Most complex thing is to get OC running, first post, too.

 

[mheathcote]

RX480 is basically WX7100 4GB - fastest card you can get. I still have one 480 for sale (on sale??).
Big Sur - first post is your friend an my fork of the micro patcher. Most complex thing is to get OC running, first post, too.

Very tempted, but I'll try and get the K4100M working, I'm planning on getting an M1 MBP in the new year, so don't want/need to spend too much on this iMac - it's mostly used for working from home with Citrix but starting to see lack of updates of a few pieces of software, hence the push to upgrade.

I followed your micro patcher guide (great work), so I must have missed something with OC or one of the post install steps. I'll do a clean run of the install and see where I get and post back the results.

Big Sur seems to need loads of restarts to install properly with OC, initially I was blocked as it suddenly stopped recognising the second SSD plugged into the second SATA header on the mainboard but moving to 11.1 seemed to solve that one, so I probably missed something in the install process.

 

[KennyW]

That's good to know. Maybe I just need to keep tinkering and see what I can find. Big Sur wasn't that smooth of an install, but as long as I know others have done it, then I'll invest the time to try and find out why it's not working. Probably missing a kext or something. Is the RX480 really worth the extra money? best deals I found were over £250 which was a bit much to spend on a 10 year old iMac.

A week ago there were still plenty on sales in eBay but now very few. Maybe snatched up by users already. Still selling at < $200.

But in my opinion, the much cheaper WX4130 should well match your vintage iMac for the usual daily computing task. No need to get the fastest and expensive GPU as I don't think users will use it for intensive graphic or video editing nor latest graphics demanding games. If you are contemplating to do so, get a M1 MacMini instead, to safe-guard your investment.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Very tempted, but I'll try and get the K4100M working, I'm planning on getting an M1 MBP in the new year, so don't want/need to spend too much on this iMac - it's mostly used for working from home with Citrix but starting to see lack of updates of a few pieces of software, hence the push to upgrade.

I followed your micro patcher guide (great work), so I must have missed something with OC or one of the post install steps. I'll do a clean run of the install and see where I get and post back the results.

Big Sur seems to need loads of restarts to install properly with OC, initially I was blocked as it suddenly stopped recognising the second SSD plugged into the second SATA header on the mainboard but moving to 11.1 seemed to solve that one, so I probably missed something in the install process.

unpatch using patch-kext.sh -u, reboot, patch again using patch-kext.sh —ns and reboot.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

OpenCore 0.6.5pre (and Big Sur)

Right now I have finished the upload of an 0.6.5 EFI folder to the OpenCore post. All (potential) users of Big Sur should upgrade immediately to this version. Especially the owners of AMD cards should do this!

Thanks to @Pascal Baillargeau for compiling and uploading the pre release. Please check out all combinations of cards and machines and config files and report back! I will not test High Sierra any longer with new versions of OpenCore. The config files have a new line of defence included against unwanted (potential) firmware upgrades. Even the NVIDIA config files have been upgraded with this feature.

No tests have been made so far. Please do a PRAM reset after changing the OC config or version!

Notes:
If you are using High Sierra with an AMD GPU on an iMac 2011 you need to install the iMacPro1,1 version of the AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext, too. Otherwise your system will not be able to sleep and panic on wake!

If you want to dig deeper into OpenCore please read the online docs linked to the #1 post. This will not and cannot become another OpenCore thread. It is just another utility to make this GPU exchange possible.

 

[Khadam]

Hello!

I have a problem while installing Big Sur using micropatcher on my iMac Mid 2011 21,5. No, I am not talking about metal related issues because I have upgraded it's video card, with custom vBios, the thing worked with Catalina no problem. The issue I'm having is...weird. While installing macOS BigSur with patched bootable USB, after some time there is that part of installation in which iMac reboots couple of times to finish doing it's stuff. But, after iMac reboots, the screen is dead black but iMac is still running, doing it's thing. At one point reboots stop, the fans are still spining (i have SSD so no thermal sensor for me) but iMac is cool to the touch but no image whatsoever. Nothing changes after turning iMac off and on, only blackness.

B U T

If I hold option key and boot to boot menu and then choose Macintosh HD drive (the one with BigSur) eveything works fine. Screen is bright, colors are vibrant it's just perfect. But after rebooting again (without option key) - blackness again. Pulling out Bootable USB? Doesn't work. Installing kexts form modified BigSur USB? Nothing. Reseting Nvram, SNC, praying to late Steve Jobs, dancing?
N O T H I N G

What the heck is going on?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hello!

I have a problem while installing Big Sur using micropatcher on my iMac Mid 2011 21,5. No, I am not talking about metal related issues because I have upgraded it's video card, with custom vBios, the thing worked with Catalina no problem. The issue I'm having is...weird. While installing macOS BigSur with patched bootable USB, after some time there is that part of installation in which iMac reboots couple of times to finish doing it's stuff. But, after iMac reboots, the screen is dead black but iMac is still running, doing it's thing. At one point reboots stop, the fans are still spining (i have SSD so no thermal sensor for me) but iMac is cool to the touch but no image whatsoever. Nothing changes after turning iMac off and on, only blackness.

B U T

If I hold option key and boot to boot menu and then choose Macintosh HD drive (the one with BigSur) eveything works fine. Screen is bright, colors are vibrant it's just perfect. But after rebooting again (without option key) - blackness again. Pulling out Bootable USB? Doesn't work. Installing kexts form modified BigSur USB? Nothing. Reseting Nvram, SNC, praying to late Steve Jobs, dancing?
N O T H I N G

What the heck is going on?

Which patcher?
Which command line options?
Have you checked the first post about common problem and about Big Sur installation?
Can you add a signature describing precisely your hardware and software?

And please do not SHOUT AT US!

Things Not to Do

These habits can produce warnings and repeated violations can produce bans.

1. Overposting. Making the same post many times, making multiple pointless posts in the same thread, making numerous posts with no real content, or posting for the purpose of gaining a higher post count.

 

[Khadam]

Which patcher?
Which command line options?
Have you checked the first post about common problem and about Big Sur installation?
Can you add a signature describing precisely your hardware and software?

And please do not SHOUT AT US!

Oh, I apologize, I didin't mean to shout at anybody. I'm more frustrated with hardware than anything else 😅 and any visible anger in my request was suppose to be for comedic reasons.

I did search through this thread and Unofficial Big Sur update thread but I didn't have any luck with finding anyone with similar problem. The only thing remotely similar to my case is the one with unchanged graphics card vBios but I flashed it while installing Catalina. Besides, as I mentioned in my previous post, computer works fine if I boot to my Big Sur drive through Boot Menu.

I used @Barry K. Nathan micro patcher and used command lines recommended in this tutorial.

And I will figure out how to add a signature in a minute but here is my configuration:

iMac Mid 2011 21,5 inch
i7 2600s
Nvidia K2100M (flashed with custom vBios)

EDIT: Spelling

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Oh, I apologize, I didin't mean to shout at anybody. I'm more frustrated with hardware than anything else 😅 and any visible anger in my request was suppose to be for comedic reasons.

I did search through this thread and Unofficial Big Sur update thread but I didn't have any luck with finding anyone with similar problem. The only thing remotely similar to my case is the one with unchanged graphics card vBios but I flashed it while installing Catalina. Besides, as I mentioned in my previous post, computer works fine if I boot to my Big Sur drive through Boot Menu.

I used @Barry K. Nathan micro patcher and used command lines recommended in this tutorial.

And I will figure out how to add a signature in a minute but here is my configuration:

iMac Mid 2011 21,5 inch
i7 2600s
Nvidia K2100M (flashed with custom vBios)

EDIT: Spelling

Go back to the first post of the Big Sur thread and check the patcher option 6 - which is my version often Barry K. Nathan micro patcher made for modded iMacs.

You should get everything including sleep and Night Shift (option --ns) and no black screen....

Most easy way:

1. download my fork
2. use unpatch.sh to unpatch your USB and mircopatch it using my version again
3. revert your current Big Sur installation calling patch-kext.sh -u as described online (booted into Big Sur)
4. reboot
5. patch your now unpatched Big Sur calling patch-kext.sh --ns as described online (booted into Big Sur, it will also enable Night Shift, drop --ns if unwanted)
6. reboot
7. be happy

EDIT:
If you want do understand what happened to your iMac go back to the first post of this thread and read about installing unsupported macOS versions.

 

[Schprecher]

Nvidia Quadro K2100M - 2Gb Elpida VRAM​

The following is a K2100M vbios for those of you that have the Elpida based GPU. The K2100M came with 3 different memory vendors: Hynix, Elpida and Samsung. By far the most common type was Hynix.

View attachment 1699002 View attachment 1699014

• The original K2100M_EG2.rom did not have entries specific for initializing Elpida vram based cards and therefore defaulted to a incorrect vram size of 1024Mb (1Gb). Many posts by members have identified this issue. @kuoshen <post>
• MacOS applications addressing anything above 1Gb (1024Mb) could cause a hang in the GPU controller code or <artifacts>. If you were lucky, it just produced lower performance. Many of you returned the cards to the original Ebay sellers suggesting a fault in the hardware. We know this not to be true now.
• The memory clock currently run at 2000Mhz. While this is good from a performance perspective and likely okay for Samsung & Hynix based cards, I have noticed some individuals who have reported some blown cards which run very hot and have short life expectencies. For the -Elpida based cards, I have chosen to keep the mem boost to 1700Mhz and the base clock to 705.5Mhz. This still represents about a 200Mhz overclock. However, it should be more stable and produce less heat. Possibly for those of you with the -7A (7.0Gbps) varient cards, you may indeed tolerate higher frequencies as those ram chips would be top end Micron/Elpida.
• You still will need to use OpenCore for your boot screen and brightness parameters with this vbios.

Thanks you to @BadBiscuit for doing the testing & screenshots:

2000Mhz mem VRAM:
View attachment 1699027

1700Mhz mem VRAM addressing full range 2048Mb:
View attachment 1699028


BigSur 11.0.1
View attachment 1699036

insanely great!
- Steve Jobs

good WORK!

but somewhere Schprecher grieves holding k3000m and cries.

 

[Khadam]

Go back to the first post of the Big Sur thread and check the patcher option 6 - which is my version often Barry K. Nathan micro patcher made for modded iMacs.

You should get everything including sleep and Night Shift (option --ns) and no black screen....

Most easy way:

1. download my fork
2. use unpatch.sh to unpatch your USB and mircopatch it using my version again
3. revert your current Big Sur installation calling patch-kext.sh -u as described online (booted into Big Sur)
4. reboot
5. patch your now unpatched Big Sur calling patch-kext.sh --ns as described online (booted into Big Sur, it will also enable Night Shift, drop --ns if unwanted)
6. reboot
7. be happy

EDIT:
If you want do understand what happened to your iMac go back to the first post of this thread and read about installing unsupported macOS versions.

Ok, so I followed you instructions (I didn't revert my Big Sur to unpached state becuase I already reinstalled it all together) and still no luck. I looked into your post about Open Core and Catalina Loader which I didn't install. Maybe installing it will help? The problem with black screen happens as soon as my iMac restarts itself for the first time during Big Sur installation (I think I said that problem starts after installation not while installing.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Then restart from the scratch - the 2011 does not need OC to boot. Only AMD or some Kepler GPU for brightness control.

Follow the instructions step by step.