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iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
- Thread starter MichaelDT
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I attached to my former message two different original Apple ATI 6970 2GB BIOS versions..try these too.
Is there a slight difference in the board hardware near the top edge to the right ?Hello everybody.
I have this problem:
I bought gpu hd6970m2g for HP workstation (checked personally). Put in my iMac - 2011 27 i7 hd6970m2g(life 50/50). With a new gpu iMac have black screen and all! On the board 2 diodes light out of 4.
Took the CH341A, downloaded bios from old 6970m(my iMac) , uploaded to new 6070m(HP), loaded successfully, but iMac have black screen and started to turn off after 2-3 min.
Download bios 6970m2g from the website :
uploaded to new 6070m(HP), loaded successfully, but iMac have black screen.
Put in my iMac old 6970m - everything is working...
??? What am I doing wrong ???
Gpu new and old 1:1 (vram samsung, chip bios Pm25LD010, number carts 109-c29647-00 )
1 photo - old gpu & new gpu
2 photo checked new gpu 6970m2g on HP
Any difference at the back ?
Hello,
I would like to select Catalina Loader :
—>System Preferences —> Startup Disk but I get an error message. I also tried with the administrator "root" but it does not work too.
I am using Catalina Loader with OC 0.6.3 and the config_NVIDIA.plist file renamed to config.plist.
Can anyone help me to solve this problem ?
I would like to select Catalina Loader :
—>System Preferences —> Startup Disk but I get an error message. I also tried with the administrator "root" but it does not work too.I am using Catalina Loader with OC 0.6.3 and the config_NVIDIA.plist file renamed to config.plist.
Can anyone help me to solve this problem ?
Hello,
I would like to select Catalina Loader :
check the mount point of the loader, it must be
/Volumes/Catalina Loaderpull and plug in the card again, if different
(move on to 0.6.4)
or
reboot, press alt/option and select the Catalina Loader SD card while pressing control (basic, basic apple sysadmin knowledge). Part of @herrdude‘s OC guide linked in the first post. You will need this with Big Sur!
Bonjour,
Bad news for me.
I ended up understanding the tutorials, reinstalling Big Sur, then crashing from time to time, then more often, then refusing to boot, I think my card has already failed.
The little I could see is that it never went over 65°.
I'm a bit fed up with all this, between my nonsense and this, it's starting to get tiring.
Bad news for me.
I ended up understanding the tutorials, reinstalling Big Sur, then crashing from time to time, then more often, then refusing to boot, I think my card has already failed.
The little I could see is that it never went over 65°.
I'm a bit fed up with all this, between my nonsense and this, it's starting to get tiring.
What I will not understand:
Why can't you just install a new GPU and check it out using High Sierra?
1. Using OC with the AMD config files you spoof a MacProID 1.1 - this will crash High Sierra on sleep unless you patch it!
2. Installing and patching Big Sur will install this patch automatically during patching and so you NEED OC and spoofing iMacPro1,1 ID. Using Big Sur without the proper OC config will crash it on every sleep.
The culprit is the AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext ... there are two versions out, one original from Mojave stock installation working with the iMac21,1 and iMac12.2 ID without OC and another patched one with the iMacPro1,1 ID.
Just figured out there is no patched High Sierra version.
The card will be fine. You are doing just as always three steps instead of one.
Have fun!
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Re,
I misspoke myself, here it is the machine which stops directly after the gong, it boots without the card on the other hand.
I misspoke myself, here it is the machine which stops directly after the gong, it boots without the card on the other hand.
I'd like to report a successful installation of an AMD WX4150 in my 27" 2010 iMac! Thanks to everyone for their help!
Here's how I solved the issues I described in my previous posts (Post 1, Post 2, Post 3):
When I initially installed the GPU, it was short-circuiting to the metal heat sink somewhere. This caused the PSU to go into a sort of protection mode when I tried to draw power for SATA drives. The computer would not POST when drives were connected and POSTed as soon as I disconnected them. To solve this problem, I covered every surface of the GPU (except for the MXM pins, GPU die, and VRAM chips) in Kapton tape. In the future, I'd like to go back and make sure that I am not smothering any overheating components with Kapton tape.
I reflashed the GPU using the GOP VBIOS labeled "WX4150_GOP" instead of the "Dell RX 560 4GB.ROM" VBIOS linked in the first post. I also created an SD card running OpenCore (version 0.6.5pre) with the AMD config.plist file. This combination of software allows the screen to turn on instead of remaining black when I want to use the computer. Using the OpenCore boot screen, I have been able to boot into Linux, Windows 10, and macOS High Sierra.
Initially, the computer was spontaneously powering off when I tried running anything GPU intensive. I can only assume that the GPU was overheating and forcing the computer off. This problem was actually caused by two things: my fan speeds over the GPU heatsink were set manually to be too slow, and my OpenCore EFI was a different and less stable version. After increasing my fan speeds and changing my EFI, the computer has been completely stable. I was able to play video games for over an hour without overheating.
The computer's benchmarks with the WX4150 installed are much higher than the stock ATI 5750. I think I can make them even better if I improve the GPU's thermals with a copper shim. I will publish my scores after I do a bit more tinkering with the cooling solution, as I want to make sure they are actually representative of what people can expect to see with this GPU in their iMac. As of right now, I took my GeekBench 4 OpenCL score from 7,931 with the ATI 5750 to 62,124 with the WX4150.
I am linking the exact GPU I purchased from eBay here. I have no affiliation with the seller, and I cannot guarantee that whatever you purchase will work inside your computer, or that this seller won't raise the price drastically upon a sudden influx of sales. I purchased the GPU in December of 2020 for $60 USD.
Getting my computer to this state took me days of tinkering, and I still haven't gotten everything to be perfect. There are still many things to do: Install a copper shim, upgrade beyond High Sierra, and perhaps even get my Boot Camp drivers to work correctly. For now, I am very happy to have the computer working again, with improved performance too! I will update this post if any further tinkering reveals additional things to improve my GPU's installation.
If anyone has questions, I'll do my best to answer them. Thanks again to everyone here who has helped me, and good luck to all who attempt a similar upgrade!
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CPU idle at 65C means that the GPU die has not enough (if ever) contact with the heat sink, normally the systems shuts down under load very quickly because the GPU temps will rise to 90+ and that is it - use a 0,5 to 1,0 mm plate of size 15x15mm to bridge the gap.
The female warrior shop will offer a set of plates with different width...and K5 pro, too.
Follow the special installation instructions for this card type - I wonder why you guys try to burn the GPU first and collect own (bad) experiences instead of....
The latest Dell 4GB version enables the 1250MHz core and 1750 MHz memory (normally only possible with the 4170) and this is the reason why your card shut's down faster than using the old "handbrake" version (half peak performance).
Feliz Navidad!
Hi all, first of all thanks to all of the heroes that spent so much time in making all of this possible, I recently got an iMac 27” 2011 from my uncle that was showing only a black screen, baking the card didn’t do anything so after finding this thread I took the risk and ordered a GTX 780m from ebay, and I have to say that thanks to Curtis Gross’ video it was surprisingly easy to use Xanderon method to upgrade the modified bios (I SSHed with powershell from windows 10) and get the gpu working!
Now, unfortunately I am not here only to give virtual bxxxjobs, even though you all deserve it, but I faced some issues trying to get Win 10 working..I am not a MacOS user so I would like to install Win 10 “native” (no bootcamp), the Mac came without HDD, I first tried to plug in an ssd with Windows already installed, and it seemed to work fine, but while unzipping the nvidia driver the screen went full black, after the backlight turned on but the screen stayed black, note that I was not installing the driver yet, I was just unzipping the file downloaded from nvidia website..I searched on google and I found out that apparently win 10 is not officially supported on this model, there are some guides to make it work, but they all involve bootcamp, and of course the drivers included in the bootcamp package are for the old 6xx0m AMD cards, is there a way to install windows 10 without installing MacOs first?
Now, unfortunately I am not here only to give virtual bxxxjobs, even though you all deserve it, but I faced some issues trying to get Win 10 working..I am not a MacOS user so I would like to install Win 10 “native” (no bootcamp), the Mac came without HDD, I first tried to plug in an ssd with Windows already installed, and it seemed to work fine, but while unzipping the nvidia driver the screen went full black, after the backlight turned on but the screen stayed black, note that I was not installing the driver yet, I was just unzipping the file downloaded from nvidia website..I searched on google and I found out that apparently win 10 is not officially supported on this model, there are some guides to make it work, but they all involve bootcamp, and of course the drivers included in the bootcamp package are for the old 6xx0m AMD cards, is there a way to install windows 10 without installing MacOs first?
this is because if you install w10 in uefi mode, windows automatically installs the drivers for the iGPU.
you can force windows not to install those drivers by following the workaround in my post #11,698
Hope it helps!
also if you want the internal audio interface to work you need to follow the instructions on this link
[GUIDE] DSDT override eGPU error 12 fix
Page shortcut: /a> | dsdt [GUIDE] DSDT override eGPU error 12 fix (Windows only) here ◄ Mac owners please work through this thread to solve...
egpu.io
alternatively you can install windows in bios / mbr mode, but you will need to use the command line within the W10 installation environment and it gets a bit more complicated if you have never used tools like diskpart in windows
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For the bolded phrase. You are a real genius.
Did you really apply the thermal pad directly on the GPU chip?
Ever know that thermal pad is worse than the thermal paste for at least 5 folds?
Ever read description for the usage of thermal pad?
They are designed to be used on the RAM chips, not the GPU chip.
My WX4150 temp is around 55 degrees at 30% used. At room temp 33 degrees and internal ambient temp 43 degrees.
And I only use thermal paste directly, no copper shims (my GPU heatsink is MXM type A, 2 pipes, and it makes direct contact with the GPU chip nicely without the copper shims)
Let windows 10 a lot of time with black screen for drivers installation, it's normal, to some extend. And start with a generic windows10 install, without specific graphic drivers already installed for another graphic card (do not connect to internet for updates) and forbid Intel HD3000 to install to avoid BSOD.
W10:
This methods works on Mid 2010 and even on Mid 2011 unless you install a second disk into your 2011 iMac!! So the solution will be to disconnect the second HDD/SDD during installation. Another solution might be to change the boot order within the iMac BIOS - which I have seen only one time after experimenting with a clean firmware onto one of my systems.
https://gist.github.com/oznu/8796d08d73315483c3b26e79a8e3d350
The only different thing to do is is this:
Within the initial Win10 installation dialog the prepared FAT partition is shown. Just delete this partition creating some free space on the disk, select this free space and press proceed. The installer creates new a single NTFS and some helper partitions and starts with copying the data from the USB to the NTFS partition.
Having a second SSD/HDD connected to the system creates this error:
We couldn't create a new partition or locate an existing one.
So I was doing a clean install of windows 10 using a USB and I deleted all the partitions including the system reserve one. The only drive left now is "Drive 0 Partition 1". It is set as primary. Theanswers.microsoft.com
--
It is a long way to create this W10 USB installer and patch boot camp to allow downloading the boot camp software. But after creating such an installer you can reuse it on any iMac whiteout going through this, again.
It will not work on the Late 2009, the BIOS of this machine does not allow to boot W10 off an USB device (USB thumb drive). But you can install Windows 10 using this method and move the disk later over to the 2009 system.
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I have revently had some time to test your package on our Mojave 2011 iMac's, and must say it works great !
I would like to mention that this kext fix, also fixes the no iMac speaker sound fix.
Dosdude1's Mojave patcher wont let me enable built in sound en Mic anymore with Mojave, dont know exactly what causes this but I think it's related to the upgrade to nvidia cards.
Anyway, if anybody wants to know, this package also fixes the sound/mic again
Many thx again for these awesome package installers
Moved it completely to GitHub and there is a 1.1dev version able to install and delete the packages cleanly - back and forth as you like. If one figured out to selected the wrong subset just choose uninstall, reboot and install again.I have revently had some time to test your package on our Mojave 2011 iMac's, and must say it works great !
I would like to mention that this kext fix, also fixes the no iMac speaker sound fix.
Dosdude1's Mojave patcher wont let me enable built in sound en Mic anymore with Mojave, dont know exactly what causes this but I think it's related to the upgrade to nvidia cards.
Anyway, if anybody wants to know, this package also fixes the sound/mic again
Many thx again for these awesome package installers
Even the code is there if some one feels to work on it...
Same is true for the Catalina version.
Don't worry, I've learned my lesson!
K5 Pro, Copper Shims, and Arctic MX4 are on the way. I will definitely come up with a more ideal solution as soon as they arrive. I think the GPU will die early without adequate cooling, so I've been using the computer sparingly with high fan speeds and not for anything graphically intensive in the meantime. After looking at some benchmark numbers (which were recorded before I realized that I shouldn't have used thermal pads) performance seems to be about half of what I could get with better cooling.I hope other people see this post, so they don't accidentally buy the wrong parts, too. I will post an update with some benchmarks and temperatures once I improve my computer (hopefully within a few days).
Hello,
The imaccolordepthfix works very well on my iMac late 2009, but I don't know how to uninstall it.
I removed it from my login item(system settings/users/login items), but the application always starts at startup and
the nvram reset does not change anything.
Do you have a method to uninstall it?
Don't worry, I've learned my lesson!
I hope other people see this post, so they don't accidentally buy the wrong parts, too. I will post an update with some benchmarks and temperatures once I improve my computer (hopefully within a few days).
Ive also used k5 Pro and MX4, which works great
I used 1mm coper plates on the vram backside chips with 3m thermal tape.
Used this on both of our 27" 2011 GTX765M equipped iMac's.
Altough I think vram cooling on the other side of the MXM card is not 100% nececarry, I would like to play it safe and I have cooled them anyway.
I'm planning in the future to 3d print a custom airduct fan, from the HDD/SSD fan to also cover the backside of the MXM card.
A 3D print module was posted here in the past before on this thread..
Ive also used k5 Pro and MX4, which works great
I used 1mm coper plates on the vram backside chips with 3m thermal tape.
Used this on both of our 27" 2011 GTX765M equipped iMac's.
Altough I think vram cooling on the other side of the MXM card is not 100% nececarry, I would like to play it safe and I have cooled them anyway.
I'm planning in the future to 3d print a custom airduct fan, from the HDD/SSD fan to also cover the backside of the MXM card.
A 3D print module was posted here in the past before on this thread..
thx but I was more referring to this post :
2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
I made one a few days ago, mine's need some trimming/sanding to fit but it works really well. I'll drop it here and maybe save you some time. ;) Please despite the GPU in the images, it's an HD7970m which I couldn't make it work... I hope it helps someone!
forums.macrumors.com
Hi! It doesn't run actually, but since the color depth is changed with the app, MacOS will remember that setting and always change it automatically on startup. So if you just switch your screen resolution to something else and than back to the original one, it will deactivate the change.
This is kinda good news, because you only need to start this app once and your screen will be good even after a restart, but the downside is that waking up from sleep it will flash the screen to black always.
Hi, I am here with a question.
I have an iMac year 2011, I installed Nvidia Quadra K2000M into it, because my older graphics card died.
I have read a lot of this discussions, but not all. I wanted to ask, if there is any chance to upgrade from High Sierra to Catalina with DosDude1 patcher without seeing boot and what are the chances that the installation will be successful?
Best regards,
HelloDarknes
I have an iMac year 2011, I installed Nvidia Quadra K2000M into it, because my older graphics card died.
I have read a lot of this discussions, but not all. I wanted to ask, if there is any chance to upgrade from High Sierra to Catalina with DosDude1 patcher without seeing boot and what are the chances that the installation will be successful?
Best regards,
HelloDarknes