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

[bluecrowHH]

with pleasure


i have a iMac mi 2011 27" (it is not the one in my signature, it is another) with a Dell card WX4150 with vBIOS . I try your patcher and it seem work very well, the result is:

View attachment 1728061

However I have 2 questions . I create the installer on a USB key and the disk is a USB SSD disk . The USB key is disk1 and there is a EFI partition:

View attachment 1728062

When I boot (with no SD card) , I have not the "EFI boot", I have "UEFI shell":

View attachment 1728063


I choose "Install macOS Big Sur", after installing macOS Big Sur, I boot back to the USB key, I select Post-Install Automator , I reboot and I have:

View attachment 1728065

View attachment 1728066
View attachment 1728067

I login and all seem OK.

1) Did I make a mistake to not have the "EFI boot " ? (I tried twice)

2) I have

View attachment 1728069

Do you think I can do this update safely? I have read this : "OTA upgrade to 11.2 (20D64) using OC 0.6.6 upgraded from Beta 11.2 (20D5042d) on iMac Late 2009 and Mid 2011."

Thank very much for your wonderful work 👍

Hey, so your wx4150 is recognized as an rx460? Hows the performance? Is it just an identification thing or does the bios flash change it performancewise?
Wich card have you bought? Where from?
Thanks a lot!

 

[joaom.ml]

Do clevo Kepler mxm cards work on imac or just Dell/Alienware. I'm still trying to figure this out.

thanks in advance

 

[nikey22]

Hello everyone,

As some of you have already noticed, I've updated the K4100M page to include a slightly overclock ROM for testing.
K4100M_UGA.rom operates at 2200Mhz for memory and TDP: 967Mhz, and a modest bump in the appropriate voltages. I've finished updating the page and both roms are now available, original and overclocked.

I've tested it for 12-hours on Valley score and some 2 hour 2K content on youtube. There are no freezes or crashes.
I appreciate @Ri7 who tested this as well on his computer under similar conditions and similar clock speeds. Obviously, more people testing it would strengthen its reliability. As @Ausdauersportler mentioned, these are experimental and we don't know long term outcomes. Invariably this will be dependent on your task-use profiles.

The GPU temperature did reach 70 degrees, and I had to use macfans to moderate it, but the average frame rate is impressive.

Tested under Catalina 10.15.7, SecUpdate 2021-001 (February 5th, 2021):

 

[Afro_]

: ) I bought a K4100M recently from eBay and installed it tonight on my 2011 mid 27' iMac to replace the old HD6770M. I got a 3-pipe heat sink, did the heatsink mod, and reused the small X-bracket from HD6770M. Flashed K4100M_UGA.rom using a USB and the first time boot with just internal display is fine. I connected a thunderbolt display and it is working as well. Then I did the benchmark which can be seen in the image below. However, once I put all the screws and glass back and did a reboot, the internal display is not working anymore. I can get in High Sierra blindly and then use the external display but the internal play just does not show anything.

Has anyone seen this issue before? I suppose maybe I should try another ROM (K4100M_BR.rom) which is more stable according to nikey22's post above. Thank you for your help!

 

[KennyW]

Hey, so your wx4150 is recognized as an rx460? Hows the performance? Is it just an identification thing or does the bios flash change it performancewise?
Wich card have you bought? Where from?
Thanks a lot!

The GPU's performance is governed by both its BIOS and graphic drivers.
Its name as shown in About This Mac or in Graphics/Displays can be modded in the config. It has no bearing on its performance. Many a time GPUs of the same core are given different nomenclature in laptop vs desktop version.

 

[KennyW]

Based on your criteria, what do you think my AMD GPU should be to buy? I have HD 6970M 2gb KO, I would like a GPU much superior to the HD6970m ... I only ask for stability and compatibility in Big Sur or Catalina ... please now I'm more lost ...

Our developer Ausdauersportler has given you the hint already in his post. Can't you take it ??

Apples Final Cut Pro X is based on - you already can guess it - metal.
The slowest and smallest AMD card outperforms the biggest and most expensive NVIDIA card on every metal benchmark.

 

[Jforte]

: ) I bought a K4100M recently from eBay and installed it tonight on my 2011 mid 27' iMac to replace the old HD6770M. I got a 3-pipe heat sink, did the heatsink mod, and reused the small X-bracket from HD6770M. Flashed K4100M_UGA.rom using a USB and the first time boot with just internal display is fine. I connected a thunderbolt display and it is working as well. Then I did the benchmark which can be seen in the image below. However, once I put all the screws and glass back and did a reboot, the internal display is not working anymore. I can get in High Sierra blindly and then use the external display but the internal play just does not show anything.

Has anyone seen this issue before? I suppose maybe I should try another ROM (K4100M_BR.rom) which is more stable according to nikey22's post above. Thank you for your help!

If you shearched a bit, you could saw that there are a few members with this problem, me included. I’m gessing the problem are the vram chips, mine are hynix bfr... Yours are...?

 

[ChrisCaro]

​

: ) I bought a K4100M recently from eBay and installed it tonight on my 2011 mid 27' iMac to replace the old HD6770M. I got a 3-pipe heat sink, did the heatsink mod, and reused the small X-bracket from HD6770M. Flashed K4100M_UGA.rom using a USB and the first time boot with just internal display is fine. I connected a thunderbolt display and it is working as well. Then I did the benchmark which can be seen in the image below. However, once I put all the screws and glass back and did a reboot, the internal display is not working anymore. I can get in High Sierra blindly and then use the external display but the internal play just does not show anything.

Has anyone seen this issue before? I suppose maybe I should try another ROM (K4100M_BR.rom) which is more stable according to nikey22's post above. Thank you for your help!

Speaking from little to no experience here. I would reset pram on next boot. Does the screen work with that trick?

I would also double check the display cables or check for a short.

 

[sergiodadi]

Hello,

Thanks everyone for all the posts in this thread. Here a abstract of what i have done to change my graphic card for my Imac 27 " mi 2011:

I have buy a Dell AMD card WX4130:

Hello,

after changing, in november 2020, the graphics card on my 27 inch iMac mid 2011 , here is the description of a second change following the purchase of a broken 27 inch iMac mid 2011 (only HS graphics card of course, everything else is OK) for around 150 € (i5 3.1 GHz, 12 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD having run only 216 hours) .

The card this time is a Dell WX4150 (it was a WX4130 on the previous one) card bought on Ebay:





The card is indeed a Dell :





Flashing the vBIOS of the card with the boot method on a USB key in Linux then connection by ssh from another Mac / PC / iPad, etc. :



Installation of Catalina with the Dosdude1 patcher, the new card is indeed "metal" compatible:


To avoid disassembling the main board, we made 2 small holes on the back of the iMac (it is my test iMac ) to be able to easily remove the graphics card without removing the motherboard and above all to be able to easily test others graphics cards. The holes will be plugged in normal operation so as not to disturb the thermal circuit:






Here is benchmark (under Big Sur):



For around 240 €, I have an iMac that can be used without any problem.


Thank to @Ausdauersportler and others peoples of this thread 👍

 

[sergiodadi]

Hey, so your wx4150 is recognized as an rx460? Hows the performance? Is it just an identification thing or does the bios flash change it performancewise?
Wich card have you bought? Where from?
Thanks a lot!

Hi, see my post here

 

[peekpt]

Hello,

after changing, in november 2020, the graphics card on my 27 inch iMac mid 2011 , here is the description of a second change following the purchase of a broken 27 inch iMac mid 2011 (only HS graphics card of course, everything else is OK) for around 150 € (i5 3.1 GHz, 12 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD having run only 216 hours) .

The card this time is a Dell WX4150 (it was a WX4130 on the previous one) card bought on Ebay:

View attachment 1728377

View attachment 1728378

The card is indeed a Dell :



View attachment 1728379

Flashing the vBIOS of the card with the boot method on a USB key in Linux then connection by ssh from another Mac / PC / iPad, etc. :

View attachment 1728380

Installation of Catalina with the Dosdude1 patcher, the new card is indeed "metal" compatible:

View attachment 1728381
To avoid disassembling the main board, we made 2 small holes on the back of the iMac (it is my test iMac ) to be able to easily remove the graphics card without removing the motherboard and above all to be able to easily test others graphics cards. The holes will be plugged in normal operation so as not to disturb the thermal circuit:

View attachment 1728382

View attachment 1728383


Here is benchmark (under Big Sur):

View attachment 1728385

For around 240 €, I have an iMac that can be used without any problem.


Thank to @Ausdauersportler and others peoples of this thread

That motherboard has an extra sata port which you can plug a data cable an SSD. You hide it under dvd. It's an enormous difference in performance.

 

[sergiodadi]

That motherboard has an extra sata port which you can plug a data cable an SSD. You hide it under dvd. It's an enormous difference in performance.

This iMac has an SSD

"(i5 3.1 GHz, 12 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD having run only 216 hours)"

 

[peekpt]

This iMac has an SSD

"(i5 3.1 GHz, 12 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD having run only 216 hours)"

1TB I assume it was original

 

[sergiodadi]

Hi all!

I did something evil, binary patched a Big Sur GUI patcher to include the Big Sur iMac micropatcher to get a (hopefully) completely command line free installation of Big Sur. I need volunteers to test it:

Hello @Ausdauersportler,

a little suggestion. It would be interesting to be able to save the terminal output in verbose mode to (try ) understand and learn what a patcher does.

We can do a copy / paste from time to time but the end screen closes the verbose output window, we do not manage to have all the outputs. Is it possible to put either:
- an option allowing to save the complete verbose output in a file
- leave the verbose output displayed when the actions are finished

thank for your work 👍

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hello @Ausdauersportler,

a little suggestion. It would be interesting to be able to save the terminal output in verbose mode to (try ) understand and learn what a patcher does.

We can do a copy / paste from time to time but the end screen closes the verbose output window, we do not manage to have all the outputs. Is it possible to put either:
- an option allowing to save the complete verbose output in a file
- leave the verbose output displayed when the actions are finished

thank for your work 👍

If you want to see what the patcher is doing use the normal iMac micropatcher edition and start it from the Big Sur terminal (not recovery). Than you can see all the output.

Using a GUI to not get bothered with al the f******g details and at the very same time demanding the debugging output is a very special request.

The sources of the micropatcher are available, too.

 

[Titus imac]

Hello, would it be a good choice to buy an amd Rx480 GPU for my imac 27 ”mid 2011 inte i7? I have located this model on ebay:
https://www.ebay.es/itm/143433793816

 

[Afro_]

If you shearched a bit, you could saw that there are a few members with this problem, me included. I’m gessing the problem are the vram chips, mine are hynix bfr... Yours are...?

Hi Jforte. thanks for the reply! I do see someone saying that HP K4100M does not work and we should use DELL card instead. My case is a bit different and strange to me as it is working for the first time. Also all four LEDs are on and it seems to me everything is fine and somehow the brightness of the display is set as zero. The VRAM chip is SK Hynix. I will let you know if I make any progress!

 

[Afro_]

Speaking from little to no experience here. I would reset pram on next boot. Does the screen work with that trick?

I would also double check the display cables or check for a short.

Hi ChrisCaro, thanks for the suggestion. I will try to reset the VRAM and a different ROM this evening.

 

[herrdude]

If you want to see what the patcher is doing use the normal iMac micropatcher edition and start it from the Big Sur terminal (not recovery). Than you can see all the output.

Using a GUI to not get bothered with al the f******g details and at the very same time demanding the debugging output is a very special request.

The sources of the micropatcher are available, too.

I finally got around to using the new patcher. Kudos! It is foolproof (which, God knows, is needed around here), it is user friendly, and it is well designed. Great job!

 

[ChrizLoud]

Hi!

Im still waiting for my K4100M GPU.
I Bought Dell version on eBay but before shipping the seller tested the card and it shows HP.

So i guess its a HP card if sellers screen shot is legit?

Im asking just that i am afraid to flash the wrong version.

And also thank you guys for all the hours you spend on this awesome project!! 🥰

 

[ChrisCaro]

There has been discussion over HP cards not working correctly. My K4100m was pulled from a Dell and booted even before I flashed the Bios.

Here is the one I bought

Dell nVidia Quadro K4100M Mobile Video 5DGTT JDHNF 4GB GDDR5 for Precision M6800 | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Dell nVidia Quadro K4100M Mobile Video 5DGTT JDHNF 4GB GDDR5 for Precision M6800 at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

 

[Afro_]

Hi Jforte. thanks for the reply! I do see someone saying that HP K4100M does not work and we should use DELL card instead. My case is a bit different and strange to me as it is working for the first time. Also all four LEDs are on and it seems to me everything is fine and somehow the brightness of the display is set as zero. How can I check the VRAM chip model? Do you fix the internal display problem or just use K4100M with the external display?

Hi!

Im still waiting for my K4100M GPU.
I Bought Dell version on eBay but before shipping the seller tested the card and it shows HP.

So i guess its a HP card if sellers screen shot is legit?

Im asking just that i am afraid to flash the wrong version.

And also thank you guys for all the hours you spend on this awesome project!! 🥰

What is the VBIOS version? Mine is like this https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/151484/151484. It works for the first boot then the internal display is not working anymore. I am still trying to figure it out.

 

[Afro_]

There has been discussion over HP cards not working correctly. My K4100m was pulled from a Dell and booted even before I flashed the Bios.

Here is the one I bought

Dell nVidia Quadro K4100M Mobile Video 5DGTT JDHNF 4GB GDDR5 for Precision M6800 | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Dell nVidia Quadro K4100M Mobile Video 5DGTT JDHNF 4GB GDDR5 for Precision M6800 at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

This looks exactly the same as mine. Do you still have the original VBOIS number?

 

[ChrisCaro]

This looks exactly the same as mine. Do you still have the original VBOIS number?

80.04.E8.00.1D

 

[Afro_]

80.04.E8.00.1D

Thanks. I might give this ROM a try later! Mine is 80.04.B0.00.08