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

[johnghadimi]

There is some thing misunderstood here. Below is my understanding (speculation) from your description.

1. Your iMac's GPU is dead. You took it to the shop.
2. The shop returned the iMac to you, with a working GPU (AMD). It's clearly that he had replaced the dead GPU with a working one, or revived it to usable level.
3. You took your iMac to the shop the 2nd time. The shop tried to flash the card K2100m, but failed.
4. You took your iMac home, thinking that there is a K2100m inside. (as the underlined sentence state). But whether the K2100m was inside your iMac is a big question here.
5. It's clearly not so, because the card inside is still AMD HD6970m. The machine is still working, with normal boot screen and all. And you have read the info from "About this Mac" that the GPU is HD6970m.
6. Now you are trying to (1) flash an modified ROM for K2100m to the HD 6970; and attempt to do that (2) within Mac OS environment?

How can it be possible?

Your point on #4 is exactly my line of investigation. Without me literally opening the iMac, is there a way for me to DEFINITIVELY confirm if a nVidia card is installed in the iMac? Basically, if the shop sent me home with another AMD card, then I need to confront them and possibly get some money back on the deal. I think all the evidence points to the fact that there is no Nvidia card installed. I just want to be 100% sure, before I purse that option. If I run the nvflash_linux --list command, will it confirm the installation (or not)??

 

[johnghadimi]

How to say this??? It seems like you might have been taken for a ride. I say this because the HD6970 is a known defective card. Full-stop. I am not sure what your objective is but you need to choose one of the cards in the first post. Then you can do some interesting stuff. With the HD6970 you are a dead man walking.

I suspect the same thing, unfortunately.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Your point on #4 is exactly my line of investigation. Without me literally opening the iMac, is there a way for me to DEFINITIVELY confirm if a nVidia card is installed in the iMac? Basically, if the shop sent me home with another AMD card, then I need to confront them and possibly get some money back on the deal. I think all the evidence points to the fact that there is no Nvidia card installed. I just want to be 100% sure, before I purse that option. If I run the nvflash_linux --list command, will it confirm the installation (or not)??

A screenshot of ”About this Mac" is enough to verify what GPU is installed in your iMac.
If the shop couldn't flash the Vbios himself, it's impossible for him to Hex Edit what is displayed on "About this Mac".
If you still believe that he is super talented to that level, a simple run of GeekBench will also reveal your current configuration, including the GPU.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Good morning!

Has anybody out there access to a new 2020 M1 Apple MacBookPro or possibly an M1 MacBook Air or M1 Mac Mini and can confirm this working with an iMac (Late 2009)?

According to older videos the same method worked even with older Intel based Mac Book Pro and iMac 2010 (possible 2011) systems and it is not the famous target display mode which is used here using CMD-F2….

CU

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Good morning!

Has anybody out there access to a new 2020 M1 Apple MacBookPro or possibly an M1 MacBook Air or M1 Mac Mini and can confirm this working with an iMac (Late 2009)?

According to older videos the same method worked even with older Intel based Mac Book Pro and iMac 2010 (possible 2011) systems and it is not the famous target display mode which is used here using CMD-F2….

CU

Is there anything special about the M1 Macs? It's just sending the video signal out through the USB-C to miniDisplayport cable, isn't it?
By default, at the log-in screen (after a PRAM reset), iMac 2009 and 2010 will automatically detect video signal inputs and turn it to Target display mode.
CMD-F2 will turn off Target Display mode and put the iMac back to normal mode.
I tested this a lot of times on my iMac 2010, with an DisplayPort to mini DisplayPort cable, both with HD5670m and WX4150 (with the GOP ROM, not the Dell ROM) in default High Sierra log-in screen. Video signal came from a Windows PC.
The issues: The backlight level cannot be changed by the keyboard. The screen is on maximum brightness, and fans at full speed, triggered by the LCD temp sensor. Maybe if we can manually control the backlight level by an external module, it'll be useful. Without ability to control backlight level, this can't be a long-time solution.

 

[xanderon]

right now I have a m1 air but missing the cables. also I only have a modded iMac 27 2011 (see sig)

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Is there anything special about the M1 Macs? It's just sending the video signal out through the USB-C to miniDisplayport cable, isn't it?
By default, at the log-in screen (after a PRAM reset), iMac 2009 and 2010 will automatically detect video signal inputs and turn it to Target display mode.
CMD-F2 will turn off Target Display mode and put the iMac back to normal mode.
I tested this a lot of times on my iMac 2010, with an DisplayPort to mini DisplayPort cable, both with HD5670m and WX4150 (with the GOP ROM, not the Dell ROM) in default High Sierra log-in screen. Video signal came from a Windows PC.
The issues: The backlight level cannot be change by the keyboard. The screen is on maximum brightness, and fans at full speed, triggered by the LCD temp sensor. Maybe if we can manually control the backlight level by an external module, it'll be useful. Without ability to control backlight level, this can't be a long-time solution.

Okay, this would explain some of the experiences shared on this video. No backlight control and noisy fans - I turned out sound and tried to fast forward until the important part started. I hate watching videos - wasted 15 minutes of live time to gather 5s important information

I was wondering if this was a different thing from the normal target display mode because the girl mentioned explicitly CMD-F2 would not work.

And the story contradicts at least to some former posts telling us that the M1 cannot be used in this mode at all.

EDIT:
No, there is nothing special about the M1 (the author published another similar video with an Intel 2018 MacBookPro).

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Your point on #4 is exactly my line of investigation. Without me literally opening the iMac, is there a way for me to DEFINITIVELY confirm if a nVidia card is installed in the iMac? Basically, if the shop sent me home with another AMD card, then I need to confront them and possibly get some money back on the deal. I think all the evidence points to the fact that there is no Nvidia card installed. I just want to be 100% sure, before I purse that option. If I run the nvflash_linux --list command, will it confirm the installation (or not)??

There are many ways to Rome!

In theory one could change the output an BIOS in an way to disguise the real identity to some level. But as said before a guy not being able to flash a card would not be able to do such a hack. Nevertheless from an Apple Service Points perspective it would be interesting to "fool" customers to believe the got a original spare while in truth they got away with a much more capable (metal) GPU. Before digging deeper into the way macOS is working the approach would not really work. Drivers are selected based on the GPU installed and found within the system. The AMD and NVIDIA drivers are different. You cannot use gas for a Diesel engine.

To come around this "fooling" story I was thinking about using the genuine NVIDIA software tools, these are only available on Linux and Windows.

Using the very same Linux utility you can run the other command called amdvbflash -i to check if the GPU is an ATI/AMD one as we all believe.

There is another way I used in the Big Sur patcher to autodetect the installed GPU using a simple a command with the terminal app from macOS:

me@iMac ~ % /usr/sbin/system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType | fgrep "Device ID" | awk '{print $3}'
0x6720
me@iMac ~ %

Possible outputs for the ATI6xx0 series are 0x6720 or 0x6740 or 0x6741.

But this is exactly the same command running to provide the output of About This Mac -> System report. Which already reports on your system a ATI 6970M card.

Are we going round in circles? We cannot write you into doing the tests. You have to start them on your own.

 

[The_Croupier]

Aiyaiyai
Picked this one up cheap.
No wonder i was getting LED 1 going off after button press. 😳🙄

Not looking forward to disassembling the LCD to see if I can remove the mould growing on the inside.

 

[passatgt]

H

Aiyaiyai
Picked this one up cheap.
No wonder i was getting LED 1 going off after button press. 😳🙄

Not looking forward to disassembling the LCD to see if I can remove the mould growing on the inside.

View attachment 1787759

Lol, how is that even possible? They used some kind of a glue instead of thermal paste?

 

[passatgt]

Is there anything special about the M1 Macs? It's just sending the video signal out through the USB-C to miniDisplayport cable, isn't it?
By default, at the log-in screen (after a PRAM reset), iMac 2009 and 2010 will automatically detect video signal inputs and turn it to Target display mode.
CMD-F2 will turn off Target Display mode and put the iMac back to normal mode.
I tested this a lot of times on my iMac 2010, with an DisplayPort to mini DisplayPort cable, both with HD5670m and WX4150 (with the GOP ROM, not the Dell ROM) in default High Sierra log-in screen. Video signal came from a Windows PC.
The issues: The backlight level cannot be changed by the keyboard. The screen is on maximum brightness, and fans at full speed, triggered by the LCD temp sensor. Maybe if we can manually control the backlight level by an external module, it'll be useful. Without ability to control backlight level, this can't be a long-time solution.

I think my app can work in this case, at least to simulate the brigthness control.

 

[The_Croupier]

H

Lol, how is that even possible? They used some kind of a glue instead of thermal paste?

I have no idea? This mac is really gross need to break out the Ajax.

Looks to me like failed bake rage syndrome 🤪

 

[johnghadimi]

There are many ways to Rome!

In theory one could change the output an BIOS in an way to disguise the real identity to some level. But as said before a guy not being able to flash a card would not be able to do such a hack. Nevertheless from an Apple Service Points perspective it would be interesting to "fool" customers to believe the got a original spare while in truth they got away with a much more capable (metal) GPU. Before digging deeper into the way macOS is working the approach would not really work. Drivers are selected based on the GPU installed and found within the system. The AMD and NVIDIA drivers are different. You cannot use gas for a Diesel engine.

To come around this "fooling" story I was thinking about using the genuine NVIDIA software tools, these are only available on Linux and Windows.

Using the very same Linux utility you can run the other command called amdvbflash -i to check if the GPU is an ATI/AMD one as we all believe.

There is another way I used in the Big Sur patcher to autodetect the installed GPU using a simple a command with the terminal app from macOS:

me@iMac ~ % /usr/sbin/system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType | fgrep "Device ID" | awk '{print $3}'
0x6720
me@iMac ~ %

Possible outputs for the ATI6xx0 series are 0x6720 or 0x6740 or 0x6741.

But this is exactly the same command running to provide the output of About This Mac -> System report. Which already reports on your system a ATI 6970M card.

Are we going round in circles? We cannot write you into doing the tests. You have to start them on your own.

This is all I needed. Thanks for yours and everyone's guidance.

 

[Eljutre]

Hi!
So, I have a mid 2010 imac 21.5 inch, the original GPU was dead, so I bought a GTX 765m, I managed to put in, but I got no screen, it works perfect with an external display, I even get a boot screen, but the internal display does nothing, I try a different display and nothing, I even try a different logic board, but still no internal screen... when I boot in safe mode I think a can spot an apple logo in the internal display randomly appearing...I install the fix for backlight, but I did it with the new gpu because the oldo one didn't do anything..and still no image...any ideas?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hi!
So, I have a mid 2010 imac 21.5 inch, the original GPU was dead, so I bought a GTX 765m, I managed to put in, but I got no screen, it works perfect with an external display, I even get a boot screen, but the internal display does nothing, I try a different display and nothing, I even try a different logic board, but still no internal screen... when I boot in safe mode I think a can spot an apple logo in the internal display randomly appearing...I install the fix for backlight, but I did it with the new gpu because the oldo one didn't do anything..and still no image...any ideas?

Could by anything we already discussed so often here:

1. 21.5 models cannot drive the MXM-B card in a stable way (has been put into the known issues section, somewhere)
2. black screen issue NVIDIA cards (mentioned somewhere on the thread, cannot remember where)
3. defective logic board (having two times the same problem, rarely?)
4. since you are using the same ?new? GPU it can be the root cause, too (more likely than #3, still unlikely since the external display works, mentioned on the thread somewhere, too)
5. inverter board dead (another hardware problem, more likely than #3 and #4)

All in all it looks like another hardware problem and this cannot be solved by posting and patching….

Did you check the first post for possible solutions? Not sure about this since you already picked the wrong GPU….

 

[Eljutre]

Could by anything we already discussed so often here:

1. 21.5 models cannot drive the MXM-B card in a stable way (has been put into the known issues section, somewhere)
2. black screen issue NVIDIA cards (mentioned somewhere on the thread, cannot remember where)
3. defective logic board (having two times the same problem, rarely?)
4. since you are using the same ?new? GPU it can be the root cause, too (more likely than #3, still unlikely since the external display works, mentioned on the thread somewhere, too)
5. inverter board dead (another hardware problem, more likely than #3 and #4)

All in all it looks like another hardware problem and this cannot be solved by posting and patching….

Did you check the first post for possible solutions? Not sure about this since you already picked the wrong GPU….

Well, I did swap the inverter board, so thats out,
I try some of the black screen issues that I could find, but many don't apply because it's a 21 inch model
The logic board couldn't be....
I`m trying to narrow it down, cuz I don't want to buy another gpu.

That's my set up

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Well, I did swap the inverter board, so thats out,
I try some of the black screen issues that I could find, but many don't apply because it's a 21 inch model
The logic board couldn't be....
I`m trying to narrow it down, cuz I don't want to buy another gpu.

That's my set up

black screen issue happens on iMac + NVIDIA - it is apparent since Sierra even on 2012 and 2013 iMac with NVIDIA cards supplied by Apple.

The next thing is: You could have started with the complete setup (in a signature like mine) and the complete things you did before. All this to keep things clear and sharp and short, I do not want to send 20+message just because you will not describe your setup properly.

Check all the things mentioned on the first post and come back later with your experiences.

 

[LegoNickD]

I have the same card in a 2011 iMac and i got 17234 on geekbench metal. So looks like the CPU might be your bottleneck, as mine runs a newer i7. With an i7-860, i think the max memory is 16gb, no? Here is the product spec from intel, it says 16gb max for 860: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compare.html?productIds=48501,48500,41316

Would be interesting to see if you could run i7-880 or the xeon X3480(which supports 32gb ram) and see if that would bump your max ram support, and also improve your metal score(probably not). Its not that expensive on ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/384081922956?hash=item596d110b8c:g:bFsAAOSw6bpgbSYy & https://www.ebay.com/itm/324658666855?hash=item4b972a1d67:g:8hoAAOSwrR1guUzk

Edit: i7-880 does work, based on this: https://mac-yak.com/2019/03/19/upgrading-a-2009-imac-cpu/ - and looks like a nice bump in performance based on the benchmark scores. So the question remains for X3480 and 32gb ram

My 2010 27" has a Xeon X3470, WX 7100, and 32 GB of ram running great. the X3480 costs way too much for the minimal performance gain over the X3470. I'm definitely CPU bottlenecked with this setup but I'd rather try and swap the logic board with a 2011 and a sand bridge cpu with the added bonus of 6 Gbps SATA for the money than pay $75 for a few extra MHz. Only issue is I have no idea how easy of a drop in replacement the board is as I can't find anyone who's successfully done it.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

My 2010 27" has a Xeon X3470, WX 7100, and 32 GB of ram running great. the X3480 costs way too much for the minimal performance gain over the X3470. I'm definitely CPU bottlenecked with this setup but I'd rather try and swap the logic board with a 2011 and a sand bridge cpu with the added bonus of 6 Gbps SATA for the money than pay $75 for a few extra MHz. Only issue is I have no idea how easy of a drop in replacement the board is as I can't find anyone who's successfully done it.

There are more difficulties than you may expect in dropping in a 2011's logic board to the 2010's case:
- Placing of the wifi card
- Some USB sockets (iSight Camera etc) changed their sizes.
- Different LVDS sockets (this is the major issue)

Thus, it's better to drop the GPU to a 2011's full case, than only the logic board.

 

[LegoNickD]

There are more difficulties than you may expect in dropping in a 2011's logic board to the 2010's case:
- Placing of the wifi card
- Some USB sockets (iSight Camera etc) changed their sizes.
- Different LVDS sockets (this is the major issue)

Thus, it's better to drop the GPU to a 2011's full case, than only the logic board.

Damn you're right. Little things like the iSight connector shouldn't be a big deal, but the whole LCD is just too much. From my quick skimming I might be able to swap the board on the back of the lcd, but no one sells that. If I could double my SATA speed, add thunderbolt, and move up a CPU generation for around $100 I'd probably try that, but the whole screen or the whole 2011 iMac with a dead GPU exceeds that. I think I'll wait for the iBoff rrc board instead then.

 

[passatgt]

Damn you're right. Little things like the iSight connector shouldn't be a big deal, but the whole LCD is just too much. From my quick skimming I might be able to swap the board on the back of the lcd, but no one sells that. If I could double my SATA speed, add thunderbolt, and move up a CPU generation for around $100 I'd probably try that, but the whole screen or the whole 2011 iMac with a dead GPU exceeds that. I think I'll wait for the iBoff rrc board instead then.

You could run two ssd in raid 0 for extra speed, i did that on a 2010 21.5". Bit tricky to setup, but it works. I got 465MB/s write, 515MB/s read with two 240GB MX500 SSDs. I think this is pretty close to sata3 speeds.

 

[KennyW]

Damn you're right. Little things like the iSight connector shouldn't be a big deal, but the whole LCD is just too much. From my quick skimming I might be able to swap the board on the back of the lcd, but no one sells that. If I could double my SATA speed, add thunderbolt, and move up a CPU generation for around $100 I'd probably try that, but the whole screen or the whole 2011 iMac with a dead GPU exceeds that. I think I'll wait for the iBoff rrc board instead then.

With extreme dedication, the logic board replacement could be accomplished but both the cost and effort might be prohibitive. You also need to align the different external ports on the chasis. Better save the money and energy perhaps for an actual iMac 2011 if you can find a cheap one, or even the M1 Macmini.

The doubling of the SATA speed doesn't have any discernible performance gain if you have been using SSD in place of the HD. While you can't add Thunderbolt to iMac 2010, you can perform a USB 3 hack as I do:

USB 3 + Wifi ac + BT4.2 for iMac 27" mid 2010

There has been a thread on USB 3 for iMac 2009 and one on USB 3 for iMac 2011. The miniPCIe slot for wifi/BT is utilised to provide USB 3 connection at the expense of wifi and BT, which have to be changed to external dongles. Thus, I explore a similar idea from those threads to install USB 3 in...

forums.macrumors.com

However, no PCIe USB 3 is bootable. They are good only for file transfer and backup but meet my need.

 

[FlorisVN]

Seems to me like the just announced MacOS 12 Monterey does not support nvidia based macs anymore.
Perhaps this is the end for nvidia support ??
Or there is still way to get the drivers back in there who knows..

 

[fredflinston]

Hi Guys,

Been following this thread a few months, I think I've read up most of it (although 600 pages is a lot, I hope to have covered the most important posts!), and just like to confirm whether the W7170M is still NOT a fully working card... as per post #4,204, it may seem to work somewhat, but after seeing over the years of posts that the marvelous work on here has gone from quite a few hardware mods and chip flashing to mostly software solutions, be it thru OC or LinuxUSB, I still have a small hope that possibly some more cards could eventually be supported (sometime soon😜)...?

So I bought what was supposed to be a 109-C95847-00C-02*, but, as seems to be common (and curiously this happened from IT card shop, same as from post above), I actually got a 109-C769A1-00B_02 - here is where I am still confused, although I prefer to trust more in the info on this site, and would say that this is not a WX7100, as it seems not to have either the correct BootROM chip, nor the treasured Ellesmore written on the card, so I am wondering whether to bother even trying to install this, or just send it back and get a refund from the shop...

I used to work at an Apple SAT, so am totally used to working inside these machines, and have a good control software wise, enough to understand and follow flashing and hackintosh instructions (have a LattePanda Alpha with a RX vega64 over a x4 PCIe connector🤔, I know, total overkill and will never take full advantage of this card (just had to take advantage of a great deal), but this little home gaming setup started out with a GTX1070 (still a bit of overkill, but came from a mining rig at a really good price), and the (long-term) idea is to have this card in a better hackintosh rig later on, when money permits (did I say looong-term!?!), anyway, works very nicely with OC, and previously with Clover ;-)

So this iMac is my home unit, kind of professional use, my need actually comes from Fusion360 is no longer being updated for High Sierra, so anything I edit on my MBP 2014 (Catalina) I can no longer open on the iMac, quite annoying!! Also, after seeing that could get true 4K thru DP, I could finally take full advantage of a 4K screen I have hooked up but only can drive to 2560x1600🤦‍♂️, if any of the pros here think it is worthwhile to try and get this card working to do some tests, I am willing to help and try out - I am sure I can easily put back the HD6970 if things do not work out, but would like to try this if there is some remote, but reasonable, possiblity of success... these days it seems very difficult to get hold of an AMD card from the list in post #1!!

*these days a 109-C95847-00C-02 seems to be a W7170M in most places on Aliexpress, but not all, and searching for a WX7100 will show cards marked with 109-C769A1-00B_02 as well, so it is getting quite difficult to know what exactly each place is actually selling - and if one searches for 109-C769A1-00B_02, then get W7170M - there seem to be an incredible amount of W7170Ms around even in the WX7100 shops - it would be great if we could use them for our iMacs!!

Cheers!!
Andy

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Seems to me like the just announced MacOS 12 Monterey does not support nvidia based macs anymore.
Perhaps this is the end for nvidia support ??
Or there is still way to get the drivers back in there who knows..

The writing is on the walls for at least a year, now. The first messages from the new thread mentioned that the first Beta has still Kepler support included. But it is the first Beta and who knows what Apple has really planned for this macOS release.

Using OCLP 0.1.6+ we should all be able install Monterey on our iMacs right now and check it out.