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

[axrst]

The final step of the upgrade was done yesterday with the installation of Big Sur with OCLP. All ok (even if after the 1st time safari was showing some pages with glitches, but there must was some driver issue and today are all ok).

I still have no brightness control from the keyboard. Am I missing something?

 

[Decha Anun]

I flashed my graphics card. My iMac reboots itself very often. how do i fix it. I will install Catalina But when installing, it will reboot itself.

 

[internetzel]

I flashed my graphics card. My iMac reboots itself very often. how do i fix it. I will install Catalina But when installing, it will reboot itself.

There's no support for your choice here, because you chose the wrong graphics card for your 21.5" model. Reboots are to be expected because of too high power draw of MXM-B cards.
Please study post 1 of this thread and search the thread for more information about the known problems.

 

[ZenSurfeur]

Hello
Can't have access to microphone and webcam using webex, never get the advices to accept accesses.
Anyway to solve this?
Thx

 

[JohnPascololo]

Does not affect Windows.

You face a hardware problem. Some cards cause this problems. You are not the first posting this. Get another card or use it in an iMac11,x.

For a test in macOS I would run the OC TUI set the appropriate option and reinstall? How can I verify if the iGPU is enabled?

 

[dfranetic]

Excellent work @edwardgeo and thank you @dfranetic for testing.

The correct pathway to eDP for imacs using the Polaris/Ellesmere GPUs is:

Connector Object ID edp:14, this activates the Internal_Uniphy1
encoder Object Id: 0x20, 0x21
i2cid: 0x93
senseid: 0x4
This provides the correct pipeline signal for the internal LCD screen on iMacs using this GPU family.

Let's integrate that information into @edwardgeo's rom and test, it should work!
*rom attached for testing*

After a week (or slightly more) I'd like to report how (relatively) long-term testing of this WX4170 VBIOS went.

To be clear - it appears to be very good. It is stable, there were no unwanted reboots during either benchmarking, light use, or sleep. There is one drawback or 'sleep bug' (as I call it) - sometimes the GPU is throttled on wake form sleep. This happens almost always with the card having Samsung K4G80325FB-HC28 RAM ICs, and rarely (but still does happen) with the modded card having SKhynix H5GQ8H24MJR-R4C RAM ICs. (I do have a third WX4170 card with Samsung K4G80325FB-HC25 RAM ICs without a machine to test it in. In preliminary tests this card behaved similarly as the one with SKHynix RAM.) I wish I could be more specific, but I could not find a 'rule'. Also, once the GPU is throttled that doesn't necessarily mean it will remain so. On the next wake it could be back to full performance...

It appears that this VBIOS is built with performance in mind. And it offers very good performance (when unthrottled), too - an average MetalBench score of 73 after 2 hours of benchmarking. What seemed a bit worrying is the Power consumption (while benchmarking) as reported by iStat: it was at 115W for the card with Samsung K4G80325FB-HC28 RAM ICs and at 77W for the card with SKhynix H5GQ8H24MJR-R4C RAM ICs. (Temperatures were sensible though, 55C-56C at most.) Could the 'sleep bug' be resolved by 'dialling down' the performance aspect a bit?

 

[internetzel]

After a week (or slightly more) I'd like to report how (relatively) long-term testing of this WX4170 VBIOS went.

To be clear - it appears to be very good. It is stable, there were no unwanted reboots during either benchmarking, light use, or sleep. There is one drawback or 'sleep bug' (as I call it) - sometimes the GPU is throttled on wake form sleep. This happens almost always with the card having Samsung K4G80325FB-HC28 RAM ICs, and rarely (but still does happen) with the modded card having SKhynix H5GQ8H24MJR-R4C RAM ICs. (I do have a third WX4170 card with Samsung K4G80325FB-HC25 RAM ICs without a machine to test it in. In preliminary tests this card behaved similarly as the one with SKHynix RAM.) I wish I could be more specific, but I could not find a 'rule'. Also, once the GPU is throttled that doesn't necessarily mean it will remain so. On the next wake it could be back to full performance...

It appears that this VBIOS is built with performance in mind. And it offers very good performance (when unthrottled), too - an average MetalBench score of 73 after 2 hours of benchmarking. What seemed a bit worrying is the Power consumption (while benchmarking) as reported by iStat: it was at 115W for the card with Samsung K4G80325FB-HC28 RAM ICs and at 77W for the card with SKhynix H5GQ8H24MJR-R4C RAM ICs. (Temperatures were sensible though, 55C-56C at most.) Could the 'sleep bug' be resolved by 'dialling down' the performance aspect a bit?

Did you observe GPU and memory clock in your tests? If so, which one got stuck after sleep?

 

[dfranetic]

Did you observe GPU and memory clock in your tests? If so, which one got stuck?

I did briefly - first it seemed they both got stuck (Core Clock at 214MHz, Memory Clock at 300MHz), but now I see that the Memory clock does make an occasional jump to 1.5GHz (at both cards).

 

[internetzel]

I did briefly - first it seemed they both got stuck (Core Clock at 214MHz, Memory Clock at 300MHz), but now I see that the Memory clock does make an occasional jump to 1.5GHz (at both cards).

I'll upload some VBIOSes this week which I had specially created not to show that stuck clock issue before or after sleep.
Would be nice if you could examine those as well!

 

[axrst]

Sorry for the off-topic, but as I can see, some of you guys, are experts on the VBIOSes.

Is there a similar VBIOS available for the RX580, so to be able to have boot screens on my MacPro on Mojave and later?

 

[internetzel]

Sorry for the off-topic, but as I can see, some of you guys, are experts on the VBIOSes.

Is there a similar VBIOS available for the RX580, so to be able to have boot screens on my MacPro on Mojave and later?

Should be possible to create such a VBIOS. I myself would currently not want to do this, because of lack of time and lack of space for a MacPro - and of course I haven't got a MacPro with such a graphics card.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Sorry for the off-topic, but as I can see, some of you guys, are experts on the VBIOSes.

Is there a similar VBIOS available for the RX580, so to be able to have boot screens on my MacPro on Mojave and later?

It's already available. Watch the below video and get the vBIOS from the link down there.

Another video with CH341a driver.

 

[axrst]

It's already available. Watch the below video and get the vBIOS from the link down there.

Thank you.

As I can see though, it's not a simple software only solution (as in iMac), but needs a chip replacement.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Thank you.

As I can see though, it's not a simple software only solution (as in iMac), but needs a chip replacement.

Yeah, all of those labour just for the native bootscreen and Mojave only, while OCLP already works and gives you boot screen.

 

[JohnPascololo]

Does not affect Windows.

You face a hardware problem. Some cards cause this problems. You are not the first posting this. Get another card or use it in an iMac11,x.

Thanks for clarifying. I was able however to turn on the iGPU with device-id property under DeviceProperties section in the config.xml just for a test and it does not change the situation in regard to OC. It even made it worse with not turning off at all and freezing on wake.

So in detail the observation with native OC install is as follows: If the Mac sleeps and I click the left mouse button the USB powers up for a second (mouse has translucent mouse wheel so I can see it gets power because the LED in the optics light up) - so it tries to wake, the fans turn on, screen turns on but black and then it just gets stuck, no keyboard/USB. If I turn on safe sleep (with hibernate mode 3) I'm able to continue after turning it off and turning it on again so it will eventually load the persisted RAM from disk. Interestingly enough this also occurs in Bootcamp/Windows.

Also I'm having the render issues in Safari which @Ausdauersportler mentioned in a PM to me, which are probably more an Apple bug but very annoying. So all put together It is probably a better choice to go with an AMD card?

Are there known problems with Sleep using AMD cards? Does anyone have a "left over" metal supported AMD card that runs in a 12,2 and want's to sell it

If I got this right the WX7100 Dell MXM card is practically an RX 580? I have found some on Ali but the prices are ridiculous...

 

[vkd]

Hi,
I have a Fusion Drive in my 2011 iMac and I'm in the process of putting a K2100M in it. Now I am thinking, if the HDD fails, which means total data loss on SSD too, and have to replace it, how will it be possible if I have to boot the GPU with OpenCore? Basically it'll be a Hackintosh, so to set up a new storage config, in other words replace HDD, I'd have to put the standard 6770M back in again to do that.

Or will it boot vanilla, just without the backlight and maybe boot menu?

The other way that comes to mind is to set up now, before changing GPUs, to a High Sierra boot partition on the SSD and make a Fusion Drive with the rest of the SSD + HDD. (I like Fusion Drives, so please don't come speaking bad about them )

Anyone can confirm or reject any of this speculation?

 

[davidg5678]

Hi,
I have a Fusion Drive in my 2011 iMac and I'm in the process of putting a K2100M in it. Now I am thinking, if the HDD fails, which means total data loss on SSD too, and have to replace it, how will it be possible if I have to boot the GPU with OpenCore? Basically it'll be a Hackintosh, so to set up a new storage config, in other words replace HDD, I'd have to put the standard 6770M back in again to do that.

Or will it boot vanilla, just without the backlight and maybe boot menu?

The other way that comes to mind is to set up now, before changing GPUs, to a High Sierra boot partition on the SSD and make a Fusion Drive with the rest of the SSD + HDD. (I like Fusion Drives, so please don't come speaking bad about them )

Anyone can confirm or reject any of this speculation?

If you'd like to make your installation of OpenCore function independently of whatever disk is installed inside your computer, I'd recommend running OpenCore from an SD card or USB drive.

 

[internetzel]

Here my latest GOP (this means you'll need OpenCore in order to have a boot picker) VBIOSes for all AMD Polaris cards.
Those VBIOSes have been tested for a lot of time now, with the exception of the VRAM configurations, which appeared only recently and were collected by @Ausdauersportler and @edwardgeo.
They should allow for proper boosting and throttling, before and after sleep, as well as in Windows. However, boosting and throttling may behave differently after the first time waking your iMac from sleep.

The WX4130 and WX4150 types differ in VRAM configuration only. Shaders are unlocked on the WX4130 so it should perform the same as the WX4150.

The WX4170 VBIOSes differ from the WX4150 ones only in terms of higher GPU clock - but the WX4170 has more shaders available in hardware, so you may use the WX4150 VBIOSes on your WX4170 if you want it to stay cooler (you'll not loose the additional shaders).

The _ALT_VRAM variants have the VRAM configuration from the VBIOS provided by @edwardgeo - you should try those if you experience issues with the "normal" one.

Please report your experiences with the attached VBIOSes!
For an official release we should sort out whether or not we need both VRAM configurations for the WX4150 and WX4170.

Note: The WX41x0 VBIOSes don't support Bootcamp. This could be fixed, but I won't do so unless there is some actual need for that.

 

[edwardgeo]

Here my latest GOP (this means you'll need OpenCore in order to have a boot picker) VBIOSes for all AMD Polaris cards, except the WX7100 for now.
Those VBIOSes have been tested for a lot of time now, with the exception of the VRAM configurations, which appeared only recently and were collected by @Ausdauersportler and @edwardgeo. (That means that effectively only the WX4130 and RX480 VBIOSes have been tested in their final state!)
They should allow for proper boosting and throttling, before and after sleep, as well as in Windows. However, boosting and throttling may behave differently after the first time waking your iMac from sleep.

The WX4130 and both WX4150 types differ in VRAM configuration only. Shaders are unlocked on the WX4130 so it should perform the same as the WX4150.

The WX4170 VBIOSes differ from the WX4150 ones only in terms of higher GPU clock - but the WX4170 has more shaders available in hardware, so you may use the WX4150 VBIOSes on your WX4170 if you want it to stay cooler (you'll not loose the additional shaders).

The _ALT_VRAM variants have the VRAM configuration from the VBIOS provided by @edwardgeo - you should try those if you experience issues with the "normal" one.

Please report your experiences with the attached VBIOSes!
For an official release we should sort out whether or not we need both VRAM configurations for the WX4150 and WX4170.

That allows a bootscreen?

 

[internetzel]

No, only via OpenCore.

The VBIOSes which support native boot screens need to have the connectors fixed in the EFI driver the way @nikey22 is currently exploring - so far I've only got as far as getting a native boot screen on the internal display as long as an external display is connected.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Hi,
I have a Fusion Drive in my 2011 iMac and I'm in the process of putting a K2100M in it. Now I am thinking, if the HDD fails, which means total data loss on SSD too, and have to replace it, how will it be possible if I have to boot the GPU with OpenCore? Basically it'll be a Hackintosh, so to set up a new storage config, in other words replace HDD, I'd have to put the standard 6770M back in again to do that.

Or will it boot vanilla, just without the backlight and maybe boot menu?

The other way that comes to mind is to set up now, before changing GPUs, to a High Sierra boot partition on the SSD and make a Fusion Drive with the rest of the SSD + HDD. (I like Fusion Drives, so please don't come speaking bad about them )

Anyone can confirm or reject any of this speculation?

If you do it correctly, OpenCore would be stored in 200MB hidden EFI volume of the SSD, which will not be lost when the HDD fails, unless the SSD itself is dead and not accessible.
In that worst case scenario, an Opencore USB can be created from any Mac to boot your iMac 2011.
Without Opencore, a normal iMac 2011 with flashed K2100m is expected to display the bootscreen if you press and hold "Option" when powering it on.

 

[vkd]

Without Opencore, a normal iMac 2011 with flashed K2100m is expected to display the bootscreen if you press and hold "Option" when powering it on.

Ah, so then I could just create a Mac OS install USB and go from there?

 

[JohnPascololo]

I would like to know if there are multiple BIOSes I could try with the GTX 880m? Is there such thing as the latest BIOS that I could download somewhere? I mean untweaked native BIOSes without Bootscreen & stuff? I just want to check if that sleep wake issue can be fixed with another BIOS.

 

[JohnPascololo]

… also: is it possible to clock down the Core frequency in the BIOS? I tested with GTA V and it runs very hot up to 93degree max which is probably by design for this card because it is basically an overclocked 780 but way too much for my opinion….

 

[m0bil]

… also: is it possible to clock down the Core frequency in the BIOS? I tested with GTA V and it runs very hot up to 93degree max which is probably by design for this card because it is basically an overclocked 780 but way too much for my opinion….

From my experience with the 780M, these cards with a TDP of 122W are a bit on the edge for the iMac. I mean, 99% of the time they will work fine, even with Valley benchmark, but under long heavy gaming sessions I've sometimes ended up having hard shutdowns even with stock clocks (specially now with over 35ºC ambient temperature in summer).

I've carefully installed GPU with high quality paste for core and ram, so I guess the heatsink/fan has problems evacuating that much heat. (the 3 pipes heatsink was designed for the 6970M with a TDP of 75W).

It is possible to tweak (under or over) vbios clocks with Kepler Bios Tweaker, it's easy to find information about that on the net.

BTW, one nasty side effect of these hard shutdowns on my iMac / 780M when stressing the card is that sometimes it won't POST again until I remove the card and make 3 PRAM resets without any card installed.