I appreciate you try to help me, but I have to say, I'm not a programer and I don't understand anything you have written there...sorry for that. But anyway I see that what you wrote is for an iMac 21.5" and I have an iMac 27" mid 2011.
Got a tip for us?
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iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
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Well, nikey22 has answered your call. But I'd guess you are in the same boat like me: no idea on what he has said although I know the bits and bytes, even programmed assembly on Z80 CPU decades ago (really revealed my age
).Anyway, you should have one external monitor working.
I bought this on ebay. Boot screen and brightness worked natively perfectly fine.
If I follow those instructions, Do I have the risk to loose those features or is just going to do something new on top of the old patch?
Do you mean that one external monitor should work without doing anything, just plug it in and go?Well, nikey22 has answered your call. But I'd guess you are in the same boat like me: no idea on what he has said although I know the bits and bytes, even programmed assembly on Z80 CPU decades ago (really revealed my age
Anyway, you should have one external monitor working.
Because at this moment doesn't work.....
So you did the patch on my card...GOOD!! Are you saying that with this card should work one external monitor plugged in?
witch out doing anything? just plug the monitor of course.....😅
because it doesn't work!!
Did you buy the whole iMac including the graphics card, or just the card, because I am amazed you get everything working (except for the external monitor) without following #10,867, for which I did before installing a K3100M card into my iMac12,2.
What's the original graphics card you just replaced, and for what reason?
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If I follow those instructions you gave me, is it going to fix my problem with the external monitor?Do you mean that one external monitor should work without doing anything, just plug it in and go?
Because at this moment doesn't work.....
I ask you that because if I look in the custom install BSB10, I don't recognise the one it suppose to fix that. Or do I need to select all of them?
Sorry for my ignorance.....I just want to be sure before I do something wrong....
Thanks again!!
I am only slightly less ignorant than you. The best advice is to read the 1st post on page 1, as @Ausdauersportler always like to highlight, and for which I actually agree😅
I buy just the card because the original one was broken, is the one everybody knows about his failure. AMD Radeon HD 6970M. So I read about the possibility to upgrade with a beter card and that is why I decide to buy the GTX 870M.
I'm good on electronics and I did the repair my self.
In this case, you and I have something in common. I also had a faulty HD6970 and I am also an electronics guy (with some programming background). I revived my faulty HD6970 with my oven
😅🤣, which was running well with OCLP Catalina for a few months before decided to go one step further by installing a metal K3100M card which allows me to run Monterey on this iMac12,2.
That trick worked out also for me!!
Thanks a lot for the tip.
But it's a petty we can not use HDMI or DVI adaptors!! We loose a lot of image quality using the VGA.
But well, at least now I can use my second monitor.
Thanks!!
Of course! my iMac too but with the help of aan multi adapter to VGA, HDMI or DVI. But it only works with the VGA.
The thing is that the answer was pretty simple..... Just try another type of connection for the monitor.
I meant the DP on my external monitor. I previously connected to another monitor with a DVI port, also works. I suspect your adapter is the issue.
Have an external HDMI display working with a simple HDMI to miniDP cable. There is absolutely no need to use VGA. DVI to miniDP needs to be active.
Most guys complaining about lack of connectivity to displays have a different (black screen) problem.
My miniDP to DVI adaptor (+ a DVI cable) does not use external power and it works well on my iMac12,2 with K3100M: just tested again now. And only one external miniDP port works, which is the one closer to the USB ports.
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G'day!!
People in this community, you are bunch of legends. Thank you for making it possible to keep my iMac 2011 27" working.
With the guidance from this thread I recently replaced the fried AMD6970M with an NVIDIA GTX880M 8GB and it works beautifully with MacOS X 10.10.5 thanks to nick22 who modified the BIOS/Firmware. So now I have a fully functional iMac 2011 27" 32GB RAM, 8GB vRAM, 1TB HD.
I have a couple of questions I couldn't find well supported answers to anywhere in this thread that I hope the more experienced members of the community will be able to answer:
- The original graphics card had memory chips only on one side and even though they had thermal paste on them, after cleaning and during the process of modifying the heat sink for the GTX880M I noticed there is roughly a 1mm gap between the chips and the heat sink.
This raises some questions which are only important if the first answer is yes: Do the memory chips really need to be cooled? Should a heat transfer pad be used instead of paste with such a wide gap? What to do with the memory chips on the other side where there is currently no heat sink?
- The GTX880M is not reporting temperature using Mac Fan Control. I read something about loosing temperature reporting after BIOS updates (Post 1 Spoiler: Q12). Is this what Q12 refers to? For now I'm trusting that the GPU heat sink temperature is a good indication of the GPU temperature itself. All reported temperatures are very low (mid 20s to high 30s) and the machine feels cool to the touch.
- None of the benchmark tools that I saw listed seem to run well on Mac OS X 10.10.5. Valley crashes every time, the latest version of Geekbench doesn't even install and the older one is not connecting to the server at the end... Any suggestion on what I can use to test performance. Happy to use Ubuntu or even Windows (can't believe I said this) if that helps.
- One last question (for now) less important but interesting (for me at least). Does anybody know how far back in Mac OS X versions can I install still get the machine working with this graphics card? This machine was originally released with 10.6.6. Would that still run? I saw a lot of information about being able to use old machines with the latest Mac OS X but nothing about older versions.
Thank you very much. Keep up the good work.
F
People in this community, you are bunch of legends. Thank you for making it possible to keep my iMac 2011 27" working.
With the guidance from this thread I recently replaced the fried AMD6970M with an NVIDIA GTX880M 8GB and it works beautifully with MacOS X 10.10.5 thanks to nick22 who modified the BIOS/Firmware. So now I have a fully functional iMac 2011 27" 32GB RAM, 8GB vRAM, 1TB HD.
I have a couple of questions I couldn't find well supported answers to anywhere in this thread that I hope the more experienced members of the community will be able to answer:
- The original graphics card had memory chips only on one side and even though they had thermal paste on them, after cleaning and during the process of modifying the heat sink for the GTX880M I noticed there is roughly a 1mm gap between the chips and the heat sink.
This raises some questions which are only important if the first answer is yes: Do the memory chips really need to be cooled? Should a heat transfer pad be used instead of paste with such a wide gap? What to do with the memory chips on the other side where there is currently no heat sink?
- The GTX880M is not reporting temperature using Mac Fan Control. I read something about loosing temperature reporting after BIOS updates (Post 1 Spoiler: Q12). Is this what Q12 refers to? For now I'm trusting that the GPU heat sink temperature is a good indication of the GPU temperature itself. All reported temperatures are very low (mid 20s to high 30s) and the machine feels cool to the touch.
- None of the benchmark tools that I saw listed seem to run well on Mac OS X 10.10.5. Valley crashes every time, the latest version of Geekbench doesn't even install and the older one is not connecting to the server at the end... Any suggestion on what I can use to test performance. Happy to use Ubuntu or even Windows (can't believe I said this) if that helps.
- One last question (for now) less important but interesting (for me at least). Does anybody know how far back in Mac OS X versions can I install still get the machine working with this graphics card? This machine was originally released with 10.6.6. Would that still run? I saw a lot of information about being able to use old machines with the latest Mac OS X but nothing about older versions.
Thank you very much. Keep up the good work.
F
So.. i’m in trouble, i mean in this days of testing my iMac i always used for a very short time.. but since yesterday i’ve noticed after 30/40 min of activity.. everything i do (Safari, play video, email), the Finder disappear and i can’t do nothing only turn off physically rear button. And when i try to turn on… nothing happen, i have to plug off power cord and wait some minutes then try again, sometimes work sometimes i have to wait more. So last night when i wrote you to install catalina..i was desperate and so i did! New usb pen with Catalina e OCPL… boot from usb start ok, when i selected disk utility..i cannot format ssd.. i mean everything it’s work but i press format and nothing happens.. so first i removed every partitions and after i can able to format… and now?? The surprise was that when i have to choose the disk where install macos… the ssd is unavaiable! It’s darkened like usb..
And now??
Sorry for long threads.. i try to explain the best i can.. and i’m Italian, my language is inaccurate.
And now??
Sorry for long threads.. i try to explain the best i can.. and i’m Italian, my language is inaccurate.
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Just use the last version of macOS that will work with your 2011 iMac.
Consider replacing your 1 decade old Mac with a 2021/2022 iMac with Apple silicon
So it's correct buy a new generation imac, i've one mac mini and one macbook air yet.. you know.. i don't like to trash old stuff..😁.
but most of all in your opinion why my imac do this problem with finder? Now i try to recovery with internet to high sierra..
Stai installando una copia compromessa di macOS su hardware non supportato.
Quindi non vuoi cestinare il Mac vecchio di dieci anni? Dai valore al tuo tempo?
Hi mate,
I am not an expert here but feel may be able to answer your questions
Yes, the RAM chips need to be cooled. But they don't generate a lot of heat. 1mm gap is by design. The original one also has this gap. You can either use the thermal pads or paste. The RAM on the other side are air-cooled. It's all by design, so all are cool.
Yes, you can trust the GPU heatsink temperature reading. You should also attach the ODD temp sensor on to the GPU heatsink to provide extra protection (the MFC only works after login).
It could be caused by the old OSX. Not sure what to recommend.
I'd presume it would allow you to go back to the original released version of 10.6.6, but not tested.
May I ask: what would be the reason for going back? I'd thought most people want to go forward by installing metal GPU cards for Big Sur / Monterey, like in my case.
Have a good evening / night.
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