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

[Ausdauersportler]

I have already apply post install patch, graphics acceleration seems to work, i already install OCLP, MacOS big sur was instable.. finder often disappeared and i couldn't do anything just reboot.
Where are OCLP onlines docs?

Where did you find the OCLP download?
Any chance that you start once reading the whole text there before simply hitting the download button?

The "instability" is an Apple APFS bug. One can get around it when having a clean system without any pre Big Sur APFS filesystems.

 

[nick0k]

I downloaded OCLP in the link of the 1st post, here https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/
normally i read the whole text😉
so since I had big sur before (but I formatted the ssd), do you think there is a BigSur pre filesystem?
I found these indications

General troubleshooting | OpenCore Legacy Patcher

 

[Ausdauersportler]

No!

Forget all this! There is no sleep/wake problem on Monterey as far as I know and if there is one dozens of iMac2011+NVIDIA GPU users would have posted here or on Discord.

About crashing apps and APFS:
Normally one should use the disk utility bundled with the installer to prepare the APFS to be used for the new installation. Problems arise if one has another macOS installation with an older APFS (High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina). But the root cause is not clear.

All this is off topic - please use the Monterey or Big Sur thread!

EDIT:
Go back to Big Sur and check if sleep/wake is working. Or wait for the Monterey 12.1 and OLCP updates, install both and reapply the patches and hope for the best!

 

[KennyW]

Unfortunately I have returned the defective K2100M and have to choose a new GPU
I have two iMacs
iMac 27 2010 and iMac 21 2011
I would like a stable system with Big Sure
On the web I find the WX4130 but the price is high (supported by Monterey) and the M5100 (great prices) but it needs a special configuration
I need your point of view
Thanks so much for your time

Due to the great no. of failing stock AMD HDxxxx cards in these iMacs, there is a big demand for such GPU upgrade and also Metal support to run the latest macOS. This has driven the rising price of all these newer AMD MXM GPUs, and to some extent the nVidia. A year ago when I got the WX4130 it was at half its current price. The Mxxxx series like the M5100 are considered cheap at present but the price is also slowing rising. They are the older generation cards as compared to the WXxxxx series, and probably less future macOS-proof. The hassle is the more difficult setup requiring a pre-modification of OC before installation of the GPU to properly run. Detailed steps have been provided by Ausdauersportler in one of his posts here. If you can read it and understand it, then you can probably go in that way. I have only the experience on installing the WX4130 and that seems simple enough for me, and the current OCLP setup is quite user friendly and mostly automatic. Consider that the expense will actually spread over a few years of the future life span of your iMac unless your iMac due to old age unexpectedly breaks for some other reason beyond savage. The cost of investment of 30 to 40 dollars a year is well worth it in my opinion. Or else, save and get the new M1 Macmini.

 

[luke9511]

what programmer do i need to program a winbond 25X20CLNIG for the graphics card replacement? i have a CH341A programmer and a TL866plusii

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

what programmer do i need to program a winbond 25X20CLNIG for the graphics card replacement? i have a CH341A programmer and a TL866plusii

The keyword for Googling is

"CH341A programmer software"

Video instruction. The guy in the video was erasing the password of the EFI, but the process is the same or less complicated for video card.

 

[CY Yong]

Hi, can allow me to get out of the topic for awhile?
My spec is as below.
And I'm Heavy Microsoft office user, I'm working something as costing + account.
So I will use quite a heavy excel file with lot of formula and lookup.

But I found out that my IMac is quite slow when handle these document (Excel version 16.43)

Do anyone know how to fix it or make it run faster?

 

[nick0k]

No!

Forget all this! There is no sleep/wake problem on Monterey as far as I know and if there is one dozens of iMac2011+NVIDIA GPU users would have posted here or on Discord.

About crashing apps and APFS:
Normally one should use the disk utility bundled with the installer to prepare the APFS to be used for the new installation. Problems arise if one has another macOS installation with an older APFS (High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina). But the root cause is not clear.

All this is off topic - please use the Monterey or Big Sur thread!

EDIT:
Go back to Big Sur and check if sleep/wake is working. Or wait for the Monterey 12.1 and OLCP updates, install both and reapply the patches and hope for the best!

Morning,
Clear.
i understand.
So i have to reinstall Big Sur.. i agree
Before installing each Macos i used the disk utility to initialize the ssd. I do some tests these days and then I'll tell you!

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hi, can allow me to get out of the topic for awhile?
My spec is as below.
And I'm Heavy Microsoft office user, I'm working something as costing + account.
So I will use quite a heavy excel file with lot of formula and lookup.

But I found out that my IMac is quite slow when handle these document (Excel version 16.43)

Do anyone know how to fix it or make it run faster?

Really slightly off topic but I assume the biggest speed bump you can have with these older iMacs is installing an SSD internally and replace the ancient HDD. This is not that complicated as changing the GPU.

You already have the top model (CPU, memory) of this line so there is nothing else to do to accelerate your application.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Morning,
Clear.
i understand.
So i have to reinstall Big Sur.. i agree
Before installing each Macos i used the disk utility to initialize the ssd. I do some tests these days and then I'll tell you!

Good morning!

Same time zone (Europe)? I know we recommended to have a High Sierra partition in place (fall back) but recently we figured out that this causes conflicts with Big Sur and Monterey. So please try to install a single macOS (Big Sur) on your internal SSD to rule out such problems. I deleted all High Sierra fall back partitions.

About the error with crashing apps and Finder: We all had this and there is/was still an ongoing discussion. Removing all other APFS file systems from the system was one resolution successfully applied on MacPro5,1 and iMac12,2.

Had this problem here during summer time, too. Took me some work and some weeks to delete all test installations from my productive platform, but now I have not seen the problem with Monterey or Big Sur for months, again. You know, I use AMD cards, only - many thanks to @internetzel for his great work every day again! But it is not related in any way to the GPU. It happens on iMacs with old ATI cards, too. On Discord a user complained about it last night.

 

[antoniomac]

I am using this WX4150 card below in my 2010 and 2011 27” iMacs and is working flawless in Big Sur and Monterey. A little pricey maybe but since you need two maybe you can try negotiating with the seller on a pair of them:

2010 iMac 11,3 i7 870, 16 GB, WX4150 w/WX4150_GOP.rom vBios, OCLP 0.3.1 Monterey 12.0.1
2011 iMac 12,2 i7 2600, 32 GB, WX4150 w/WX4150_GOP.rom vBios, OCLP 0.3.1 Monterey 12.0.1

Dell Precision 7520 AMD Radeon Pro WX 4150 4GB Video Card V30XX | eBay

DP/N: V30XX.

www.ebay.com

This is a great cpu but the seller is American.
I should pay the customs fees

Due to the great no. of failing stock AMD HDxxxx cards in these iMacs, there is a big demand for such GPU upgrade and also Metal support to run the latest macOS. This has driven the rising price of all these newer AMD MXM GPUs, and to some extent the nVidia. A year ago when I got the WX4130 it was at half its current price. The Mxxxx series like the M5100 are considered cheap at present but the price is also slowing rising. They are the older generation cards as compared to the WXxxxx series, and probably less future macOS-proof. The hassle is the more difficult setup requiring a pre-modification of OC before installation of the GPU to properly run. Detailed steps have been provided by Ausdauersportler in one of his posts here. If you can read it and understand it, then you can probably go in that way. I have only the experience on installing the WX4130 and that seems simple enough for me, and the current OCLP setup is quite user friendly and mostly automatic. Consider that the expense will actually spread over a few years of the future life span of your iMac unless your iMac due to old age unexpectedly breaks for some other reason beyond savage. The cost of investment of 30 to 40 dollars a year is well worth it in my opinion. Or else, save and get the new M1 Macmini.

Your speech is correct, I may have found a bargain for the WX4130

 

[luke9511]

The keyword for Googling is

"CH341A programmer software"

Video instruction. The guy in the video was erasing the password of the EFI, but the process is the same or less complicated for video card.

that doesnt tell me which programmer i need to program the eeprom

 

[CY Yong]

Really slightly off topic but I assume the biggest speed bump you can have with these older iMacs is installing an SSD internally and replace the ancient HDD. This is not that complicated as changing the GPU.

You already have the top model (CPU, memory) of this line so there is nothing else to do to accelerate your application.

Thanks, i had upgrade it to 1TB SSD as well, but i still feel it's respond quite slow on those heavy excel file.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

that doesnt tell me which programmer i need to program the eeprom

Yeah, you need to read and understand, too.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Thanks, i had upgrade it to 1TB SSD as well, but i still feel it's respond quite slow on those heavy excel file.

Since I cannot check the way your heavy excel files are programmed the only other option is creating a RAM disk, moving all your data and excel files over there and run everything completely cached in memory. After finishing you have to copy results back to SDD.

But I assume the 32GB of your machine are already used heavily for filesystem caching. So at the end no difference might be visible.

The last option is doing a run time analysis of your excel files (honestly this is a horrible tool to do real math calculations, it was never optimized to get it quickly done) and identify the time consuming parts and refit them to run more quickly.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Excel is notorious for consuming CPU calculating power.
There are several famous Excel files made for CPU benchmarking/stress-testing as well. (Super Pi, etc.)
The issue resides inside the program, not the hardware.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

what programmer do i need to program a winbond 25X20CLNIG for the graphics card replacement? i have a CH341A programmer and a TL866plusii

First post, FAQ, Q3.

 

[luke9511]

First post, FAQ, Q3.

see thats helpful the other person not so much, so thanks

 

[khoe]

hello I swapped the graphics card in my Imac 12.2 from an AMD for an NVIDIA Quadro K4100M from niky22 with 4 GB in mid-2011. The system runs very well with it. But I noticed that the display on the monitor is very dark, even though I have set the slider to the maximum. It is still enough to edit pictures. But it would be nice if there could be a little more light. Other options are available. At startup the screen is much brighter. The Adjust brightness setting is deactivated. It's great when someone speaks a little German, I don't speak English very well. Thanks for the help. -------------------------------------------------- ---------------- The system iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011) Processor: 3.4 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 Memory 32 GB Nvidia Quadro K4100m by Nikey22 4 Gb Catalina operating system 10.15.7

Thanks Klaus

 

[globetribe]

hi all,
M5100 is supposed to be delivered so moving forward with my project of rebranding my iMac 21’ 2011.
I have already installed Monterey on and external SSD. BT working natively and Wifi fixed using post install patch. At the moment I am using the stock card and OCLP acceleration. It works as expected. Only issue i get is with sleep mode. Computer enter / exits sleep with w/o any problem except the screen that looks still powered on.
Your help appreciated.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

hi all,
M5100 is supposed to be delivered so moving forward with my project of rebranding my iMac 21’ 2011.
I have already installed Monterey on and external SSD. BT working natively and Wifi fixed using post install patch. At the moment I am using the stock card and OCLP acceleration. It works as expected. Only issue i get is with sleep mode. Computer enter / exits sleep with w/o any problem except the screen that looks still powered on.
Your help appreciated.

Not sure if you read my posts:

M5100 will break sleep on iMac12,x. Display will switch off, system can not, would crash on wake.
About the OCLP with the ATI please check Discord or OCLP docs. This is off topic, here?

 

[globetribe]

Not sure if you read my posts:

M5100 will break sleep on iMac12,x. Display will switch off, system can not, would crash on wake.
About the OCLP with the ATI please check Discord or OCLP docs. This is off topic, here?

Indeed. Tks for pointing out.
Will ask in Discord

Ps : and yes I read ur post about wake issue with m5100. Benefits definitely above this issue

 

[TwanaKez]

Ok time for another sanity check. I still cant figure out why the OS feels like running through thick molasses, despite benchmarks appearing healthy.

It's things like, just running the pointer through menu items, opening Finder windows, using Mail and Safari that seem laggy and sluggish.

Suspecting maybe RAM or the SSD, I've run tests on the SSD which seems fine, and ran the ASD for this model and it passed all the checks including ram tests without issue (just a red mark for the HD temp sensor)

The way the system is behaving reminds me of how things run on a Hackintosh if the SMBIOS is set with the wrong System Definition.

So just checking, are we *sure* things are running normally on Big Sur with these models?
As it would stand to reason that things could be running poorly considering Big Sur was not designed to run on this System Definition.

Ok, could it be that thermal paste in not applied correctly?
GPU heatsink doesn't appear to go much above 50 degrees.

Would there be any way to test this, perhaps in Windows or Linux?

Thanks.

 

[CY Yong]

Since I cannot check the way your heavy excel files are programmed the only other option is creating a RAM disk, moving all your data and excel files over there and run everything completely cached in memory. After finishing you have to copy results back to SDD.

But I assume the 32GB of your machine are already used heavily for filesystem caching. So at the end no difference might be visible.

The last option is doing a run time analysis of your excel files (honestly this is a horrible tool to do real math calculations, it was never optimized to get it quickly done) and identify the time consuming parts and refit them to run more quickly.

Excel is notorious for consuming CPU calculating power.
There are several famous Excel files made for CPU benchmarking/stress-testing as well. (Super Pi, etc.)
The issue resides inside the program, not the hardware.

Thank Ausdauersportler, Nguyen Duc Hieu,

Thanks for both of your advice, I will try with RAM disk first.

Nguyen Duc Hieu,
It's surprised to see Vietnamese here, I'm living in Hanoi Hai Duong as well.

 

[Gorditcho]

We spent a lot of time on the first post to get and have it up to date. If you do not find a link or a vBIOS on the first post it has not been published (cum grano salis).

There is a search button on the top of this page. You may use it with a keyword like 660 and limit all results to this thread in case you doubt me to or the information published on the first post.

EDIT:
In the beginning users here just put in the card and tried. There is a good chance a Kepler 660 would work from the start but showing some of the seven problems mentioned on the first post.

After installing the GPU you can simply install OpenCore using the latest OCLP app to get an emulated boot screen as it is used with all AMD cards. In case your 660 GPU does not fire up the internal or an external display you might try to flash other available vBIOS versions (techpowerup.com is a great source). If you found a vBIOS working with internal and external displays, but still showing no OC boot screen you may use an GOP updater to add a GOP part to your vBIOS.

You see, OpenCore, flashing and surviving a black screen, no boot screen, GOP update - a lot of problems you may have to solve.

Hey @Ausdauersportler has anybody tried flashing the GTX 660M with the vBIOS from the GTX 680M, or is that just a crazy idea and the product of my fevered mind? 🤪