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iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
- Thread starter MichaelDT
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I keep hoping to find a repair shop or enthusiast in LA area to work on iMac GPUs.
From a quick look at the roms on the cards I can tell you that the iMac 780m has the exact combo of displays it supports spelled out in the rom.
The PC 780m I looked at had 2 or 3 times as many displays listed as possible. Windows dynamically chooses display outputs while OSX has always had the more rigidly defined.
The self-init NVIDIA drivers are designed to account for this with PCIE GPUs but I doubt that they have done the same with MXM cards.
The other unknown is where the rom is held. On some Apple machines the rom for GPU is now part of boot rom.
I'm short, until someone like myself has hands on an iMac GPU, it is doubtful that progress will be made. Fact that all new iMacs have GPU soldered in makes this even less likely.
From a quick look at the roms on the cards I can tell you that the iMac 780m has the exact combo of displays it supports spelled out in the rom.
The PC 780m I looked at had 2 or 3 times as many displays listed as possible. Windows dynamically chooses display outputs while OSX has always had the more rigidly defined.
The self-init NVIDIA drivers are designed to account for this with PCIE GPUs but I doubt that they have done the same with MXM cards.
The other unknown is where the rom is held. On some Apple machines the rom for GPU is now part of boot rom.
I'm short, until someone like myself has hands on an iMac GPU, it is doubtful that progress will be made. Fact that all new iMacs have GPU soldered in makes this even less likely.
I've been searching all over and here to see some success in upgrading the 2011 imac with non Apple GPU. I havent got a definite answer whether I can upgrade my mid-2011 iMac 27" AMD 6770m 512MB to an Alienware AMD 6970m 2GB. I know apple offer this GPU as an option for the higher end iMac.
Will something like this work?:
Will something like this work?:
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Yes, i have imac 27 2011 to 6770m, i bought ebay 6970m (native), replaced, light 4 LED, but after loading apple logo - white screen. This card is bad or something else to do after replace card?
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Sorry for the late answer, didn't got the notificatioins.
I don't really remember how many adapters there was listet on nvflash. But I think there where two of them. I'm also a beginner at flashing cards, so i can't really give you an qualified answer to the BIOS and EFI things. To answer your last question, yes, my iMac is running Yosemite.
Did this GPU ship in same iMac? Can you do safe boot? Will it boot a recovery partition or install disc? Did you apply thermal paste and make sure heatsink sitting flat?
Something isn't working but diagnosing from cryptic Internet posts is, at best, guesswork.
Yes, GPU from another iMac (together with the heatsink, 3 pipes).
Safe boot, boot recovery, boot internet recovery, usb image - apple logo, white screen. Only removed kext ati6000controller (system/library/extensions) boot ok, about this mac - graphics, see new GPU 6970m, run apple hardware test - no error.
Thermal paste no check, but first boot GPU is cold yet.
imac 21 inch mid 2011 can upgrade graphic card
Which graphics cards can upgrade if any send me the link please
Which graphics cards can upgrade if any send me the link please
Clevo GTX 680M 4Gb not detected
I received the MXM card today. It's a Clevo GTX 680M 4Gb with vBios 80.04.29.00.01. (http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/131179/clevo-gtx680m-4096-120507.html). However after hours of installation, my iMac does not recognised the new MXM and in black screen all the way. Only the 1st and 2nd LED indicators are ON. Sometimes my iMac refuses to start at all but after a few buttons it starts normally with chimes and thats it. Any ideas of what might have happened?
I received the MXM card today. It's a Clevo GTX 680M 4Gb with vBios 80.04.29.00.01. (http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/131179/clevo-gtx680m-4096-120507.html). However after hours of installation, my iMac does not recognised the new MXM and in black screen all the way. Only the 1st and 2nd LED indicators are ON. Sometimes my iMac refuses to start at all but after a few buttons it starts normally with chimes and thats it. Any ideas of what might have happened?
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Just jump the the previous page and read the long post of mine. This is exactly the case I tried, I got all symptoms you describe and explanation for some of them in the the post. Altogether it is just a waste of time as this won't work well at least not on OS X
Just jump the the previous page and read the long post of mine. This is exactly the case I tried, I got all symptoms you describe and explanation for some of them in the the post. Altogether it is just a waste of time as this won't work well at least not on OS X
Looks like a same symptoms. Have you tried flashing the BIOS yet?
More of a downgrade than an upgrade in my case, I have a mid 2011 imac(imac12,2 if it matters) with a 6970 that decided it wanted to die today. Perfect timing, right in the middle of a bunch of IOS work I need to get done.
Is there any reason I couldn't get a 6750 and put it in there, assuming it was taken out of a 21" imac from the same year? I have a better gaming machine now, so I just use the mac for development work, and the gpu doesn't really matter to me that much as long as it can run very low end games - basically mobile games running inside the unity editor.
From the looks of it, a replacement gpu is going to be obnoxiously expensive no matter what option I go for.
Is there any reason I couldn't get a 6750 and put it in there, assuming it was taken out of a 21" imac from the same year? I have a better gaming machine now, so I just use the mac for development work, and the gpu doesn't really matter to me that much as long as it can run very low end games - basically mobile games running inside the unity editor.
From the looks of it, a replacement gpu is going to be obnoxiously expensive no matter what option I go for.
I'm currently working on a writeup of my experience attempting an upgrade of a Dell GTX 780M on a mid-2011 27" iMac. I got it fully working in OS X using the Clover bootloader and would like to share how I was able to do that. However, I could not get Windows working (probably a driver issue as I couldn't install the driver without the card installed and only saw a black screen when it was installed). This was unacceptable, since casual gaming in Windows was the primary reason for upgrading the card. Ultimately, I gave up because of the compatibility issues due to the card not having EFI. I came to the realization that, without EFI, any OS X update had to be done very carefully. Additionally, reinstalling OS X or Windows (if one uses Bootcamp) was impossible without swapping back to an EFI card. To my knowledge, no one is working on an EFI solution for the 6xxM and 7xxM cards like MacVidCards does with desktop cards for the Mac Pro, probably due to the limited performance gain of using mobile GPUs. I think I read MacVidCards say somewhere that the process of EFI development takes months for each individual card model.
This is the direction I went: I bought a 2010 Mac Pro for around $400 and am slowly upgrading the internals (I now have a flashed 780). It's been a much more fulfilling process, as the 780 costed slightly less than the 780M I originally purchased for my iMac with nearly twice the performance. I realize this isn't the ideal solution for everyone (my original draw to the iMac was the small amount of space it took up), but without an EFI solution, using a card that is not officially supported is a pain since you WILL be swapping the card out for an EFI one occassionally.
Robert
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You should be fine with any MXM 3.0 card from an iMac. All that really matters is having EFI on the card, with which all iMac cards come.
Good to know, thanks. To Ebay with me! Unless of course there's somewhere better to find these things.
eBay is usually the best, especially if you aren't in a rush and have the time to wait for a good deal. Someone on these forums might have one for sale, also.
Pipe dream?
I love to check in on this thread from time to time and dream about what I could do to my 2011 iMac some day.
I know that the 780M is currently the latest NVIDIA card used in iMac, but I can't help but wonder--how much of a pipe dream would the GTX 970M 6GB or the GTX 980M 8GB be? I presume things like a boot screen wouldn't be possible, but could you get far enough to at least install NVIDIA's drivers and have a functional machine? Anybody have any experience with these?
Here's a link to some Alienware versions being sold on Eurocom--
http://www.eurocom.com/ec/vgas(1)ec
I love to check in on this thread from time to time and dream about what I could do to my 2011 iMac some day.
I know that the 780M is currently the latest NVIDIA card used in iMac, but I can't help but wonder--how much of a pipe dream would the GTX 970M 6GB or the GTX 980M 8GB be? I presume things like a boot screen wouldn't be possible, but could you get far enough to at least install NVIDIA's drivers and have a functional machine? Anybody have any experience with these?
Here's a link to some Alienware versions being sold on Eurocom--
http://www.eurocom.com/ec/vgas(1)ec
Hi!
I have iMac 2011 21,5" 2.5ghz etc... with AMD readon 6750m 512mb.
I want to upgrade my graphic card as well as processor...
Which graphic card is supported? I want to see my iMac working normally after instalation. What i need to do to? Just put my graphic card inside instead my old card? Or should i install something? Price limit is something around 300$
Next think is processor. I think, that i7 2600 would be great http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Cor...593?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item2ee115c7b1
is it possible to chance it? Would temperatures be ok? Should i install something (fimrware or i dont know what) after putting it on place?
Thanks for answers
I have iMac 2011 21,5" 2.5ghz etc... with AMD readon 6750m 512mb.
I want to upgrade my graphic card as well as processor...
Which graphic card is supported? I want to see my iMac working normally after instalation
. What i need to do to? Just put my graphic card inside instead my old card? Or should i install something? Price limit is something around 300$ Next think is processor. I think, that i7 2600 would be great
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Cor...593?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item2ee115c7b1is it possible to chance it? Would temperatures be ok? Should i install something (fimrware or i dont know what) after putting it on place?
Thanks for answers
The place where these updates run into major issues is that Apple used a non-standard device id on it's 780M. So anyone else's will likely NOT be in the drivers.
I'd be happy to take a whack at putting an EFI on one, but if it isn't in the drivers there is little point.
I would strongly suggest that before the surgery you enable screen sharing and have another Mac that you know how to log in with. That way if you end up with black screen on iMac you may be able to remotely "see" what is happening.
I have very little time to offer but if an iMac repair facility in LA wanted to work on this, I would be game.
UPDATE: I just researched this again. The Apple 780M uses id of 119E. The Alienware and Dell versions use 119F. Just off by one letter of Hex, but to a computer that is enough. Driver doesn't see a card it can "match" to and that is that. Ideally you would have an Apple 780M and the Alienware version next to each other. It is likely that the number is changed via a small resistor either being in a different position (bridging 1 & 2 instead of 2 &3) or having different value. (35K Ohms instead of 45K Ohms)
Only way to find and change is to have both.
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So what card i can buy? I was thinking about r9 m280x from imac 5k... http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.vie151675324406w&id=&alt=web
Will it Be ok?
Will it Be ok?
