Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

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

Status
The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
torsapbro said:
Flashed in Mac os.There was no sound signal.Only one LED was on and that was it.
Click to expand...
1. You cannot flash it from macOS (as far as I know). The only software option I know is flashrom and using a clip CH341A.
2. Have you ever heard a chime when booting the RX470 card within your iMac12,2?
3. Do the fans start to spin when powering on the iMac with the card installed?
4. Have you ever been able to boot Linux or macOS or Windows while the card was installed?
 
Ausdauersportler said:
1. You cannot flash it from macOS (as far as I know). The only software option I know is flashrom and using a clip CH341A.
2. Have you ever heard a chime when booting the RX470 card within your iMac12,2?
3. Do the fans start to spin when powering on the iMac with the card installed?
4. Have you ever been able to boot Linux or macOS or Windows while the card was installed?
Click to expand...
1. Flashed in 1 way, using the CH341A clip in Mac os.
2. There was no sound signal.
3.The fans rotate and after 1 second the imac turns off.
4. no
 
torsapbro said:
1. Flashed in 1 way, using the CH341A clip in Mac os.
2. There was no sound signal.
3.The fans rotate and after 1 second the imac turns off.
4. no
Click to expand...
So your card is as incompatible with the iMac12,2 as our RX480 cards here. If you took some time reading on the very first post in advance you could have figured this out before starting this project and asking for help and forcing me to spending time on it (you might get an idea why most of my posts start with: read the documentation!).

The RX470 will likely run really perfectly in iMac11,1 and iMac11,3 models. There is no known way to fix this (hardware) problem.

P.S.: I would assume the currently flashed RX480 vBIOS will do fine in the other iMacs mentioned above. Get another card for your iMac12,2!
 
B0URNE said:
Still waiting on the 880M to arrive and will do similar upgrade on the 2011 using the OLCP to 12.4. The price and performance with this mgpu (according to passmark) is far better than the AMD 41x0 and roughly 20% better than the WX7170. The broken support for the Kepler architecture in 12.5 is a concern moving forward though.

I’m interested in the 7170 but waiting to see if the NVRAM reboot is resolved for the 2011. Not sure if native boot screen and brightness is at all possible with this series.
Click to expand...

Hi Bourne

I'm currently waiting on an 880M to arrive and was wondering if after physically installing the GPU if I can just use OCLP as outlined in this great video step though or do I have to flash the GPU BIOS first?

 
Hi I have an iMac 2011 21.5 inch, what card would you guys recommend to run Monterrey on the cheap? I don't care much about performance, the card that came by default with it was powerful enough for me, I don't care about sleep either

thank you

EDIT: If possible I would also like it to be able to run Windows
 
___ said:
Hi I have an iMac 2011 21.5 inch, what card would you guys recommend to run Monterrey on the cheap? I don't care much about performance, the card that came by default with it was powerful enough for me, I don't care about sleep either

thank you

EDIT: If possible I would also like it to be able to run Windows
Click to expand...
Go back 777 pages and 19,400 posts and start reading at the beginning of this nine year long trip. Cheap depends entirely on your local market.
 
Last edited:
$200 is a broad spectrum in this case. Any MXM-A AMD GPU detailed in the first post should work. IMO: Rock-bottom cheap? M5100/M4000. Best overall? WX4150. Still, those cards fit below your budget.
 
Marche90 said:
$200 is a broad spectrum in this case. Any MXM-A AMD GPU detailed in the first post should work. IMO: Rock-bottom cheap? M5100/M4000. Best overall? WX4150. Still, those cards fit below your budget.
Click to expand...
Thanks, is the WX4150 affected by this?

"Windows 10:
Installing W10 in UEFI mode is compatible with OpenCore (unlike BootCamp legacy Windows). Some (or all?) cards show the infamous error 43 in the DeviceManager. One can get around this (not tested with all cards except the RX480) using the driver signature patch as described on the page. Rename the tool and run as (Windows) admin and reboot."

And if driver signature patch is needed, I'm assuming it results in a still signed driver, right?
 
https://www.ebay.com/itm/374233617312？
www.ebay.com

For iMac 27" A1312 Mid 2009 2011 HD6970M upgrade NVIDIA GTX 765M 2GB Video Card | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for For iMac 27" A1312 Mid 2009 2011 HD6970M upgrade NVIDIA GTX 765M 2GB Video Card at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com
www.ebay.com

For iMac 27" A1312 Mid 2009 2010 2011 upgrade NVIDIA K3100M 4GB GPU Video Card | eBay

For Apple iMac 27" A1312 Mid 2009 2010 2011 upgrade NVIDIA Quadro K3100M 4GB GDDR5 GPU Video Card. Custom official may open and remove for inspection. Full warranty against any defective product.
www.ebay.com
I found a shop that has a lot of graphics cards that offer upgrades and don't know how to choose.
 
computer expert 111 said:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/374233617312？
www.ebay.com

For iMac 27" A1312 Mid 2009 2011 HD6970M upgrade NVIDIA GTX 765M 2GB Video Card | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for For iMac 27" A1312 Mid 2009 2011 HD6970M upgrade NVIDIA GTX 765M 2GB Video Card at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com
www.ebay.com

For iMac 27" A1312 Mid 2009 2010 2011 upgrade NVIDIA K3100M 4GB GPU Video Card | eBay

For Apple iMac 27" A1312 Mid 2009 2010 2011 upgrade NVIDIA Quadro K3100M 4GB GDDR5 GPU Video Card. Custom official may open and remove for inspection. Full warranty against any defective product.
www.ebay.com
I found a shop that has a lot of graphics cards that offer upgrades and don't know how to choose.
Click to expand...
www.ebay.com

New AMD WX4150 4GB MXM GDDR5 Video Card 109-C98581-00_02 APPLE iMac A1311 A1312 | eBay

This is 100% original New AMD WX4150 4GB MXM GDDR5 Video Card 109-C98581-00_02. - iMac 12,2 with old graphcis AMD HD6970M 1G / 2G, must buy a new X-bracket too. - needs High Sierra or better (AMD support).
www.ebay.com
 
  • Like
Reactions: Oyah12
computer expert 111 said:
I think you can choose it, hope it helps you.
www.ebay.com

New AMD WX4150 4GB MXM GDDR5 Video Card 109-C98581-00_02 APPLE iMac A1311 A1312 | eBay

This is 100% original New AMD WX4150 4GB MXM GDDR5 Video Card 109-C98581-00_02. - iMac 12,2 with old graphcis AMD HD6970M 1G / 2G, must buy a new X-bracket too. - needs High Sierra or better (AMD support).
www.ebay.com
Click to expand...
Please stop posting ebay links. We do not comment on offers (since we cannot or want not guarantee you will get what has been displayed, a lot of shop owners cannot distinguish their own products and send out wrong products) and we do not promote shops here. The last point is also in violation with the general forum rules.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Nguyen Duc Hieu
Ausdauersportler said:
Please stop posting ebay links. We do not comment on offers (since we cannot or want not guarantee you will get what has been displayed, a lot of shop owners cannot distinguish their own products and send out wrong products) and we do not promote shops here. The last point is also in violation with the general forum rules.
Click to expand...
Sorry, I don't know the rules, please forgive me.
 
computer expert 111 said:
Sorry, I don't know the rules, please forgive me.
Click to expand...
It is not that bad.

Another point is this: Such links get out of date very soon. So there is not long term value of such links. A seller might go out of business, cards get out of stock. A friend in Brazil got a completely wrong card two weeks ago after waiting a month for delivery.

The general (buying) rule is:

Do not go with the fastest and biggest cards, they might have been played to death in gaming laptops (NVIDIA) or burned to death in bitcoin farms (AMD S7100X, RX480 and similar). Try to get an unused spare part if possible. Do not waste two much money on more VRAM (have rarely seen VRAM memory pressure). Find a (local) seller with a reasonable return policy. Unfortunately exactly users of this thread drove a lot of sellers into a no return at all policy just because they (the users) were not able to successfully install and flash a card.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: The_Croupier
Where should I buy a WX4150?

On Ebay.ca they all seem to be sold by 1 guy on multiple accounts, which kinda sketches me out
 
Maybe this is a little offtopic, but I just found this Radeon HD 3650 512Mb card I bought many years ago for a Windows laptop, and I didn't even use it. Would it work in a 21.5" iMac A1311 if my current HD4650 256Mb breaks? I think it is MXM II and the connector seems a little smaller than MXM-A/B.
Here it says MXM-A is backwards compatible:

MXM Graphics Card Types, Models & MXM GPU List

MXM Graphics Card Types, Models, Specifications, and List of latest MXM Graphics Modules for Laptops and Mobile Computers. Find out about AMD and Nvidia MXM Graphics Cards. MXM Graphics Cards are removable graphics cards that are designed for gaming laptops or notebooks, All-in-one PCs, mobile...
graphicscardhub.com graphicscardhub.com
Would it work with High Sierra? I can't find any Mac ROM.
Thanks!
 

Attachments

  • e09bda82-78bb-4ac2-b0ea-8269ff757e0e.jpeg
    e09bda82-78bb-4ac2-b0ea-8269ff757e0e.jpeg
    329.7 KB · Views: 110
  • e544c632-bd42-473a-b311-d9949f4546c5.jpeg
    e544c632-bd42-473a-b311-d9949f4546c5.jpeg
    368.7 KB · Views: 72
___ said:
I can't find any of those, it's all from China with unreasonable return policies
Click to expand...
I took a chance (quite a big chance given the price) on a WX4150 recently from an Ebay seller in China. It arrived in the UK within 2 weeks and was exactly as described. The seller answered pre-sale questions clearly and gave me some confidence it was a genuine sale. That said, I went in knowing that I might not get the exact model I expected (so I had the necessary parts to mod it if it was the wrong model) and if there were any issues, even if the seller would accept a return the price of shipping it back would be significant.

I would have much preferred a local seller with a decent returns policy but there's no 4130 or 4150s on eBay sold from the UK right now, and sadly shipping to / from the EU is not as easy as it used to be (if they are even available there).

Bottom line, buying anything like this from a seller you don't know is risky (I have a collection of fake / re-marked 68030 CPUs to attest this!). There are good and bad sellers everywhere, but if you can't absorb potentially having nothing to show for your money, my advice would be look elsewhere.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mrlost and Oyah12
___ said:
Thanks, is the WX4150 affected by this?

"Windows 10:
Installing W10 in UEFI mode is compatible with OpenCore (unlike BootCamp legacy Windows). Some (or all?) cards show the infamous error 43 in the DeviceManager. One can get around this (not tested with all cards except the RX480) using the driver signature patch as described on the page. Rename the tool and run as (Windows) admin and reboot."

And if driver signature patch is needed, I'm assuming it results in a still signed driver, right?
Click to expand...

I have to be honest: I was not affected by this, but can't say for sure that you will not. As I've said before, and as I have put in my signature, I'm not using an standard iMac CPU (a Xeon without an iGPU, for starters), so that changes things a bit in regards to my hardware. I actually asked about this a few pages ago but received no answer.

___ said:
Where should I buy a WX4150?

On Ebay.ca they all seem to be sold by 1 guy on multiple accounts, which kinda sketches me out
Click to expand...

Check the seller's reputation and make sure it's well-reviewed. I bought mine from eBay and so far it's been good. Other than that, you're on your own.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back