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

[SEJU]

This is High Sierra installed? It will disable the screen unless you fix it through patching or OCLP.
So you flashed the new vBIOS? This is no wonder, had a good teacher and this is skilled AMD vBIOS modding
Fans high speed? Connect heat sink sensor back and all others, too.

Take a picture with alt/option pressed on boot.

Yes for now it is High Sierra. I wanted to wait with OCLP until everything works and I have the time to learn everything about it. The aim is to update the machine to Big Sur.

I took an image of the text, that is displayed after doing a PRAM reset:

Is that supposed to be displayed at that point?

And an image of the boot menu that appears after pressing ALT at start up:


I attached the heatsink sensor to its place and the newly mounted ODD sensor to the ODD TEMP interface on the motherboard. There should be not much else to connect.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

1. EG2 mod works, EFI Boot Picker on picture two.
2. There might be a quirk to disable text in graphics, but just ignore what you saw on picture one.

What does MVC charge for an EFI picker on AMD cards?

If your fans go wild there is still one connector missing.
Did you change the HDD with a new SSD? Add a SATA splitter cable (power).

You might read for more details, you know where..

Please post a picture of the VRAM chips of your WX7100.

 

[SEJU]

I will put in a pause for today. Tomorrow morning I will take the GPU out, clean it, reapply the thermal compound properly and add the metal frame back.

During my last attempts I only took the GPU off the heatsink to flash it and applied a small dot of MX-4 to the GPU each time I reassembled it. I think it might be better to apply the thermal compound properly.

After that I will reassemble everything and see what the fans are doing. When everything is assembled I will report back. For today thanks a lot @Ausdauersportler, @dfranetic and @idenis42.

@Ausdauersportler a good teacher is a perfect start, but without the right student the fun ends ;0)

Last question for today: do you know why the card is not displayed in the About This Mac section?

 

[SEJU]

1. EG2 mod works, EFI Boot Picker on picture two.
2. There might be a quirk to disable text in graphics, but just ignore what you saw on picture one.

What does MVC charge for an EFI picker on AMD cards?

If your fans go wild there is still one connector missing.
Did you change the HDD with a new SSD? Add a SATA splitter cable (power).

You might read for more details, you know where..

Please post a picture of the VRAM chips of your WX7100.

Yes I added an SSD with an OWC splitter cable. That has a thermal sensor... I will verify that the cable is still attached.

Yes tomorrow morning I will go over post 1 to verify that I am not missing anything.

You will get a picture of the VRAM chips as well as of everything else after finishing this operation. I very much would like to give an illustrated walk through of my installation back to the thread.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Yes I added an SSD with an OWC splitter cable. That has a thermal sensor... I will verify that the cable is still attached.

Yes tomorrow morning I will go over post 1 to verify that I am not missing anything.

You will get a picture of the VRAM chips as well as of everything else after finishing this operation. I very much would like to give an illustrated walk through of my installation back to the thread.

No need to waste money for the OWC. Just add the SATA splitter, it will short the sensor making the SMC thing the temp is fine all the time. The SSD generates only heat if you stream data onto it through restore or backup jobs. I use two SSD in a double pack in an 3.5->2.5 conversion frame (7 Euro including all cables).

About this Mac section: Only on High Sierra...possibly the same reason why the internal LCD went dark. The vBIOS does not advertise the card completely and correctly. High Sierra is dead, @internetzel refuses to spent more time into this.

 

[SEJU]

No need to waste money for the OWC. Just add the SATA splitter, it will short the sensor making the SMC thing the temp is fine all the time. The SSD generates only heat if you stream data onto it through restore or backup jobs. I use two SSD in a double pack in an 3.5->2.5 conversion frame (7 Euro including all cables).

About this Mac section: Only on High Sierra...possibly the same reason why the internal LCD went dark. The vBIOS does not advertise the card completely and correctly. High Sierra is dead, @internetzel refuses to spent more time into this.

Ah, ok. No problem with the About This Mac section. I was just wondering, if I missed something. When I understand you correctly it might work with OCLP and Big Sur, so that will be fine.

I will take a look tomorrow with fresh eyes into all the cables and the rest, obviously after skimming through post #1. Maybe the fans will be fine once the display is mounted... I will see tomorrow.

Wish you a great day/night!

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Ah, ok. No problem with the About This Mac section. I was just wondering, if I missed something. When I understand you correctly it might work with OCLP and Big Sur, so that will be fine.

I will take a look tomorrow with fresh eyes into all the cables and the rest, obviously after skimming through post #1. Maybe the fans will be fine once the display is mounted... I will see tomorrow.

The display has it's own temp sensor (black cable next to display connector). You need to connect it back to get the fans quite, again -> first post somewhere deep down.

Wish you a great day/night!

It will work with every macOS from Mojave until Monterey latest using OCLP really perfectly and patch free.

Three years of work spent by a lot of highly motivated guys both invested in the BIOS topic and into macOS support.

 

[nikey22]

AMD FirePro S7100X Windows 10

Hello everyone, I'm back from a small break and catching up on my messages. I wanted to review some discoveries to make this card more compatible with bootcamp and expand our knowledge on its inner workings.

Firstly, you cannot arbitrarily assign any device ID (DEVID) to the MMX video card. One solution that AMD uses for setting a DEVID is to use six bits of straps and 10 bits of fuses to set the 16-bit DEVID. Fuses are an internal component of the GPU die and can pull either high or low to simulate a 1 or 0 to set a part of the DEVID. This is hard-coded during manufacturing and is unalterable.

The AMD vbios however contains a header entry. I’ve located the section of code that allows for software DEVID identification, but again its implementation will be limited by the hardware fuses that are already activated in the GPU die. This is somewhat alterable and we will take advantage of that next.

For these cards to be compatible with both macOS and Windows 10, a new DEVID needs to be chosen. The one that came with the stock card 6929, unfortunately is not recognized by macOS. Let's investigate:

In macOS, the AMD9000Controller kext is what initializes the Tonga Adapter in the S7100X. Variations of acceptable IDs are listed within its IOPCIMatch entries above.

After some experimenting, from my testing anyways, I decided to use 0x6939. Patching the vbios was simple and the video card accepted 0x6939 as a native DEVID without internal fuse conflict. There may indeed be others.

If we want this to work in the Windows environment, the revision ID (REV_) of the GPU needs to be altered as well! I’ve also located the region in the vbios where the revision ID is encoded (see below). A clue to which REV ID to set comes from the AMD drivers themselves, Let’s interrogate them. Looking in the driver file, we come across this section:

[ATI.Mfg.NTamd64.10.0...16299]
"%AMD6939.1%" = ati2mtag_Tonga, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6939&REV_00
"%AMD6939.2%" = ati2mtag_Tonga, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6939&REV_F0
"%AMD6939.3%" = ati2mtag_Tonga, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6939&REV_F1


Here we can see that 3 things needs to be correctly set:
Vendor ID (VEN_) : 1002
Device ID (DEV_) : 6939
Revision, (REV_) : 00/F0/F1

The areas to patch in the header are below:

Bookmark 1 - highlights the 3 byte code used to set the Device ID (DEV_)
Bookmark 2 - highlights the Revision code (REV_) that needs to be set correctly to one of the 3 options above.

Therefore in summary, a stock 0x6929 REV 01 FirePro S7100X video card (not recognized by macOS), can be altered to appear as a 0x6939 REV 00 FirePro S7100X. It now has the advantage of being completely recognized by the macOS accelerators and should be identified with full acceleration by the Windows 10 Adrenalin drivers:

Bingo!, no more "Microsoft Basic Display Adapter". You will noticed that Windows 10 will interpret the video card as a “Radeon R9 200 Series”. This is okay, it is only cosmetic. Windows 10 uses Driver Signatures for its OEM drivers and will not allow manipulation of them, nor will the AMD drivers. They compare any alterations in the .inf files to a hash in the catalog file and will reject tampering.

The .rom file below has all the necessary patches applied.
Furthermore, it has been boosted to 750Mhz for GPU clock and 1300Mhz for Memory. I can show you in a different post how to manipulate these entries in the powerplay module. It probably can tolerate a lot higher as it is a server card.

Insanely Great!
-Steve Jobs

 

[SEJU]

1. EG2 mod works, EFI Boot Picker on picture two.
2. There might be a quirk to disable text in graphics, but just ignore what you saw on picture one.

What does MVC charge for an EFI picker on AMD cards?

If your fans go wild there is still one connector missing.
Did you change the HDD with a new SSD? Add a SATA splitter cable (power).

You might read for more details, you know where..

Please post a picture of the VRAM chips of your WX7100.

This is a picture of the VRAM chips I promised:

Now I will try to organise some 99,9 % Isopropyl to finish cleaning the GPU. I only have 70 % Isopropyl around, which should be ok, but would take longer to evaporate.

Let me know what else you need to have documented before putting it back together. I took images of the complete card, which I already shared some posts ago, but not all codes are visible on those images.

 

[jichiun]

I have 2010 iMac 27" ，upgrade k1100m GPU (done bios flash, open core ), after use Catalina patcher installed , many background blur menus may act distorted when moving a cursor over it .
I enable a new Beta Blur feature in open core , but don't work . anyone can help ??

 

[asd903191]

Hello, I have flashed the imac 11.3 booteom and rx480 eg2 vbios, although there is a boot screen, but the screen is directly stuck when the disk is selected to boot

 

[dfranetic]

View attachment 2115758
Hello, I have flashed the imac 11.3 booteom and rx480 eg2 vbios, although there is a boot screen, but the screen is directly stuck when the disk is selected to boot

Stuck in what sense? Stuck on every boot entry?

 

[asd903191]

Stuck in what sense? Stuck on every boot entry?

After choosing the startup disk, it keeps spinning in circles, but when I press the keyboard size keys, there is a response, and the mouse can still move, and it doesn’t look like a crash.

After inserting the usb 10.13.6 installation disk and starting the usb with opencore, the situation is exactly the same. It is normal that the eg2 vbios has not been flashed. It should not be a hardware problem.

 

[idenis42]

After choosing the startup disk, it keeps spinning in circles, but when I press the keyboard size keys, there is a response, and the mouse can still move, and it doesn’t look like a crash.

After inserting the usb 10.13.6 installation disk and starting the usb with opencore, the situation is exactly the same. It is normal that the eg2 vbios has not been flashed. It should not be a hardware problem.

Show on video.

 

[dfranetic]

After choosing the startup disk, it keeps spinning in circles, but when I press the keyboard size keys, there is a response, and the mouse can still move, and it doesn’t look like a crash.

After inserting the usb 10.13.6 installation disk and starting the usb with opencore, the situation is exactly the same. It is normal that the eg2 vbios has not been flashed. It should not be a hardware problem.

What happens if you start High Sierra installation directly (without OC)? Does it stall?

 

[zephadbeeblebrox]

First time replying but I have been at this a little over 1 year, always reading & re-reading the 1st post, following a potential solution only to hit a dead end.

In Sept of 2021, I swapped the GPU on my 2011 27" iMac i5 from the factory AMD 6970m to an Nvidia GTX 780m. Got it from Ebay and it came pre-flashed with the appropriate Vbios from Nick .

Reading through the thread over and again seemed to confirm that using DosDudes Catalina Patcher was the best for my card, so that's what I am currently running.

Started with a fresh install of High Sierra on one small partition and used that to create my Catalina partition. On High Sierra, I have only one problem- no brightness control. No worries for me here; I can live with that. I have an external monitor via TB and that works with High Sierra too, with no issue. Beauty!

Problem is, when I boot from the Catalina partition, I lose the internal display, but retain the external one. Whats more is, in the system display settings, there appears to only be one display registering, unlike under normal circumstances where you see options for both the internal and external displays.

Now I've used this system for a year now, with only an external display, re-installed all of my software, and I've got it how I like it, with no plans to move beyond Catalina. It's being used mainly to run Logic for music production in my home studio and longterm stability of the existing setup is key to me so I'm quite wary of messing anything up/needing to start a new install.

Life got in the way of sorting this issue out over the last 9 months (new child) but now I am resolved to make this setup work using both the internal and external display, so here I am asking humbly if anyone can point out where I have gone wrong? The card must be good, the hardware install went fine and heat is not a problem.

Is this the dreaded black screen issue that is so well documented?

I'll take the abuse from the hardworking regulars around here that make this possible, for not finding the answer myself. It is likely among the 700+ pages of this thread, but I have exhausted my limited knowledge and ability. Thanks in advance.

 

[dfranetic]

Is this the dreaded black screen issue that is so well documented?

Yes! (Page 1 -> NVIDIA section -> Known issues -> issue 7. And BTW, you could/should be able to find that yourself. It would’ve taken less time than to write that oddly long question…)

 

[asd903191]

What happens if you start High Sierra installation directly (without OC)? Does it stall?

I re-modified the bootrom and flashed it to use it, but now when I enter Windows 10, the graphics card will show a code: 43

 

[dfranetic]

I re-modified the bootrom and flashed it to use it, but now when I enter Windows 10, the graphics card will show a code: 43

You could clarify first if the EFI bootpicker now works as expected. I'll assume it does.
For the rest: post 1 or this. Please read those. (I'm not a Windows user and I have no experience with this, so I can't and won't answer any additional questions on this...)

 

[asd903191]

You could clarify first if the EFI bootpicker now works as expected. I'll assume it does.
For the rest: post 1 or this. Please read those. (I'm not a Windows user and I have no experience with this, so I can't and won't answer any additional questions on this...)

If I refresh the CoreEG2.ffs and EDIDParser.ffs provided by @Ausdauersportler, it will not be directly stuck on the boot screen

 

[asd903191]

I tested it yesterday and found that it will be stuck on the boot screen. Unplug the bios battery and it will be normal. I installed the driver in windows 10 and the code is always code: 43, but the temperature does not exceed 80 when running unigin on a Mac.

 

[lilliputian]

Completed upgrading my iMac 2010 27" Intel Core i7-870 with a flashed GTX870M 3GB and MacOS Monterey the other day. (Had tried to just go to Mojave, but the installer wouldn't recognize my drive as a valid install location for some reason; Monterey's installer had no such qualms.)

Running MetalBench I get an average of 40 Mrays/sec after running it for a few minutes.

 

[madvinegar]

Is there a way to know which bios version is installed in the bios chip, without using the clip?

I want to make sure that the modded bios is installed before flashing the new EG2 GPU bios.
Thanks.

 

[dfranetic]

I have 2010 iMac 27" ，upgrade k1100m GPU (done bios flash, open core ), after use Catalina patcher installed , many background blur menus may act distorted when moving a cursor over it .
I enable a new Beta Blur feature in open core , but don't work . anyone can help ??

A Metal capable GPU does not need non-metal patches. You need to undo the patches (either directly, if applicable, or by reinstalling macOS).

 

[dfranetic]

I tested it yesterday and found that it will be stuck on the boot screen. Unplug the bios battery and it will be normal. I installed the driver in windows 10 and the code is always code: 43, but the temperature does not exceed 80 when running unigin on a Mac.

This (EFI picker problem) sounds like a hardware problem. Have you replaced the battery with a new CR2032 cell?
Also: Please add a signature with your system description. Apparently you also upgraded the WiFi card - what happens if you remove/disconnect the PCI connection to the WiFi card?