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

[Neo-dessinator]

Hello hello =)

here to try to complete my plan on the GPU upgrade journey !

As far as I know here are the different informations and tools I gathered :
- grizzly thermal paste and K5 thermal paste
- in process of bying a WX4130 pre-flashed.
- mini DP for he black screen part
- USB stick for the boot. But I don't really know which distribution I should put on. People use sometimes high sierra, sometimes catalina. Can I start from big-sur ? I don't really understand the process for the USB stick

Here are some question I have :
- The buyer is telling me I need a new X-bracket for my 3 pipe dissipator. Do I really need one ? which one exactly ?
- I don't really understand the Usb part at the end of the process. Some boot from high sierra, other from catalina. Can I start from big-sur ? I don't really understand this part of the process with the USB stick

The card's seller I found is telling me that these boot options does not work :
- Target Disk Mode
- Apple Hardware Test works
- Native Internet Recovery
Is there a way to make them work again ? It seems tha OCLP will. But I don't really understand when to use it.

I don't really understand the post hardware modification part (with the USB stick). What should I install, tweak or modify :/

Finally. What will be the latest working and stable OS I could use ? it seems to be Big-Sur from what I read. Montery seems to have some troubles

Hope you will be able to help me.
Otherwise, have a good week end =)
(and sorry to be a burden D

My best regards

 

[sergiodadi]

The WX4130 EnableGop VBIOS available in Ausdauersportler's GitHub page should work now. There was literally one single bit set which shouldn't have been set.

I have try the @Ausdauersportler WX4130_EnableGop.rom on my 3 iMacs 27" mid 2011 , all with a graphic card Dell WX4130 , all is OK

- the flash:

- the native boot picker:

- the Apple Diagnostics:

- I have try for fun (on another disk ) the recovery install of High Sierra by Internet , it is OK:

High Sierra is OK with a graphic card Dell WX4130

thank @Ausdauersportler and all the developers 👍

 

[luke9511]

would the M4000 work in a late 2009 27 inch imac?

 

[Minghold]

Here's an interesting somebody-else's hack-job that showed up my local recycler: a mid-2011 27" iMac with a for-that-year top-of-the-line 3.4ghz i7 (which I'd thought were only offered in the late-'11s). It also had a 250gb SSD and AMD Radeon HD6970M 2GB VRAM card, so it's definitely been tinkered with previously. Nice score for $25, even if all I do is part it out, but I'd rather not dissassemble it due to an unterminated 1.5 inch-long crack in the outer glass near one corner that will likely spread further across the display.

Problems:

1) This machine will NOT fully boot, without "help", any stock officially-supported (for that machine) MacOS from Snow Leopard to High Sierra. This includes full-installs, recovery partitions, or USB installers. Most attempts result in a crash/reboot about three quarters of the way through the progress bar crawl, although occasionally shortly after the desktop appears. (My assumption is that this is why the machine was dropped off at the recycler.)

2. The machine WILL boot any OpenCoreLegacy-EFI'd officially-UNsupported MacOS. However, all of them have the identical problem of missing OpenGL, leading to low screen-redraw rates, block artifacts around the cursor in some applications, and failure to play most games. I am, however, able to browse YouTube videos at 1080p without much trouble, and most applications appear to run fine (for example, I am submitting this post to Macrumers from it right now). Clean-installing Mojave/Catalina/BigSur/etc from scratch did not result in OpenGL, and checkboxing "Reduce Motion" and "Reduce Transparency in SystemPreferences/Accessibility/Display does not solve the issue. (I have not yet attempted to clean-install High Sierra or older OS from within OCL/EFI environment.) Aside from that, the machine is stable.

--My assumption is that either the video-card is running in a half-failed state (track OCL's trickery somehow salvages), or that I am needing drivers/kexts for this card (which strikes me as odd, because AFAIK the 6970M/2GBvram was an supported model in these machines).

Hopefully someone in-attendance for all over-800 pages of this topic knows what's going on.

 

[Zellgadus]

Hello!
I made an account just to thank everyone who contributed to this thread. Thanks to everyone’s input and hard work, I was able to upgrade an old imac 11.2 from mid 2010. It is still going strong and kicking.

I have attached the result from my tinkering. Used all the data from this thread and OpenCore Legacy Patcher.

Big thanks to everyone once again. Could not have done it without you!

 

[Dog Knight]

Here's an interesting somebody-else's hack-job that showed up my local recycler: a mid-2011 27" iMac with a for-that-year top-of-the-line 3.4ghz i7 (which I'd thought were only offered in the late-'11s). It also had a 250gb SSD and AMD Radeon HD6970M 2GB VRAM card, so it's definitely been tinkered with previously. Nice score for $25, even if all I do is part it out, but I'd rather not dissassemble it due to an unterminated 1.5 inch-long crack in the outer glass near one corner that will likely spread further across the display.

All those options (CPU, SSD, GPU), were factory options at the time for the Mid 2011 iMac.
There is no reason the GPU should need any extra drivers to work. It's likely it is just failing like so many of these models have over time.

 

[Minghold]

There is no reason the GPU should need any extra drivers to work. It's likely it is just failing like so many of these models have over time.

I've seen half-failed Radeons in those 2011s dozens of times, but never one that failed in that exact manner. They're either stone-dead/black-screen, or colorspasm halfway through boot, or freeze/pixelpuke when warmed up. I've never seen or heard of one force-rebooting* (rather than just crashing) even while cold when the OS tries to (apparently) kick in hardware-acceleration -- but others suffers no ill-effects whatsoever.

(*System Preferences/Energy Saver/Start-up-sutomatically-after-a-power-failure is uncheckboxed.)

 

[gagarin]

iMac 11,2 2010 21.5" upgrade to R9 375X with few caveats.

I have recently bought green DELL 109-C93157-00A-03 for less than 40$ locally. Today I have finally installed it in 2010 21". No need to use copper shim BTW:

Screen is off so you have to use some form of remote control. For me it was legacy install of Win10 with RDC prepared beforehand. This is how card present itself in GPU-Z on the first boot:

I am going to flash W5170M-GOP made by @Ausdauersportler from this post. There actually second post regarding this card from him but I am not sure that M5100-GOP.rom would work since there is a warning that you have to only use it in RED card (and I have a green one).

Anyway new AMDVBFLASH is not working since there is SSID mismatch and you cannot force flash with new tool. I have to come back few versions and v2.93 with parameters "-f -p 0 W5170M-GOP.rom" worked. Downloaded from techpowerup for sure.

After restart there is no bootscreen but when Windows drivers kick in you have finally have a picture!
Here is a screenshot of GPU-Z after flash:

What immediately catches my attention is Bus interface numbers: Why is it only x1? I did run stress test to alleviate Power Management here. This is how it looks in AIDA64:

I also did a Geekbench OpenCl and Metal tests. On the right side it is Metal scores from Geekbench list which shows that my scores seems to be lower than expected:

Also there is this strange thing happening I have not found the reason yet — about ten minutes from the boot both ODD and CPU fans kick in full blast and seems like CPU starts throttling. Here are the temps from MacFanControl:

Anyone has any ideas why that is happening and what can I do to troubleshoot it? I have BigSure with OpenCore installed and a Win10 legacy install.

Is there specifically R9 375X BIOS with proper boos clocks? Also going through @Ausdauersportler GitHub I have found -EG2 rom in download section — what are those for?

I hope someone can help with this. Here is Furmark screenshot

 

[dfranetic]

Anyone has any ideas why that is happening and what can I do to troubleshoot it? I have BigSure with OpenCore installed and a Win10 legacy install.

This:

The problems you have in iMac11,2 can only be resolved with a hardware mod - by desoldering two jumpers on the card to disconnect the on-card temperature sensor IC from the SMBus.

 

[MrZupp]

Hello, just got my RX5500XT today and I was wondering if there's anything I need to know before I start putting it into my iMac12,2 besides what's in the ROM post for it.

Also, if there's a need for more testing with this card, please let me know if I can help somehow.

 

[MrZupp]

Experimental AMD Radeon Pro 5500XT 8GB support

This card has been (likely) produced in more than a single variant, currently I have only tested one version as shown and described below. Rumors told me approx. 5000 cards have been produced in China for crypto mining, only.
There will be no such new cards available. Most cards hit the Chinese market last year after a few years of use, most of them were reused by commercial buyers to build or rebuild PCI desktop cards - what a waste if this story is real.

Currently I believe you cannot cross flash a the vBIOS coming with this card to other models. We would have to walk the development path described below with each version, again.

Type	ident	device-id	working
Green PCB	SH149V-0 E248799	7340	yes

It is a big MXM-B card fitting into 27 inch iMac models, only! Card comes with a modern UEFI2 compliant GOP vBIOS. It has been configured to provide 5 DP output channels, OpenCore and WhateverGreen enable the internal screen on macOS login screen with apdpmod=pikera added to boot-args in the config.plist.

With the help of some friends we were able to enable the EFI boot picker using the MacPro7,1 firmware graphics drivers (many thanks to @Nick [D]vB for providing those drivers).

Following another approach with help from @internetzel we were able to modify the original vBIOS and change the 2nd DP connector type to eDP - this way the LCD panel will be recognized as an internal one providing macOS software support from brightness management.

Since one cannot flash any modified vBIOS back onto the BIOS chip we tried to inject the first 64K of the modded vBIOS using OpenCore and the ATY,bin_image property. It is important to fix the checksum of the modded vBIOS although is will be only used via OpenCore. To enable native brightness control you need to add applbkl=3 to the boot-args entry, too.

After some trial and error we thought this approach failed - but on the next morning after a night and a system sleep brightness control suddenly and finally worked - heureka!

Finally I documented the method how to modify and construct the 64K bytes to inject via OpenCore on GitHub (link on the bottom of the page).

Known issues:
- no native brightness control with Apple EG2 vBIOS (injection of modded vBIOS impossible)
- does not enable backlight on boot without wire-mod or this PCB

Known features:
- supports two external displays using both TB2 ports of an iMac12,2
- sleep/wake is working
- boot screen with OpenCore (GOP) or natively (EG2)
- brightness control working (only GOP after first system sleep)
- needs Catalina 10.15.6 or better (AMD support)
- 4K HEVC and 4K H.265 hardware support

System Support:
- tested in iMac11,3 and iMac12,2 (assume iMac11,1 will work, too)

Performance:
- GeekBench Metal: > 40.000
- GeekBench OpenCL: > 40.000
- Valley: > 65 FPS, > 2729 (is more limited by GPU core and CPU frequency, not so much by resolution)
(resolution 2560x1440, quality low: 2716, medium 2703, high 2429, ultra 2157)
(resolution 1920x1080, quality low: 2729, medium 2729, high 2442, ultra 2396).
- MetalBench: 230 MRays/s
- PowerDraw: 19W idle - 95W max (observed by HWMonitor app)

Notes:
- this card needs a big MXM-B heat sink of the Mid 2011 models and more grinding (check picture for details)
- no Apple X-clamp is fitting, needs possible a 3D printed special 1mm bed to avoid contact with small components
(using a Dremel grinding away big parts the big X-clamp from the 2011 HD6970 works)
- move the ODD temp sensor to the heat sink!
- adjust CPU fan according to PSU Primary using Macs Fan Control, avoids an over heating PSU
- use copper plate 0,5mm width and 20mm x 20mm size to bridge a gap between GPU and heat sink and avoid deeper grinding

Credits:
- @vmbl for trying the Sonnet card
- @Rainy1989 for helping!
- @lyf314512 for his initial RX5500XT post
- kingo132 for implementing RX5500XT backlight control support into OpenCore
- @Nick [D]vB and @internetzel
- last but not least: @Bmju for helping getting EFI boot screen support

Technical information:
- please check out this page

Btw, as I was checking the card, I noticed a bridge between two pads on the back, should I leave them as they are or or should I desolder them?

 

[gagarin]

This: View attachment 2177087
The problems you have in iMac11,2 can only be resolved with a hardware mod - by desoldering two jumpers on the card to disconnect the on-card temperature sensor IC from the SMBus.

Thanks @dfranetic! I have missed that while disassembling and reassembling this iMac few times. Does modding it will make it iMac11,2 specific card or will I be able to easily move it to 11,3 or 11,1 after that for example?

P.S. Also is there info on this mod somewhere? First I thought I have seen it but now when trying to search for it I am not able to find a link 🤷‍♂️

 

[dfranetic]

Thanks @dfranetic! I have missed that while disassembling and reassembling this iMac few times. Does modding it will make it iMac11,2 specific card or will I be able to easily move it to 11,3 or 11,1 after that for example?

P.S. Also is there info on this mod somewhere? First I thought I have seen it but now when trying to search for it I am not able to find a link 🤷‍♂️

To disconnect the temp. sensor IC from the SMBus on the W5170M you need to remove (desolder) the two jumpers circled in red on the bottom layer of the card. And the card will be just as compatible with all iMac11,x machines as before...

As far as I know we are unable to 'convince' iMac's SMC to properly read temperature data from the temperature sensor IC on the GPU for any of the upgrade GPUs in this thread.

 

[gagarin]

To disconnect the temp. sensor IC from the SMBus on the W5170M you need to remove (desolder) the two jumpers circled in red on the bottom layer of the card. And the card will be just as compatible with all iMac11,x machines as before...

As far as I know we are unable to 'convince' iMac's SMC to properly read temperature data from the temperature sensor IC on the GPU for any of the upgrade GPUs in this thread.

Many thanks! I am going to disassemble and do it tomorrow.
Also what software would you recommend to mod w5170m-gop.rom with boost clocks of r9 375x, it seems to me this is to be a culprit of lower Metal scores then expected from this card.

 

[dfranetic]

Many thanks! I am going to disassemble and do it tomorrow.
Also what software would you recommend to mod w5170m-gop.rom with boost clocks of r9 375x, it seems to me this is to be a culprit of lower Metal scores then expected from this card.

Just remove those jumpers! The clocks are low (even CPU clocks by the way) because iMac's SMC/firmware throttles the system - the SMBus collision makes some sensor readings unreliable so the system believes that fans at full speed and low clocks will keep it properly cool...

 

[gagarin]

Just remove those jumpers! The clocks are low (even CPU clocks by the way) because iMac's SMC/firmware throttles the system - the SMBus collision makes some sensor readings unreliable so the system believes that fans at full speed and low clocks will keep it properly cool...

Thank you! Actually, I just did it. Going through testing and will update my original post after that

P.S. do you believe if I should expect any troubles with flashing wx4150 on iMac12,1? This one:

 

[Eerbeer]

After 3 months my K2100M card did not work anymore. It did not get any hotter than 50 degrees celsius. I got a new card (warranty, because old one was dead). Just to be sure... here are couple of questions (sorry guys):

On the shiny middle Nvidea chip I put MX4. On everything that is red aligned I put enough K5 Pro. This GPU comes with already placed thermalpads (see picture). Would you guys advice me to remove these pads and put K5 pro on it?

Just another thing to be sure: I can not put too much K5 pro on the VRAMS, right? Maybe it was just bad luck that the GPU was dead after 3 months?

 

[gagarin]

After 3 months my K2100M card did not work anymore. It did not get any hotter than 50 degrees celsius. I got a new card (warranty, because old one was dead). Just to be sure... here are couple of questions (sorry guys):

On the shiny middle Nvidea chip I put MX4. On everything that is red aligned I put enough K5 Pro. This GPU comes with already placed thermalpads (see picture). Would you guys advice me to remove these pads and put K5 pro on it?

Just another thing to be sure: I can not put too much K5 pro on the VRAMS, right? Maybe it was just bad luck that the GPU was dead after 3 months?

Did paste had a good contact with the radiator? If yes it could be just a bad card. Also I would check ODD sensor placement this time, as recommended in this thread to put it on near the gpu sensor

 

[mrlost]

Hello everyone. Can someone help me, telling me, what temperature does the heatsink 2 measure, in hwmonitor? When I carry out tests it goes up to 72 degrees Celsius in red.

Also, I wanted to consult a situation, over the weekend, I erased the disks of my imac, to install high sierra from scratch, and when I want to start the machine with the normal installer, it recognizes the installer, but it only stays forever in the Apple. I have had to start the machine again with an external disk that has high sierra installed, is this normal?

 

[sashkin_bro]

Hello) I have a question, is it possible to use an iMac 2011 21.5 hd6750m as a monitor for a macbook 2020 pro on intel? help, and does it matter which system is installed?

 

[Marche90]

Hello) I have a question, is it possible to use an iMac 2011 21.5 hd6750m as a monitor for a macbook 2020 pro on intel? help, and does it matter which system is installed?

No, you can't. Only the 27" models could be used for Target Display mode.

 

[sashkin_bro]

Ні, не можна. Лише 27-дюймові моделі можна використовувати для режиму Target Display.

hmmm, but here it says that it should work with any size iMac, does anyone have 100% information?

Use your iMac as a display with target display mode - Apple Support

Target display mode is a feature available with certain older Mac models.

support.apple.com

 

[funkybassmonkey]

Here's an interesting somebody-else's hack-job that showed up my local recycler: a mid-2011 27" iMac with a for-that-year top-of-the-line 3.4ghz i7 (which I'd thought were only offered in the late-'11s). It also had a 250gb SSD and AMD Radeon HD6970M 2GB VRAM card, so it's definitely been tinkered with previously. Nice score for $25, even if all I do is part it out, but I'd rather not dissassemble it due to an unterminated 1.5 inch-long crack in the outer glass near one corner that will likely spread further across the display.

Problems:

1) This machine will NOT fully boot, without "help", any stock officially-supported (for that machine) MacOS from Snow Leopard to High Sierra. This includes full-installs, recovery partitions, or USB installers. Most attempts result in a crash/reboot about three quarters of the way through the progress bar crawl, although occasionally shortly after the desktop appears. (My assumption is that this is why the machine was dropped off at the recycler.)

2. The machine WILL boot any OpenCoreLegacy-EFI'd officially-UNsupported MacOS. However, all of them have the identical problem of missing OpenGL, leading to low screen-redraw rates, block artifacts around the cursor in some applications, and failure to play most games. I am, however, able to browse YouTube videos at 1080p without much trouble, and most applications appear to run fine (for example, I am submitting this post to Macrumers from it right now). Clean-installing Mojave/Catalina/BigSur/etc from scratch did not result in OpenGL, and checkboxing "Reduce Motion" and "Reduce Transparency in SystemPreferences/Accessibility/Display does not solve the issue. (I have not yet attempted to clean-install High Sierra or older OS from within OCL/EFI environment.) Aside from that, the machine is stable.

--My assumption is that either the video-card is running in a half-failed state (track OCL's trickery somehow salvages), or that I am needing drivers/kexts for this card (which strikes me as odd, because AFAIK the 6970M/2GBvram was an supported model in these machines).

Hopefully someone in-attendance for all over-800 pages of this topic knows what's going on.

This is exactly the spec and current running condition of the iMac I have, and have owned since 2012. The only thing that is non-standard about yours is the SSD which someone has been in and replaced. Everything else was available as the top spec option from Apple store, including the 3.4 i7 and the 2GB 6970M. My GPU is also half dead - died in front of me. The only way to get the machine to boot fully was to first boot it in target disk mode, and then use another Mac to move the AMD kexts out of the way (I moved them all although maybe that wasn't necessary), and now it boots with all the sluggish screen draw nonsense you describe as I assume the hardware acceleration is now gone.

I'm now in the process of assembling all the parts I need to replace the GPU with a WX4130, along with all the amazing info on this forum - I hope to get another 10 years from this superb machine.

Oh, and I guess that the reason OCLP may work is that the hardware acceleration may not be available for these older cards in the same way that dosdude's Catalina patcher does not provide any hardware acceleration for these cards, and so a Metal GPU upgrade is recommended in any case for this.

 

[simsa]

Sorry for ignoring this, but I totally forgot to reply. Hate to say this, but most likely the card is dying. This same pattern appeared on my 21.5" with the original faulty GPU.
Does not help that the 880M has issues on a 2011 27", too.

Hi thx for the answer
So I guess the card is broken and I'll get another one. What problems do you mean? I wonder if I should buy another 880m something else.

 

[betolley]

I updated my 27 inch with a HP HP ZBook 17 nVidia Quadro K4100M 4GB. I updated the bios and It runs OSX great but I mainly use bootcamp. That works great but about 30% of the time when the GUI would normally turn on in Windows from the boot logo it doesn't. The mouse turns on and I think the system is booted up. I usually turn on and off a few times and it boots up. But it is annoying. Anyone see anything like this? I am using Open Core to make the Sound work in Windows. Any ideas? Everything works great but this...Also no sleep mode in windows but that is ok.