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

[Shnite]

YES, exactly like in the picture.

Only one?
Is it shown here incorrectly?

 

[bernd20062]

Revert OCLP patches (from ATI 4670) and apply new patches (for AMD GCN) - this is more an how to use OCLP problem than a GPU related one.

Hello Ausdauersportler, thank you for replay. How do I delete the files for the old graphics card? I activated AMD GOP Injection and AMD GCN in OC under Settings, Advanced, and manually inserted NVRAM boot args -radpg=15 -wegtree agdpmod=pikera in the config.plist. Then Build and Install Opencore.Then Post install Root Patch.Thanks for the help

 

[willowthewisp]

Do you have a photo?
Would it be wrong to simply fill it with epoxy glue?

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2011-imac-graphics-card-upgrade.1596614/post-29251720

I didn’t take a photo.
You can just glue it to the heatsink as long as the sensor is electrically insulated from the heatsink (it’s connected to ground).
If you use a thermal pad and only apply some resin to the edges you can remove the sensor in case of.
I think the ODD sensor is way better placed at the GPU heatsink than on the optical drive anyway.
It’s fully ok to do it like in the photo.

 

[Machist]

Mid 2011 iMac (Quadro K1100M) is updated to Sonoma and everything seems to work ok.

 

[bkiben]

Hello!
I would like to replace in the iMac video card. Which one should I choose?
AMD WX3200 or Quadro K3100? Or anything?
My specs:
Imac 27 2011 summer
I7 2600
32 GB Ram

 

[vitortiberio]

Ausdauersportler​

Could you help me with one question please,

currently I have 3 iMacs one being iMac 27 Mid 2011 and the other two being iMac 21 Mid 2011

I currently have 3 video cards, two of which are AMD Fire Pro W5170 2GB green card

and the third Amd Fire Pro M6000 video card does not work perfectly on the iMac 27, it needs to reset the Pvram every time the iMac 27 turns on, I tested the W5170 2Gb video card on the iMac 27 and it worked correctly.

Do I need to make any changes to the board's VBIOS???

and when I start it, it works but the screen freezes when I perform a very heavy task on the GPU, and the card clock is always at 600Mhz and never changes, pleaseeeeee helppppppp meeeeeee

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Ausdauersportler​

Could you help me with one question please,

currently I have 3 iMacs one being iMac 27 Mid 2011 and the other two being iMac 21 Mid 2011

I currently have 3 video cards, two of which are AMD Fire Pro W5170 2GB green card

and the third Amd Fire Pro M6000 video card does not work perfectly on the iMac 27, it needs to reset the Pvram every time the iMac 27 turns on, I tested the W5170 2Gb video card on the iMac 27 and it worked correctly.

Do I need to make any changes to the board's VBIOS???

and when I start it, it works but the screen freezes when I perform a very heavy task on the GPU, and the card clock is always at 600Mhz and never changes, pleaseeeeee helppppppp meeeeeee

Do me a favor and read the first post (the documentation post) about the support and known problems of GCN1-3 cards in iMac12,x models. You simply got the the wrong cheap cards for your fancy fleet of iMacs.

Do not take it personal, but a year ago I decided to stop answering request like yours. It was and it still is disappointing to see users ignoring the work we all put into this project and into the documentation every day, again.

If anyone has an idea how to avoid these problems in future please let me know.

 

[Pacific1972]

Hello!
I would like to replace in the iMac video card. Which one should I choose?
AMD WX3200 or Quadro K3100? Or anything?
My specs:
Imac 27 2011 summer
I7 2600
32 GB Ram

For your price range on ebay.com or similar...

Prepatched Radeon Pro WX4130 (GCN 4 - 2GB) with Thunderbolt Adapter + HDMI Ghost Stick for
High Sierra, without Adapter for further macOS versions, additional with new WiFI / Bluetooth
module from A1418 / A1419.

The WX3200 I personally prefer if you plan a primary WIN or LINUX machine...

I stay primary on High Sierra because of the 32Bit Steam Games,
but take sometimes a look for 2013 Mac Pro Trashcan on ebay,
with OCLP you can run macOS SONOMA... hehe !

 

[vitortiberio]

Do me a favor and read the first post (the documentation post) about the support and known problems of GCN1-3 cards in iMac12,x models. You simply got the the wrong cheap cards for your fancy fleet of iMacs.

Do not take it personal, but a year ago I decided to stop answering request like yours. It was and it still is disappointing to see users ignoring the work we all put into this project and into the documentation every day, again.

If anyone has an idea how to avoid these problems in future please let me know.

Thanks for the answer friend, I thought I had already solved this problem, as it is only on the iMac 27 mid 2011 that this problem occurs.

The W5170 2GB video card works perfectly on the iMac 21 Mid 2011. since I'm here asking.

Can I ask another question????

Does it work on the Sonoma on the iMac 21 Mid 2011 W5170 graphics card??

Here at my service I installed Sonomo but with the original AMD Radeon HD 6750M 512 MB graphics card, and it works perfectly

 

[vitortiberio]

I put the Macbook Pro 15 Retina 2015 card airport in it and made some adjustments, and it works perfectly, Bluetooth 4.2 and network at maximum performance.

 

[vitortiberio]

Mid 2011 iMac (Quadro K1100M) is updated to Sonoma and everything seems to work ok.

I put the Macbook Pro 15 Retina 2015 card airport in it and made some adjustments, and it works perfectly, Bluetooth 4.2 and network at maximum performance.

 

[vitortiberio]

Mid 2011 iMac (Quadro K1100M) is updated to Sonoma and everything seems to work ok.

Does it work normally with the W5170 2GB video card???

 

[Shnite]

YES, exactly like in the picture.
If you plan to use a AMD s7100x in an iMac - glue the ODD temperature sensor near to the GPU temperature sensor.
Cut a silicon termal pad to the size of the ODD sensor and use some epoxy/resin at the edges of the sensor.
Use a clamp or some wight to press the sensor to the surface of the heatsink during the hardening of the resin.
The thermal pad will give a good coupling an electric insulation to the ODD sensor.
Gently remove the original adhesive tape from the ODD sensor before ! Clean the little pcb with acetone free brake cleaner or n-hexan.
The temperature readings won't differ from the original GPU sensor after that.

How to install S7100X on a radiator?
In what order should the screws be tightened?
First 1-4, and then 5-8?

Main question:
And how tightly should the screws be tightened?
Are the screws tightened all the way?
So that the screw with the spring rests against the board?

If you tighten the screws all the way, the board will not be installed parallel to the radiator - fourth photo.

 

[bernd20062]

Hello Ausdauersportler, thank you for replay. How do I delete the files for the old graphics card? I activated AMD GOP Injection and AMD GCN in OC under Settings, Advanced, and manually inserted NVRAM boot args -radpg=15 -wegtree agdpmod=pikera in the config.plist. Then Build and Install Opencore.Then Post install Root Patch.Thanks for the help

Revert OCLP patches (from ATI 4670) and apply new patches (for AMD GCN) - this is more an how to use OCLP problem than a GPU related one.

Edit: You will find the revert button next to the patch button in the OCLP app.

Many thanks for the help. The solution is to reset all the patches, now everything works as it should, only SD cards in the internal card reader are not recognized. No map appears in Disk Utility. The card reader is listed in the system information. When i start in recovery mode the card is recognized. An external card reader also recognizes the SD card. Is there a solution to this. Many thanks

 

[Shnite]

Which firmware is better to install?
nikey22 S7100X_6939_imac 1300_750 MHz or Ausdauersportler S7100X-6930-LVTMA-GOP UEFI Windows 10?
Why are there so many differences (8685)?

 

[Shnite]

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.

Do I understand correctly that to return to the stock state you need to change these parameters in your firmware?

 

[Pacific1972]

Which firmware is better to install?
nikey22 S7100X_6939_imac 1300_750 MHz or Ausdauersportler S7100X-6930-LVTMA-GOP UEFI Windows 10?
Why are there so many differences (8685)?

That is a really good question

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2010-imac-graphics-card-amd-firepro-w7170m.2338687/page-3?post=31856946#post-31856946

 

[Shnite]

AMD S7100X support (AMD Radeon S7100X 8GB)

Type	ident	BIOS version	device-id	working
Red AMD PCB	109-C769A1-00_02	S7100X	6939	yes

This GPU will be identified by the macOS as AMD FirePro R9 285 8GB - this is purely cosmetic!

Tested systems:
- iMac12,2: sleep/wake broken - black screen on cold boot needs PRAM reset each time
- iMac11,1: no problems
- iMac11,3: no problems
- iMac10,1: not tested, but should work

Memory support:
Samsung

Known problems:
- does not run reliably in the iMac12,2
- flashing using the GRML amdvbflash failed consistently - had to use the CH341A clip to avoid problems

Known features:
- Airplay is working until Catalina as with any other AMD metal card on iMac11,x and iMac12,2 (without using QuickSync)
- high metal scores
- boot screen with OpenCore
- GPU power management working
- still full Monterey support (no root patching needed unlike Kepler)
- DRM support (even with Ventura und OLCP 0.6.4+)
- card needs iMac12,2 MXM-B heat sink and the same Dremel modifications as the W6170M/W7170M cards.
- GPU chip was called a barn heater once here, it is dissipates the most heat of all cards ever tested
- failing to control the FANs or ignoring the ODD sensor replacement will burn the card to death in a few months!

Performance:
- High GeekBench Metal (28.922) and OpenCL (24.715)
- Valley: 40 FPS, 1820 Score on i3 550 CPU (58.1 FPS and 2430 Score on i5-2400)
- MetalBench: 85MRays/s
- CoreClock: 725 MHz
- Memory: 1250 MHz
- TPD: 75W (this is a 100W card, but during tests it never drew more than 75W, which is the limit of the MXM slot)
- no 4K HEVC or 4K H.264

Setup:
- boots macOS High Sierra even without OpenCore support, DRM and more recent macOS need OpenCore

Development:
- Thanks to @nikey22 and @internetzel for their dedication and time helping to get the card working!

Download:
- Please check out this site!

IMAC-EFI-BOOT-SCREEN/EG/S7100X-6939-LVTMA-EnableGop.rom.zip at main · Ausdauersportler/IMAC-EFI-BOOT-SCREEN

How to create an EFI boot screen vBIOS for Apple Late 2009 to Mid 2011 iMac systems using AMD MXM graphics cards - Ausdauersportler/IMAC-EFI-BOOT-SCREEN

github.com

Results:

 

[bosjc]

Hi, so interesting issue I am having. I have an iMac 2010 mid-21.5" which I have been playing around with. I decided to upgrade the GPU so I could get it on a newer OSX and I went with an AMD wx4130, pre-flashed from eBay. After a decent amount of assembly/re-assembly, I am able to boot up, here the chime, but then nothing - after a bit, the fans hit max speed. This is with my external display connected. There is no activity on the 3rd LED, only the first two diagnostic LEDs.

So, I thought it was maybe a bad GPU or perhaps the firmware wasn't flashed correctly. I created a Linux USB boot drive and plugged it in. I got no IP on my network with it plugged into the ethernet port which I thought was strange. However, after letting it run for a few minutes I saw that Linux had actually booted up and was working on my external monitor. I went in and confirmed that the LAN port didn't seem to work (it had before the GPU upgrade attempt). I went into the flashing utils and confirmed that the proper firmware was on the card, and flashed it again just in case, but still, I can't get any video output outside of the Linux USB.

Has anyone else experienced this? Bad GPU maybe, even if it seems to work under Linux? Appreciate any thoughts.

 

[Shnite]

How much energy does your S7100X consume in idle mode?
My card consumes 26W. It's too much.
Is it possible to reduce consumption?

Is it possible to lower the voltage and frequency so that the S7100X heats up less?

 

[internetzel]

Hi, so interesting issue I am having. I have an iMac 2010 mid-21.5" which I have been playing around with. I decided to upgrade the GPU so I could get it on a newer OSX and I went with an AMD wx4130, pre-flashed from eBay. After a decent amount of assembly/re-assembly, I am able to boot up, here the chime, but then nothing - after a bit, the fans hit max speed. This is with my external display connected. There is no activity on the 3rd LED, only the first two diagnostic LEDs.

So, I thought it was maybe a bad GPU or perhaps the firmware wasn't flashed correctly. I created a Linux USB boot drive and plugged it in. I got no IP on my network with it plugged into the ethernet port which I thought was strange. However, after letting it run for a few minutes I saw that Linux had actually booted up and was working on my external monitor. I went in and confirmed that the LAN port didn't seem to work (it had before the GPU upgrade attempt). I went into the flashing utils and confirmed that the proper firmware was on the card, and flashed it again just in case, but still, I can't get any video output outside of the Linux USB.

Has anyone else experienced this? Bad GPU maybe, even if it seems to work under Linux? Appreciate any thoughts.

There are a few versions of WX4130 VBIOS available from here.
Which one did you flash?

Further questions:
What type of VRAM chips does your card have?
Do you use OpenCore?
Which macOS version are you trying to boot?
Do you know whether your iMac firmware (a.k.a bootrom) is up to date?

 

[Shnite]

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

Why are DEVIDs in firmware from nikey22 and Ausdauersportler different?

 

[unclemiltie]

Hello!
I would like to replace in the iMac video card. Which one should I choose?
AMD WX3200 or Quadro K3100? Or anything?
My specs:
Imac 27 2011 summer
I7 2600
32 GB Ram

I have the same configuration, less the i7, and did the K3100 last year. I've done one with the WX7100 as well.

both of those (K3100 and WX7100) are MXM-B cards and will require the 3-pipe (larger) heat sink that might have come with your mac if it had a 6970 graphics card. If it had the 6770 itt'll only have the 2-pipe heat sink which won't do it for those higher power cards. So you might be buying a heat sink as well as the card.

The K3100 works great (on the machine I am using now) however, I do have issues with sleep/resume. The system will not recover from sleep so I've just turned the settings to the point where it never goes to sleep. If that's an issue for you, you might want to consider it, although there are other who have the K3100 and hve no issues. The system sometimes also won't power on and it takes a few (a dozen?) pushes of the power button to get it to start. Once that happens though it runs great.

 

[Shnite]

I've done one with the WX7100 as well.

How much energy does your WX7100 consume when idle?

Release 6.26 · CozmoNate/HWSensors

HWMonitor: Removed autoupdater (Sparkle framework) HWMonitor: added TcaseMax override to SMART config, possible to override overheating temperature for specific HDD GPUSensors: Inital support for ...

github.com

 

[Shnite]

- PowerDraw: 8W idle - 75W max

Why does my S7100X consume 25W of power when idle?