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iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
- Thread starter MichaelDT
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Damn, ok, I though that mine had a problem having a max of 80°C in full load...
Yes, I do have one and the brightness controll isn't working, it's always at full brightness because mine has a backlight mod done to it.
The wx7100 graphics card has 84 degrees at full load. The rx5500xt graphics card has 78 degrees at full load. The graphics card itself works well.
The simple backlight wire mod will force the backlight to be always on - so no backlight control by the OS possible in that case.
In case of not having done a hardware backlight mod, or the mod permits backlight control by the OS some time after powering on, you might get hardware backlight control in macOS only, and only after one sleep/wakeup cycle.
OCLP should inject a modded VBIOS into macOS that makes backlight control possible, but that will only work if your card has the internal display connected to the same display connector on the card as has Ausdauersportler's card (and, at least currently, the card needs to have the same PCI device ID as his card).
I've talked with Ausdauersportler in private and we've concluded that my card has a backlight mod installed that forces the backlight to be turned on upon boot and work at full brightness
Also, did anyone notice some RX6600M mxm cards starting to pop up here and there? I might buy one and try it out in my 12,2.
I have a slider running immediately before the sleep cycle or when I start the mac. But if you move the slider, the brightness does not change. Is the reason for the pci card ID?
The brightness does not change after sleep either.
An error occurred in the configuration in Opencore?
Next step: I installed Monterey without a problem. Then tried to update to Sonoma 14.3 the same way I did on all other iMacs (regular update in system preferences). It loaded the OS image but during preparation the same error occured... I will send a screenshot of the error (it is in German).
Update: I tried again to update from Monterey to 14.3 and it worked! No idea why but I am now happy to have the latest OS.
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Helping someone with a 12,2 w/6970M that died. User never used macOS patching/OCLP so clearly was happy enough with <= High Sierra. Therefore probably not too much of a power user. Common Kepler Big Sur solution probably good enough but like to get him on to solidly working Sonoma for low cost and provide more info to this community.
Consulting post #1 + much searching ( post #21457 ) suggest Dell Green WX4130 ver1.1 is good option (lowest cost, easiest install, no card + heat sink mods, more recent macOS)
My recent success ( post #21491 ) with 11,1 + low cost GCN v1-3 (M5100) on Sonoma proves its a solid runner ( link ). Will be doing a M4000 (ebay $12! for like 75% of M5100 performance. Same GPU core and die size (28nm) with 1/2 VRAM/bandwidth and low TDP for easy thermal install) on 11,3 w/Sonoma in the coming week. So 11,x owners have solid solutions to continue to live on the latest macOS @ low cost.
Am personally very motivated to find a solid low cost solution to Sonoma for 12,x users. Low cost Kepler was good until Monterey and I guess starting to get a bit old. Apple probably wants to get Intel off its support list ASAP haha.
Consulting post #1 + much searching ( post #21457 ) suggest Dell Green WX4130 ver1.1 is good option (lowest cost, easiest install, no card + heat sink mods, more recent macOS)
- Post #1 says GCN v4 cards generally start having incompatibilities @ Ventura but I can't find any post sharing problematic experiences.
- #21457 poster ( @yezhou1225 ) tested card on all 11,x and 12,x with solid functionality on Sonoma. PMed and he seems very technical user + some dev ability at a minimum in our brief PM. So a great data point.
My recent success ( post #21491 ) with 11,1 + low cost GCN v1-3 (M5100) on Sonoma proves its a solid runner ( link ). Will be doing a M4000 (ebay $12! for like 75% of M5100 performance. Same GPU core and die size (28nm) with 1/2 VRAM/bandwidth and low TDP for easy thermal install) on 11,3 w/Sonoma in the coming week. So 11,x owners have solid solutions to continue to live on the latest macOS @ low cost.
Am personally very motivated to find a solid low cost solution to Sonoma for 12,x users. Low cost Kepler was good until Monterey and I guess starting to get a bit old. Apple probably wants to get Intel off its support list ASAP haha.
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Yes I can confirm that Sonoma works well on iMac 12,2 and WX4130. I installed this card on 5 iMacs 12,2 and all work fine. I installed Monterey first (from OCLP Boot Stick) and then updated to Sonoma.
Awesome! Thats another great data point. Looks like a good choice for 12,x. Will post follow up with a guide although looks like it will probably be identical to the 11,x + M5100
( Good for newbies, just need 1 consistently working process for as many iMac versions as possible )One important comment: I had to change the settings on the OCLP USB stick to make the WX4130 card work:in the "advanced" tab I changed the "Graphics Override" to AMD GCN.Awesome! Thats another great data point. Looks like a good choice for 12,x. Will post follow up with a guide although looks like it will probably be identical to the 11,x + M5100
Ditto, same with M5100 (I also checked AMD GOP Injection, worked but don't know if required) and familiar with GRML vBIOS flash.
I also built the macOS installer without checking these flags but only built the Installer USB stick's OC with them. Also worked. And even on first boot, full card VRAM was found and macOS seemed to run fast. Post Install Root Patch gave some msg about stuff already installed (new to me compared to OCLP installs on 100% OEM hardware Macs) but went ahead and did a few things. OCLP is definitely getting more automatic every release. Impressive work and even more impressive the +metal iMac devs have integrated everything with OCLP so well.
You may send me your config.plist and the output of System Profiler for your graphics card. I'll then check whether OCLP detected your graphics card and installed everything needed for backlight control.
In case you do have backlight upon boot without any mod installed, it's almost sure that your card is more similar to MrZupp's than to Ausdauersportler's and hence cannot have backlight controlled by the OS.
The config.plist contains everything needed for backlight control to potentially work.
That's unlike Ausdauersportler's card, so backlight control by software probably impossible - his card doesn't show any backlight upon boot without a hardware mod.
His card looks exactly the same as mine in the photo and the model is the same. I also do not show the backlight without a hardware mod. OK. Thanks for the reply.
I'm having problems bringing my iMac (mid 2011, 12,2 27" screen, i5 2700 CPU & 6770 GPu) back to life after I've tried to upgrade the CPU to i7 2600, GPU to Nvidia 860M. Both the CPU & the GPU were new items. The system at first was running an updated Linux kernel. So have I have proceeded by trying the following:
With that long winded story, does anyone have any idea what might be or how to proceed?
TIA
- install both i7 2600 CPU & 860M GPU. With this combination, there was no boot chime after pushing the power button, only 1st LED lite. Power button and cable checked out to be ok.
- Replaced 860M GPU to OEM GPU, i7 2600 was left in. Once again no boot chime, only 1st LED lite.
- Changed the 17 2600 CPU back to the i5 2700, left OEM GPU installed. I got the boot chime, 1 & 2 LEDs lite up. 3rd does not lite up which means (if I understand correctly) the CPU & GPU aren't communicating. I was able to ssh to the iMac, but Linux OS did not find the GPU. Note this is the original configuration that worked before starting this upgrade process.
- Cleaned GPU connectors on OEM GPU and logic board. Same results as #3.
- I decided to see if I would get better results if I booted with the Mac OS disk, loaded with High Sierra. The results were the same as tests 3 & 4, with exception I can't ssh into the iMac because I never enabled ssh daemon.
With that long winded story, does anyone have any idea what might be or how to proceed?
TIA
First, press the 4 alt+cmd+R+P buttons simultaneously when turning on. If the computer restarts because you pressed 4 buttons, you can say that the computer is fine. It remains to check the video card. You need to connect an external TV or monitor. It will be visible there on the outside.
What vbios does he (Ausdauersportler) have on the map? Original or Enable Gop?
Thanks for the quick response. I did what you said during one of the later attempts, and I did hear the second chime. So I guess the GPU is shot. I'll try to hook it up to the TV since I don't have an extra monitor, but first I will need to get the appropriate cables first.
Thanks again.
I bet he's got the Enable GOP VBIOS installed which you downloaded from his GitHub site.
You will need to download the Mac system. And to load the Mac, you need to press the X button when you turn it on