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

[dorninko]

You should use a temperature monitoring tool to verify that all temperature sensors do report correct values - except for the GPU temperature sensor, which can not be reported correctly with upgraded graphics cards.
Unfortunately not all needed sensors can be read out by software.
But using the terminal command

sudo powermetrics -s cpu_power -i 100

you can verify whether the CPU frequency does actually change while using the machine - in case it stays at a constant low frequency, there's at least one thermal sensor defective or not connected correctly.

Thanks for the info. I tried that but the CPU speed seems ok, it hovers around 95-100% for all cores.
I think it has soemthing to do with the installation of the system because the booting takes so long.
I will investigate further.
Does anybody know how to get into safe mode? I tried the shift button but as I stated before, the progess bar stops at midway and thats is?

@howardc64: I did the post install.

 

[howardc64]

Thanks for the info. I tried that but the CPU speed seems ok, it hovers around 95-100% for all cores.
I think it has soemthing to do with the installation of the system because the booting takes so long.
I will investigate further.
Does anybody know how to get into safe mode? I tried the shift button but as I stated before, the progess bar stops at midway and thats is?

@howardc64: I did the post install.

Can you post the following pic



Mine 12,2+WX4130 looks like this and running lightning fast

Is SSD known good? Did a install on a failing SSD and went all the way through install but couldn't boot. Looks like it takes all the writes and forget some of it haha.

 

[dorninko]

Can you post the following pic

View attachment 2346655

Mine 12,2+WX4130 looks like this and running lightning fast

Is SSD known good? Did a install on a failing SSD and went all the way through install but couldn't boot. Looks like it takes all the writes and forget some of it haha.

Thanks for the info, see attachment, I don't see any big differences. But your suggestion about a failing SSD could very well be the problem. I will try a new SSD.
Thanks again.

 

[internetzel]

Thanks for the info. I tried that but the CPU speed seems ok, it hovers around 95-100% for all cores.
I think it has soemthing to do with the installation of the system because the booting takes so long.
I will investigate further.
Does anybody know how to get into safe mode? I tried the shift button but as I stated before, the progess bar stops at midway and thats is?

@howardc64: I did the post install.

You need to look at the clock speed in MHz - don't investigate anything else unless you are really sure with this. On my machine the clock speed will go down to much less than 2 GHz and rise up to more than 3 GHz depending on the load.
Take a very close look at the frequency values in order to make sure CPU frequency does actually reach at least its nominal value and doesn't seem locked at a certain value.

Are there maybe any processes causing constantly high CPU load? Check that using Activity Monitor.

 

[boodaddyz]

Pretty awesome that this is still alive. I remember doing this back in the day to my Mac Pro 3,1. We had to do everything the old-school way though lol. My friend recently got a Mid 2011 iMac 12,1 for only $16 at the thrift store 🤑. It's literally in perfect condition as well.

I got him the following upgrades

New i7-2600s - eBay @ $36.99
New Dell WX4130 V1.1 - Green PCB - eBay @ $55.00 Best offer accepted 🤑🤑
Timetec 32GB iMac Ram kit - Amazon @ $34.99 (Tested on multiple Apple systems)
1TB Crucial MX500 SSD - Amazon @ $69.99
Noctua NT-H2 Thermal Paste - Amazon @ $13
ARCTIC 1.5mm VRAM Thermal Pads - Amazon @$9.99

Not too shabby for $236 including the computer 😂

Say a few prayers, start a fire in your front room, dance around it for me, say a couple more prayers, and let's hope all goes as well as it did in the past lol. 🍻

 

[EddieMac82]

Help with graphics card anyone? 2011 imac upgrade not going to plan

 

[howardc64]

Help with graphics card anyone? 2011 imac upgrade not going to plan

Read my signature link for first time upgrader. On 2011

• Hardest upgrade (need to pull logic board, at least on the 27", haven't done a 21.5" yet)
• Higher cost than 2009-2010. Lowest cost for 2011 want to run latest macOS = Dell green color WX4130 card. Got mine on ebay ~$40ish a week+ ago. No such deal now. Post #21580 picked up for $55 best offer.

Post #21572 outlines my success on 2011.

Perhaps post what problems you have and put iMac spec in signature to help the helpers

 

[dorninko]

You need to look at the clock speed in MHz - don't investigate anything else unless you are really sure with this. On my machine the clock speed will go down to much less than 2 GHz and rise up to more than 3 GHz depending on the load.
Take a very close look at the frequency values in order to make sure CPU frequency does actually reach at least its nominal value and doesn't seem locked at a certain value.

Are there maybe any processes causing constantly high CPU load? Check that using Activity Monitor.

Hi Internetzel,
the cpu speed is normal.
It was the SSD!?!
I made a copy of the system onto another SSD and then swapped the SSDs. and now the behavior of the iMac is as expected, very fast.
Strange thing that the SSD can go this bad...

Thanks to all, especially howardc64 for his suggestion about the SSD.

 

[zoran]

I wonder why there are no videos demonstrating the upgrade using a FireproM5100m GPU on a mid 2010 27" iMac... maybe its not possible and the results are bad?

 

[m0bil]

Hi Internetzel,
the cpu speed is normal.
It was the SSD!?!
I made a copy of the system onto another SSD and then swapped the SSDs. and now the behavior of the iMac is as expected, very fast.
Strange thing that the SSD can go this bad...

Thanks to all, especially howardc64 for his suggestion about the SSD.

I recently had a Samsung 870 EVO SSD fail in a similar way, no OS io errors, but general slowness when using some parts of the drive.

Drive had just 5% of expected write lifetime, but running a S.M.A.R.T report showed "critical" values for ECC error rate and Uncorrectable Error Count:

Searching the net it appears a batch of Samsung 870 EVOs were built with defective flash chips, so many people have had problems with them. BTW, Samsung was very responsive and replaced my unit for free even though it was almost 3 years old.

 

[howardc64]

I wonder why there are no videos demonstrating the upgrade using a FireproM5100m GPU on a mid 2010 27" iMac... maybe its not possible and the results are bad?

Probably because no one made video yet. So many combinations.

I installed M5100 to 11,1 and M4000 to 11,3 (2010 27”) both worked well on Sonoma. M4000 exact same GPU core as M5100 but 1/2 VRAM size and bandwidth.

 

[howardc64]

What are people's success rates buying pre-flashed cards? I think claiming well tested pre-flash cards by aliexpress sellers are unlikely true. Providing a working pre-flashed 10 year old card thoroughly requires 1) flash the correct vBIOS 2) install into iMac + OCLP install 3) running it for few days with reasonable usage. These are 10 year old used card after all.

Here is my aliexpress M5100 experience : wrong firmware flashed and random hangs once I flashed correct firmware

iMac+Metal GPU - GPU Selection

This part can be quite challenging with so many possibilities, working and non working versions of the same card. And success (including partial and during earlier development) posts scattered all over. Only few Simpler Card Choices Some risk to buy pre-flashed cards. Read link iMac 11,x Best

sites.google.com

Maybe highest success for pre-flashed cards is getting one from a developer here that have tested their cards and just selling the already finished testing pile of cards. But too few of these are available and devs probably not spending much effort selling them anyways.

So far my limited stats on lower end smaller and cooler cards are

• 2 US ebay seller cards requiring vBIOS flash myself worked in daily use for 1+ week.
• 1 aliexpress pre-flashed cards had wrong vBIOS and random hangs after correct vBIOS flashed

 

[howardc64]

Thanks for the info. I tried that but the CPU speed seems ok, it hovers around 95-100% for all cores.
I think it has soemthing to do with the installation of the system because the booting takes so long.
I will investigate further.
Does anybody know how to get into safe mode? I tried the shift button but as I stated before, the progess bar stops at midway and thats is?

@howardc64: I did the post install.

I recently had a Samsung 870 EVO SSD fail in a similar way, no OS io errors, but general slowness when using some parts of the drive.

Drive had just 5% of expected write lifetime, but running a S.M.A.R.T report showed "critical" values for ECC error rate and Uncorrectable Error Count:
Searching the net it appears a batch of Samsung 870 EVOs were built with defective flash chips, so many people have had problems with them. BTW, Samsung was very responsive and replaced my unit for free even though it was almost 3 years old.

Just discovered 850 EVO's incompat with some Macs.

Failed on 11,3 internal SATA II
Worked on 12,2 internal SATA III

Looks like SATA spec mismatch between iMacs and at least some 850 EVOs.

2011 iMac won't mount Samsung Evo 850

Hi, i have same issue, Beware iMac 27 mid 2011, don't work with samsung 860 EVO (Because samsung use unsupported new controller) also same situation can be with 850 EVO (i didn't check with this series), so optimal for upgrade without any risk will be use 840 EVO series. Symptomatic is next...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[dorninko]

What are people's success rates buying pre-flashed cards? I think claiming well tested pre-flash cards by aliexpress sellers are unlikely true. Providing a working pre-flashed 10 year old card thoroughly requires 1) flash the correct vBIOS 2) install into iMac + OCLP install 3) running it for few days with reasonable usage. These are 10 year old used card after all.

Here is my aliexpress M5100 experience : wrong firmware flashed and random hangs once I flashed correct firmware

iMac+Metal GPU - GPU Selection

This part can be quite challenging with so many possibilities, working and non working versions of the same card. And success (including partial and during earlier development) posts scattered all over. Only few Simpler Card Choices Some risk to buy pre-flashed cards. Read link iMac 11,x Best

sites.google.com

Maybe highest success for pre-flashed cards is getting one from a developer here that have tested their cards and just selling the already finished testing pile of cards. But too few of these are available and devs probably not spending much effort selling them anyways.

So far my limited stats on lower end smaller and cooler cards are

• 2 US ebay seller cards requiring vBIOS flash myself worked in daily use for 1+ week.
• 1 aliexpress pre-flashed cards had wrong vBIOS and random hangs after correct vBIOS flashed

I recently bought a M6100 pre-flashed card from AliExpress for only 27 Euros. I put it in an 11,3 iMac, works fine. But I don't have long-run experience with this card.

 

[howardc64]

I recently bought a M6100 pre-flashed card from AliExpress for only 27 Euros. I put it in an 11,3 iMac, works fine. But I don't have long-run experience with this card.

I'd guess best go with high review iMac vBIOS flashed seller. Maybe not the lowest cost but probably more experience and since AliExpress favors foreign buyers in legitimate disputes, they don't want to lose too much $ without experience to flash correct files and pulling cards from bad systems.

 

[deenx]

Hi Guys,

I'm new to this forum, but maybe someone could help me out there...
I recently got an iMac 27 (mid-2011), with a faulty HD6770 512mb, but I've got almost for free a card from iMac 2009 - which is older HD4670 with only 256mb of memory.
I tried to put it in, but only got a turn on sound, screen is black - not even a backlight has been turned on(( just sound with a dead screen.
I'm not even sure if system was booted or not, as there's windows only installed currently on the ssd.

So question 1: should it work at all, or is it a bad 4670 card (not sure if the card is 100% in working condition)?
I'll try to put my original card back today, to see if it would change anything (as at least I had a picture, untill I boot up OS)

Maybe some bios modifications required to startup the screen during UEFI boot, (not sure on that)?
The purpose of such downgrade - is that I've got the card almost for free and I just need my mac to work without any kinda critical gpu usage (web browsing, etc).

 

[deenx]

PLS ignore my previous post. The issue is SOLVED!

I figured it out that in my iMac mid-2011 - there's already a eDP panel, and the HD4670 card I've got from iMac 2009 - had an LVDS panel, therefore - it didn't initialized in my mac.

I quickly desoldered the bios chip and put it on the xGecu programmer, read bios and compared it to the one from here:

IMAC-EFI-BOOT-SCREEN/Apple 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

It was exactly the same (hex comparison) as for LVDS interface, so obviously I just had to flash the eDP version and that's what I did.
After flashing and soldering the chip back, I put everything back together and it works) At least Windows booted up with pre-installed ATI drivers. I even was able to launch Superposition test with something near 1-2 FPS)))) LOL )))
Now installing Sonoma...

 

[howardc64]

PLS ignore my previous post. The issue is SOLVED!

I figured it out that in my iMac mid-2011 - there's already a eDP panel, and the HD4670 card I've got from iMac 2009 - had an LVDS panel, therefore - it didn't initialized in my mac.

I quickly desoldered the bios chip and put it on the xGecu programmer, read bios and compared it to the one from here:

IMAC-EFI-BOOT-SCREEN/Apple 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

It was exactly the same (hex comparison) as for LVDS interface, so obviously I just had to flash the eDP version and that's what I did.
After flashing and soldering the chip back, I put everything back together and it works) At least Windows booted up with pre-installed ATI drivers. I even was able to launch Superposition test with something near 1-2 FPS)))) LOL )))
Now installing Sonoma...

Congrats and great detective work. Problem wasn't obvious to me at first read but fairly obvious once you mentioned it.

non metal GPU on Sonoma have a few visual anomalies but still very usable in Big Sur ( link )

 

[GPope]

updated my Mid 2011 iMac to Ventura 13.6.4 using OC a couple of days ago. I have 24gigs of ram, 1 tera ssd and original Graphics.
So far, everything seems to run. I don't play games, but illustrator and Photoshop works and YTube videos play. where can I expect to maybe hit a wall.
Awesome job on getting these old iMac working. Hats off to the whole team.

 

[deenx]

Thanks a lot, bro... but now for some reason I can't install Sonoma. After few reboots - it just stuck on logo with loading bar indicator, but empty (like it's 0%)...

Will try different macOS versions

Okay. So nothing helps((( I tried to re-install Sonoma few times, did Option+Command+P+R (nvram + something) reset, but still stucked on boot logo and 0% counting ....

Trying to install native MacOS Lion with internet recovery on another HDD right now... just to see if HD4670 would work in MacOS...

BTW. For some reason once I start the machine - after 10-15 seconds GPU fan begins to spin quite fast... it wasn't like that before on old HD6770, even during installation it was quite before, but now it's spinning quite loud. In Windows I observer GPU temp from 50 to 67 C, wanna see how it would go in native os..

 

[howardc64]

Thanks a lot, bro... but now for some reason I can't install Sonoma. After few reboots - it just stuck on logo with loading bar indicator, but empty (like it's 0%)...

Will try different macOS versions

Okay. So nothing helps((( I tried to re-install Sonoma few times, did Option+Command+P+R (nvram + something) reset, but still stucked on boot logo and 0% counting ....

Trying to install native MacOS Lion with internet recovery on another HDD right now... just to see if HD4670 would work in MacOS...

BTW. For some reason once I start the machine - after 10-15 seconds GPU fan begins to spin quite fast... it wasn't like that before on old HD6770, even during installation it was quite before, but now it's spinning quite loud. In Windows I observer GPU temp from 50 to 67 C, wanna see how it would go in native os..

2011s are challenging without low cost +metal GPU option. WX4130 is lowest even its hard to get <$50.

NV Kepler cards such as K1100M is more abundant for +metal GPU upgrade but sounds like compatibility problems after Big Sur but still way better than High Sierra. Can at least run latest browsers.

If you pursue +metal upgrades, info in my signature link. I'll be doing 2011+Kepler soon to hopefully document more knowledge for 2011 owners.

 

[deenx]

2011s are challenging without low cost +metal GPU option. WX4130 is lowest even its hard to get <$50.

NV Kepler cards such as K1100M is more abundant for +metal GPU upgrade but sounds like compatibility problems after Big Sur but still way better than High Sierra. Can at least run latest browsers.

If you pursue +metal upgrades, info in my signature link. I'll be doing 2011+Kepler soon to hopefully document more knowledge for 2011 owners.

Yep, that's my temporary solution so far. If it woun't be able to run Big Sur or Monterey - I'll just use Windows for now... But going forward, I'm looking to replace that crap (i.e. 4670) to something like K4100m or K2000m..
For K4100 I'd need 3 pipe heatsink as it's mxm B, but K2000m doesn't as it's mxm A, so regular 2 pipes heatsink is enought for it...is quite fine I guess for my needs.

 

[deenx]

That's actually quite weird, since according to the requirements of OCLP - Sonoma should run just fine (and it was running just fine, till the moment when original 6770 failed) with older iMacs (from 2009, where 4670 was used). But in my case it's mid-2011 with card from 2009)))) I'll try to continue investigations just for fun. Will try to boot Monterey and if it'll fail - then Big Sur. Otherwise it's no point to try older OSs.

 

[deenx]

Monterey installed just fine, but it's actually useless. Very slow(( Apps are not opening, can't do anything there...

 

[howardc64]

Monterey installed just fine, but it's actually useless. Very slow(( Apps are not opening, can't do anything there...

After post install root patch + settings I mentioned in post #21593?

I've run 11,1 11,3 stock GPU Sonoma with those settings and quite zippy. Perhaps your Frankenstein 09 GPU integration is the cause.