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

[LightBulbFun]

btw funny and interessting ROM-version your quadro K1100M has, it says preset 1.0.0

it says that because the user is running el cap which has very old Kepler drivers (if he is running this on his Mac Pro as well it would explain why his GK208 card did not work)

and those old drivers dont report the VBIOS version on PC cards

Sierra and newer have 355 branch based drivers which support every Kepler GPU out there and also display the VBIOS version properly

 

[Nick [D]vB]

old drivers dont report the VBIOS version on PC cards

Interesting, although I found all the bios stuff still gets hidden once you load a valid Nvidia EFI.

What is the right way to reassemble the board into the iMac. It always take me about 20-30 minutes to get the board in position. This design s*ks hard for maintenance.

Agreed, but for gods sake take the ram out, it’s a nightmare getting the board installed with it in!

Also you need to replace the bios chip, because the default one on the non-apple card is 64kb and you need a 128kb one for the apple fw

Yep, you need the red Dell cards, sadly even if you were to solder a 128KB EEPROM to those empty pads you’d find the HP card will only talk to the first 64KB, because some spiteful little resistor is limiting the address range. The Apple bios won’t work anyway, even on a Dell card, boot freezes if you connect the LCD. To save getting the soldering-iron out you can just inject the EFI part into the system bootrom, if you can find a way to write to it…

never say no, maybe Rominator will be back someday with a rom..

Maybe, I guess back-light control defeated him to. MVC & Netkas seem to be busy with cMP RX580 / 560 roms at the moment, but anything cMP can do we can do to…

Sorry, I might need to lurk a little harder, has anyone tried AMD's Cards?

I tested the AMD cards, all of them! Most of the older AMD MXM cards have detection problems in the iMac, or just refused to talk to the LCD, but some of the newer ones actually work very well, with a bit of work, you can get Metal, boot-screens & HEVC video acceleration, plus a few Radeon Pro perks in the Windows driver. But this does require a hardware back-light mod, and a system bootrom mod for boot-screens. These cards are expensive and hard to source, but if anyone wants to give it a shot I could post a guide?

WX7100 (RX580) Works with a back-light mod:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-Radeon...or-Dell-Precision-7710-7720-7730/273660865691

WX4170 (RX560) Works with back-light mod, but normally comes with a blank vbios!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Zbook17...VIDOE-CARD-917107-001-925180-001/163747154688

WX4150/30 (RX550X) Sadly the cheapest / most available cards DON’T WORK, at all, even a little bit:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Preci...eon-Pro-WX-4150-Video-Card-V30XX/113726245822

– they’re just not detected, it's not a vbios issue, some MXM / PCIE weirdness I guess…? 8(

I'll ask Collin about DyingLight availability, but you can just hot-wire the back-light to full brightness and use the Brightness slider app. Info on enabling HEVC decoding here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/activate-amd-hardware-acceleration.2180095/

Some random screen-shots below...

 

[passatgt]

The Apple bios won’t work anyway, even on a Dell card, boot freezes if you connect the LCD.

Thats not true, it works fine. I'm guessing the dell card you tried was also dead, thats why it freezed for you. But for me, it worked fine, i sold my old 21.5 iMac with a card like that. Someone on the forums even sent me a 1gb version of the Apple firmware and that worked fine too: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2011-imac-graphics-card-upgrade.1596614/page-67#post-27080233

 

[Pascal Baillargeau]

Hi Nick [D]vB,
i am very interested by your method to make an RX580 works, I have aldready flashed a GTX780M and make it works, so i know the basics, but if we can avoid to reinvent the wheel it will be wonderfull!
Regards,

 

[Ooze]

Interesting, although I found all the bios stuff still gets hidden once you load a valid Nvidia EFI.


WX4170 (RX560) Works with back-light mod, but normally comes with a blank vbios!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Zbook17...VIDOE-CARD-917107-001-925180-001/163747154688

What does the process look like for installing a wx4170? I'd be really interested in something like that.

 

[Roman78]

it says that because the user is running el cap which has very old Kepler drivers (if he is running this on his Mac Pro as well it would explain why his GK208 card did not work)

and those old drivers dont report the VBIOS version on PC cards

Sierra and newer have 355 branch based drivers which support every Kepler GPU out there and also display the VBIOS version properly

Aha, that could be the reason. I ran 10.10 when i tried the GK208.

Here a picture from Mojave:

 

[passatgt]

Anyone has experience fixing a GPU in a 24" iMac? I can see that the GPU is socketed, but its an older MXM slot. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+24-Inch+EMC+2111+GPU+Assembly+Replacement/5214

 

[Nick [D]vB]

Thats not true, it works fine.

Well there are at least 4 versions of the Apple 6770 bios, and the Dell cards come with several different memory types, so a lot of variables. Glad to hear one combination worked in your 21”, they didn’t with the 27" 2011 iMac. There was nothing wrong with the card, the modified 1GB bios worked fine, except for BootCamp. Nice of that guy to send it to you, very generous… ; )

i am very interested by your method to make an RX580 work

The RX580 is actually the easiest because the WX7100 card should already come with a working vbios, you just need to do the back-light mod. Not sure what’s happening with the DyingLight but in the mean time you can do a basic “hot-wire” mod instead, I think I posted about that before, to re-cap… You can do this with a single wire, but a safer method uses a PCIE power extension cable between the PSU and LCD “inverter” board.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/8-6-pin-PC...Video-Card-Power-Extension-Cable/352463698131
https://www.ebay.com/itm/6Pin-Male-...-Card-Power-Extension-Cable-20cm/201764196006
https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-2-Pack-Extension-Power/dp/B01DV1Z4EQ

You just cut the PWM wire on the extension (at the female/socket end) and feed ~3v into it to fire the back-light, you can tap 3.3v from the Bluetooth / SD reader cable, or just poke the wire into the right hole (!) on the back of the main PSU connector, & secure with a zip-tie. The PSU pin is SMB_SCL, not really a power rail, but it works.

Obviously all the usual health warnings apply, even when unplugged that power supply can give you a nasty jolt (take my word for it!) so don’t go poking anything on the back of the PSU PCB. Apple really should have insulated that, it’s almost as if they don’t want people opening these things… xD

What does the process look like for installing a wx4170?

The RX560 is a bit tricky, there are at least two versions of the WX4170 card, the one I found had a blank vbios chip that you can “blind flash” in windows using remote access (TeamViewer etc) or with a programmer clip. But, the version in most eBay listings are actually missing a vbios chip, so you would need to solder one on. You would then also need to do the back-light mod. There’s a small chance the WX4150 cards could work in a late 2009 iMac, it was actually detected in an early 2009 iMac (A1225) but couldn't output to its LVDS screen. They might also work in a 2009 Xserve?

The boot-screen mod is quite complicated, we can get to that later, but it basically involves injecting a few bits & bobs from newer iMac firmware into your bootrom (all original Apple code). I’ll try and put together a magic boot disk so you guys can update your bootrom easily. I'll post some proper photos of the back-light mod when I get time, and if the DyingLight has actually died a death we can look into some other options.

UPDATE: Bootrom + vbios files to enable boot-screen now attached.

I was hoping to make a boot disc to enable boot-screens on 560 / 580 cards, I did find a way to patch & write the bootrom through EFI shell using a tool called Chipsec, but it was complicated and ridiculously slow (about 3 hours to write the full bootrom!) so the much faster / safer option is just to use a hardware programmer instead. You can get a CH341A + Clip for $5 which you can also use to flash the video card bios, two birds one stone etc.

First dump the iMac bootrom (make a back-up copy!) then use UEFI Tool to inject the CoreEG2 & EDID Parser (DXE drivers from the iMac 17,1). Expand the first volume in the bios region, scroll down and insert both drivers at the end before the free space, then save the file. Flash the modded bootrom and the vbios for your card (patched with a GOP taken from the MBP 14,3) then do a NVRAM reset and you should see a boot-screen! 8)

 

[Roman78]

Something came to my mind last night... If the GK208 i have just did not worked because the old OSX version and should work on a newer OSX version, than maybe the K610M also should work. The K610M is the cheapest card i found till now.

Other thoughts.... mine dead iMac 2013 had the GTX 775M in it. This has the GK104 chip, like the GTX 780M, would it be possible to use that firmware from that card to make the GTX 780 (or maybe even for the GTX 765M) EFI compatible? On other iMacs there were the GT750M and GT755M (GK107) installed. From the old G4 Days i flashed some PCI and AGP cards and also had some strange issues back than. Like i flashed a Radeon 9650 with the firmware from a 9800 and it worked. Still own that card, it is in my Quicksilver a.t.m.

3rd thought... yes i had a sleepless night... as i own the GT230M, which apparently won't work in the 2011 iMac, would this one work in a 2009 or 2010 iMac?

 

[FlorisVN]

Something came to my mind last night... If the GK208 i have just did not worked because the old OSX version and should work on a newer OSX version, than maybe the K610M also should work. The K610M is the cheapest card i found till now.

Other thoughts.... mine dead iMac 2013 had the GTX 775M in it. This has the GK104 chip, like the GTX 780M, would it be possible to use that firmware from that card to make the GTX 780 (or maybe even for the GTX 765M) EFI compatible? On other iMacs there were the GT750M and GT755M (GK107) installed. From the old G4 Days i flashed some PCI and AGP cards and also had some strange issues back than. Like i flashed a Radeon 9650 with the firmware from a 9800 and it worked. Still own that card, it is in my Quicksilver a.t.m.

3rd thought... yes i had a sleepless night... as i own the GT230M, which apparently won't work in the 2011 iMac, would this one work in a 2009 or 2010 iMac?

getting a 2013 iMac kepler bios, and mod it would be an idea indeed, I have been thinking about this to in the past..
But i don't have the skills to do the job..
Maybe some smart one of us, can figure this one out, and release a Apple vbios for all of us out there.. ?

As of this day, I don't see anybody has uploaded his 2013 nvidia bios to techpowerup vga bios database.. ?
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios...le&model=&interface=&memType=&memSize=&since=

about your 3rd thought, i doubt that it would work then on 2009,2010 iMac's if it already does not work in the 2011 one.

 

[passatgt]

Depends if you really mean the old white plastic iMacs, or the newer 24" A1225's ?

The old, white version, EMC 2111.

Btw, this is the 6770m that worked for me: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32865870005.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.27424c4d6GrjB5

 

[AlexPalm]

Yes, it fits with the bigger heatsink. You need to drill out the bracket holes on the card so the iMac screws can go through it, thats the only mod you need to do. But if you read back, the k1100m works too and it has slightly better performance, so i would get that instead.

Thanks a lot!

And another question, will DDR3 version of K2000M work in iMac 27 2011?

 

[passatgt]

Thanks a lot!

And another question, will DDR3 version of K2000M work in iMac 27 2011?

I don't think theres multiple versions of this card, all of them is ddr3. If you found something else(i checked on ebay, theres ddr5 listed on some ads) is i think just a listing error. I bought this one: "D30WG - Dell Precision M4700 nVidia Quadro K2000M 2GB DDR3 Video Card"

 

[AlexPalm]

I don't think theres multiple versions of this card, all of them is ddr3. If you found something else(i checked on ebay, theres ddr5 listed on some ads) is i think just a listing error. I bought this one: "D30WG - Dell Precision M4700 nVidia Quadro K2000M 2GB DDR3 Video Card"

I have access to this one:
NVIDIA QUADRO 2000M N12P-Q3-A1 DDR3 2GB MXM VGA VIDEO CARD from Dell Precision 4600.
It looks the same, but from previous generation of DELL - 4600

 

[FlorisVN]

General questions
Q: What new issues will I have after swapping my card with a PC MXM card?
A: The two biggest issues we have are:
1. The loss of EFI boot screen*
2. The loss of Backlight control**
3. You can only connect one external monitor to the 27" iMacs

Q: What paste is recommended to cover the VRAM/Components on the MXM card like Apple’s design?
A: For the GPU Die any thermal Paste like Thermal Grizzly’s Kryonaut paste is good for the Die. For onboard components I recommend using K5 Pro Viscous paste instead of thermal pads, due to the unevenness of the heatsink, it’s also similar to Apple’s original Design: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00K04D3UK/

Q: Why aren’t you using Maxwell or Pascal cards in the iMac?
A: A lot of people here have tested Maxwell cards with their 2011 iMacs, and have had various issues from no internal display, no backlight on internal display and the card not hitting boost. It is best not to attempt using Maxwell cards until we know of a VBIOS that will play nice with the iMac and the “Dying light” brightness control module is perfected.

2009-2011 27” iMac MXM card upgrade Q/A
Q: What MXM cards are known working?
A: Currently the Dell/Alienware 765m, 770m, 780m and 860M are confirmed working. You could also use the smaller form-factor(MXM 3.0A) Dell K2000M card.

Q: What mods are needed for the 27” iMac to make the cards fit into the iMac?
A: There are 2 mods needed to make the MXM card fit. First you must grind down your heatsink in the area where two large coils sit, this way the card will sit flush with the heatsink. Second you must drill out the rivets on Dell’s X-Clamp or grind away Apple’s X-Clamp so no capacitors or components touch the X-Clamp or sit under it. Skipping this step can fry/damage your card.

2010-2011 iMac 21.5" iMac MXM card upgrade Q/A
Q: What MXM card(s) are known working?
A: currently only the Dell K2000M is the preferred MXM card to swap due to space issues and low power draw of the k2000m.

Q: are there any internal modifications needed for an MXM-A swap?
For an MXM-A swap (the shorter/less power draw cards) there are no modifications that are needed for the heatsink. The X-clamp needs be removed from the back of the card and have the screw posts drilled out.

Installing macOS Mojave
Since you will have a Mojave compatible GPU, you could run the newest macOS without any serious issues. The recommended method is to have High Sierra as your primary OS and install Mojave alongside on a separate partition. So if anything goes wrong, you can still boot back into High Sierra to fix issues. You could preinstall Mojave before changing your GPU. Use dosdude1's Mojave patcher to do the install: http://dosdude1.com/mojave/
Important: while running the Post Install tool, make sure you deselect the Legacy Video Card patch option(since you will using a new, compatible card).

* This means that when you start your iMac, you will have a blank screen until macOS boots up. So you cannot see the boot menu and the Apple logo during boot. The boot menu still works, so you can navigate it blindly if you are lucky.

Q: sleep is broken in Mojave, how do i fix this?

A: this is because of the SandyBridge kexts missing in Mojave. Although we aren't using the iGPU, these kexts are still needed for proper sleep functionality. A zip file is attached with the proper kexts to restore sleep in Mojave. Inside the unzipped folder contains an APP, Kext Utility and the necessary SandyBridge kexts needed to be installed. Right click to open kext utility, then immediately quit. Select all the files inside the folder and drag them on top of kext utility and allow them to install.


** An attempt is being made throughout this thread to fix Backlight. A "Dying Light" module created by @dosdude1, originally intended for the 2011 15” MacBook Pro has been found to work with controlling the backlight PWM signal on the iMac. This involves removing your SD card board, splicing wires and soldering to the SD card adapter. Currently no official guide is made for this mod, so it is briefly mentioned here. You can also try a software based method, which can simulate the brightness change(it will just change the colors appearing on your screen, not the actual backlight). The best app for this is Brightness Slider, which is available on the App Store for free.

Original Post from @MichaelDT June 14th, 2013.
I will be attempting to upgrade the MXM card in my 2011 21.5 iMac from the factory 6770m 512mb to a NVidia 675m 2GB. I choose this card because the chipset already has support from 10.8.3 onwards and affordability for an experiment. I am hoping that it will work without flashing like many of the other non MXM modern graphics cards (UEFI support) do in 64bit EFI Mac Pros ( I may loose the initial boot screen). But if all else fails I will attempt a flash. I will report back my findings when the card arrives (from Hong Kong). Wish me luck hopefully this will give those of us with the last modular iMac a path forward.

Maybe the Nvidia Dell Quadro K1100m, could be added to this post.. ?
It appears to also work fine, this gives 21,5" users more options out there

 

[passatgt]

Maybe the Nvidia Dell Quadro K1100m, could be added to this post.. ?
It appears to also work fine, this gives 21,5" users more options out there

Anyone can edit the first post, feel free to extend it with more info

 

[Roman78]

I have access to this one:
NVIDIA QUADRO 2000M N12P-Q3-A1 DDR3 2GB MXM VGA VIDEO CARD from Dell Precision 4600.
It looks the same, but from previous generation of DELL - 4600

The N12P-Q3-A1 2000M is a Fermi not a Kepler card. It used the GF106GLM Core. As far as i read, fermi wont work. But if you already own the car, just test it. I do the same with every card i can get for cheap, as the K1100M i got last week.

 

[passatgt]

I have access to this one:
NVIDIA QUADRO 2000M N12P-Q3-A1 DDR3 2GB MXM VGA VIDEO CARD from Dell Precision 4600.
It looks the same, but from previous generation of DELL - 4600

Yes, looks like this is an older one. I'm not sure that it would work. The one i bought has a N14P-Q3-A2 chip, the one you mentioned is N14P-Q3-A1. The chip layout is slightly different too.

 

[AlexPalm]

The N12P-Q3-A1 2000M is a Fermi not a Kepler card. It used the GF106GLM Core. As far as i read, fermi wont work. But if you already own the car, just test it. I do the same with every card i can get for cheap, as the K1100M i got last week.

Thanks, good to know. I was able to buy it locally, but I will better search for other options.

 

[FlorisVN]

Anyone can edit the first post, feel free to extend it with more info

ok lol thx, I was not aware of this..

 

[Nick [D]vB]

The old, white version, EMC 2111

Stick with the original 7300GT card, they’re not expensive or hard to find. I think MVC made a 7600GT work years go, but 32bit EFI and weird LVDS encoding limit your options, more trouble than it’s worth these days.

GT230M... would this one work in a 2009 or 2010 iMac?

No, Nvidia cards from that generation stop newer iMacs even powering on, they trigger some sort of protection in the PSU. Even if they didn’t, those cards output LVDS so they can’t talk to the eDP LCD panel in the A1312 iMacs.

I don't see anybody has uploaded his 2013 nvidia bios to techpowerup vga bios database.. ?

Probably because they can’t be easily dumped using GPU-Z etc, they’re embedded into the main iMac bootrom firmware, but can also be extracted from firmware updates in the MacOS installers.

getting a 2013 iMac kepler bios, and mod it would be an idea indeed

Indeed. If only life was that simple, someone would probably have done it already! Sadly those iMac’s legacy vbios won’t work on MXM cards, and they use a GOP type EFI which won’t talk to the older UGA type bootrom firmware in our iMacs - that’s why you need to mod the bootrom to get boot-screens on RX580 etc. With Nvidia cards you also get to have fun with DCB tables, and then there’s the P5 clock limit in windows to deal with.

It seems Apple / Nvidia also changed the way the back-light is controlled in newer iMacs, so even if you do get an EFI loaded, and the brightness slider to appear, it just won’t talk to the PWM hardware in our iMacs. AMD is more hopeful here, my “M380” actually has native brightness control in Windows & MacOS when using the standard RadeonFrameBuffer, but it still needs a hardware mod to wake the screen up, and has a host of other issues.

I’m not saying getting native brightness controls with these new cards is impossible, but the DyingLight mod (or something similar) really does look like the best option at the moment.

Maybe some smart one of us, can figure this one out, and release a Apple vbios for all of us out there.. ?

Maybe, just maybe…

; )

 

[Roman78]

What is the DyingLight?

A RX580 would be to expensive. I just searching for cheap alternatives, that why i bought the K1100M. Now i just doubt to buy a K610M to see if the GK208 Chip is working. Those cards are around 30 Euros.

So i have to sell the GT230M again...

 

[Nick [D]vB]

https://computeco.de/DyingLight

(check my post history for iMac installation details)

Sadly they've been sold-out for months now... 8(

 

[passatgt]

Probably because they can’t be easily dumped using GPU-Z etc, they’re embedded into the main iMac bootrom firmware, but can also be extracted from firmware updates in the MacOS installers.

I might be wrong, but with TechPowerUp GPU-Z its possible to backup the bios i think. That might work on bootcamp?

 

[Roman78]

https://computeco.de/DyingLight

(check my post history for iMac installation details)

Sadly they've been sold-out for months now... 8(

Yes off course. I read about that thing while i "fixed" some MacBook Pro's 2011. But i did not run High Sierra so i didn't need it. But if that is the solution for the iMac, i'll have to order some of those... when they are back on sale. Or is it possible to order the parts....

Other question. We know Kepler works. How about Maxwell and Pascal cards?

And.... not really GPU question... Is it true, than i can use a 95W cpu in a 21,5" iMac and not the K version in the 27" iMac? As my 27" has the 3.1 i5 2400 and the 21 has the 2500S. Now i have a 2500K here, I would to place into the 27" and the CPU from the 27" into the 21,5".