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

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The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
@snackbar WX4150 can run Sonoma, try holding shift though the boot screens until you get to the progress bar.
 

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ethanstiles said:
Heaven unigine gets 30-60 fps
Click to expand...
That's well and good, but Safe Mode is used for troubleshooting. It's not meant to be used for daily use. When reboot, hold down Option. This be macOS boot picker. Pick your OpenCore EFI. This will then boot to OpenCore boot picker. Pick disk where you installed OC macOS. If the OC macOS doesn't boot, then you have incompatible drivers loading during macOS boot.
 
Just upgraded 2x 12,2 with Nvidia k610m + OCLP Sequoia 15.7.2. Works great for a low cost gfx card ( but slower new since Ventura iOS style System Settings UI than the newer AMD metal cards).

Upgrade sequence this time is
  1. Install High Sierra (to ensure latest bootrom)
  2. Install SSD, do thermal sensor mod
  3. Install OCLP Sequoia on OEM AMD GPU
  4. Setup Account
  5. Set Kepler GPU, Install OC to EFI SSD
  6. Reverse Root Patch
  7. Install k610m GPU
  8. Boot and Root Patch
One step I forgot before Step 4 was PRAM Reset (haven't done a 11,x 12,x GPU + OCLP upgrade in awhile). This caused much diagnostic effort. Everything mostly works but have weird behaviors (frequent random reboots, display anomolies)
 
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Bigwaff said:
That's well and good, but Safe Mode is used for troubleshooting. It's not meant to be used for daily use. When reboot, hold down Option. This be macOS boot picker. Pick your OpenCore EFI. This will then boot to OpenCore boot picker. Pick disk where you installed OC macOS. If the OC macOS doesn't boot, then you have incompatible drivers loading during macOS boot.
Click to expand...
I can’t see the boot screen with the wx4150 but the os detects the graphics card. I am having some trouble with wifi now. Do you know how I can fix wifi issues with my card not being used?
 
ethanstiles said:
I can’t see the boot screen with the wx4150 but the os detects the graphics card. I am having some trouble with wifi now. Do you know how I can fix wifi issues with my card not being used?
Click to expand...
Assuming you read this page -
github.com

WWWW

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 github.com

Which WX4150 do you have?
 
Bigwaff said:
Assuming you read this page -
github.com

WWWW

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 github.com

Which WX4150 do you have?
Click to expand...
I have the dell one with samsung ram. I am having a problem where the imac will not shut down or restart from the menu and must be forced to shut down. Do you know how to fix this?
 
Ausdauersportler said:
About AMD EFI boot screen support​


Nearly two years ago I posted here about a method @Nick [D]vB proposed to get EFI boot screen support with AMD Polaris cards. Before he took a sabbatical from this thread he left all knowledge and tools to get such a result. Unfortunately the first generation of EG2 vBIOS versions had some problems, sometimes the boot screen was dark (invisible) and needed a wire mod to switch the display on manually, sometimes the EFI picker showed up only on an external display. Last year @internetzel and I did a first run to solve this, after a break of more than seven months @dfranetic took over and solved using an IDA64 debugger the riddle within some weeks.

The only thing you need in advance is the iMac firmware modification. These BIOS versions offer native brightness control, support external displays without any sync problems. You can also use the same (OCLP) OpenCore setup as with the GOP BIOS versions to enable 4K H.264/HEVC on the GCN4 cards and DRM on GCN4, Venus, and Tonga Cards.

Tonga and Saturn cards use an Apple driver from iMacs not fully compatible with our systems. Unfortunately these drivers cannot enable the backlight (at least we failed to achieve this). Again @dfranetic developed a little PCB to install into the iMac which enables backlight on boot automatically. Details about this development (layout will be published) will be added to the same Github repository, too. The longer I write, the more I think he should have written this post.

Download:

In future all GOP and EG2 and other new vBIOS versions and all files need to modify the firmware can and will be found in this Github repository.

All EG2 version will be found in the subfolder named EG2, all vBIOS versions will follow the simple naming convention GPUNAME-EG2_adj.rom, if you need the M4000 version the file name will be M4000-EG2_adj.rom.

At the same time I moved all the existing GOP vBIOS version posted here on the individual posts scattered over the thread into the same GitHub repository. All GOP versions are stored in the subfolder named GOP and will follow in general this naming convention GPUNAME-GOP.rom, if you need the M4000 version the file name will be M4000-GOP.rom. There may be more than one file with your GPU name included covering different VRAM support.

You can download and flash as usually using the Linux GRML tool with amdvbflash or flashrom and a clip programmer.

Currently these EG2 vBIOS versions are available:

iMac11,x only (crash on wake after sleep, NVRAM corruption, not POST in iMac12,2)

Venus: M4000, M5100, M6000, W5170
Saturn: M6100, W6170, W6150 (all needing a PCB)
Tonga: W7170M, S7100X (needing a PCB)
Ellesmere: RX480, RX470, WX7100 VER 1.0

iMac11,x and iMac12,2:

Polaris: WX4130, WX4150, WX4170
Ellesmere: W7100 VER 1.1
RDNA 1.0: RX5500XT (needs a PCB)

Possible, but not touched so far:

Polaris: WX3200 (needs OC spoofing)
Tonga: W7170M (needs PCB)

The GCN4 / Polaris vBIOS versions will work in the same way as the Venus card, the backlight of the internal LCD will turn on automatically on system boot or when pressing alt/option.

Supported iMacs: iMac11,1 . iMac11 . iMac11,3 . iMac12,1 . iMac12,2

UEFI Windows support:

Since the GOP driver needed for UEFI Windows has been replaced within these new vBIOS by an Apple EG2 driver (or name it AppleGOP) installing UEFI Windows is mandatory and you need to load and reconnect the AMDGOP.efi driver using OpenCore.

Simply add the AMDGOP.efi to the Drivers folder of your OpenCore installation. Add an entry within the config.plist to the OpenCore UEFI/Drivers section next to OpenCanopy and friends and finally set the value of the already existing variable named ReconnectGraphicsOnConnect to true. The config.plist would partially look like this, here the AMDGOP.efi entry in UEFI/Drivers

Code: 
                        <dict>
                                <key>Arguments</key>
                                <string></string>
                                <key>Comment</key>
                                <string></string>
                                <key>Enabled</key>
                                <true/>
                                <key>Path</key>
                                <string>AMDGOP.efi</string>
                        </dict>
and for the ReconnectGraphicsOnConnect entry in the UEFI/Output section
Code: 
                        <key>ReconnectGraphicsOnConnect</key>
                        <true/>
Unfortunately OpenCore has a small bug, when entering the EFI picker and selecting OpenCore the first time to boot the internal LCD becomes black. Just press enter to select the preselected boot option and wait until macOS has booted. On every subsequent boot the Bootscreen will work as expected. The sync problems with external display in macOS will have a come back, too. The RX480 EG2 does not support Windows - driver installation fails.

​
All this would not have been possible without @Nick [D]vB, @nikey22, @dfranetic, and @internetzel. Great team!

Note: I will not constantly update this single post! Please consult in future the GitHub repos.
Click to expand...
This is what you are saying I must do? Reflash the gpu in linux because I do not have power off or wifi? It seems like I may not have sleep either. But is it possible to fix these issues? Please let me know.
 
Hello everyone I replaced my gpu with a Nividia K4100M

On an IMac 2011

The installation went well the system detects it after installing the Niky22 rom but the fan on the right turns fast

Someone can fix me to solve it thanks
 
I had to switch to ventura due to issues with sonoma. It seems that I am having some graphical glitches now. Does anyone know how to fix transparency not working properly? I would also like to know if it might be possible to upgrade to tahoe or sequoia? Or are newer versions out of the question for upgraded gps?
 
Tairon85 said:
Hello everyone I replaced my gpu with a Nividia K4100M

On an IMac 2011

The installation went well the system detects it after installing the Niky22 rom but the fan on the right turns fast

Someone can fix me to solve it thanks
Click to expand...

Right side fan flows over the optical disc and cools the GPU heat sink. Did you forget to plug in thermal sensor for either the GPU card or optical disc? Install macsfancontrol and take a look at which temp sensor value is missing. Both connector can be seen with just the LCD removed without pulling the logic board.

If change HDD to SSD, also need to solve drive thermal solution ( can solder a short jumper on logic board without removal, see my signature link)
 
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ethanstiles said:
I had to switch to ventura due to issues with sonoma. It seems that I am having some graphical glitches now.
Does anyone know how to fix transparency not working properly?
Click to expand...

May need to PRAM reset and/or run root patch again

ethanstiles said:
I would also like to know if it might be possible to upgrade to tahoe or sequoia? Or are newer versions out of the question for upgraded gps?
Click to expand...

OCLP Sequoia works fine. OCLP Tahoe won't be ready for awhile. Watch Mr. Macintosh's summary on youtube for OCLP Tahoe.
 
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