iM 4,1-14,4 iMac 2011 Maxwell and Pascal GPU upgrade

[jay508]

Hey all, it's been a long time, apologies for the slow reply... Great work on the new vBIOS mods!

The HP T1000 works great, and as suspected it's EFI has UGA support like all Turing cards.
Everything "just works" - 4 debug LEDs, boot-selector, target disk mode, internet recovery etc.
Windows 10 drivers work fine, MacOS has no drivers but will boot with un-accelerated graphics.
So we get Mac boot-screens but no Mac drivers, someone at Nvidia has a sense of humor...

Now for the bad news... You MUST do a hardware back-light mod to force the iMac's back-light on.
There are many ways to do it, but a single wire will do, see the 2011 upgrade thread for options.
If you can't solder, push a wire into the back of the connectors, be careful to get the right pins!

There is no way around this, the Turing vBIOS can't be edited, it's protected with a "signature"
so if you change a single bit the Windows driver code 43s, and even the EFI driver refuses to load.
I was hoping to patch the Turing UGA EFI for the Pascal cards, but I'd guess that it is protected to?

The back-light mod should work on the Adlink cards, but check you have all 4 debug LEDs on first?
First 3 LEDs means the iMac LCD is not detected, likely on a vBIOS designed for embedded PCs.
You can try to flash a different vBIOS, but be careful about GDDR 5 or 6 and TU117B revisions.

It's likely that all Nvidia cards from the HP Zbook G6 will work with a back-light mod, RTX 3000 etc.
Maybe someday, in a distant future, someone will find a dusty old RTX 6000 on eBay and try it!

@Santa's Little Helper Long time no see

Do you mean that the mxm graphics vbios of the Turing architecture on the HP Zbook17 G6 rtx3000 rtx4000 rtx5000 does not need any modification to make everything "work" - 4 debug LEDs, boot selector, target disk mode, internet recovery, etc.?

And also Turing Adlink as well?

Do you have to make a hardware backlight module to force the iMac's backlight on?

I see that the p3200 p4200 p5200 from Pascal is more powerful compared to the p3000 p4000 p5000. Is it possible to patch them separately to add UGA EFI support?

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

 

[m0bil]

Hey all, it's been a long time, apologies for the slow reply... Great work on the new vBIOS mods!

The HP T1000 works great, and as suspected it's EFI has UGA support like all Turing cards.
Everything "just works" - 4 debug LEDs, boot-selector, target disk mode, internet recovery etc.
Windows 10 drivers work fine, MacOS has no drivers but will boot with un-accelerated graphics.
So we get Mac boot-screens but no Mac drivers, someone at Nvidia has a sense of humor...

Now for the bad news... You MUST do a hardware back-light mod to force the iMac's back-light on.
There are many ways to do it, but a single wire will do, see the 2011 upgrade thread for options.
If you can't solder, push a wire into the back of the connectors, be careful to get the right pins!

There is no way around this, the Turing vBIOS can't be edited, it's protected with a "signature"
so if you change a single bit the Windows driver code 43s, and even the EFI driver refuses to load.
I was hoping to patch the Turing UGA EFI for the Pascal cards, but I'd guess that it is protected to?

The back-light mod should work on the Adlink cards, but check you have all 4 debug LEDs on first?
First 3 LEDs means the iMac LCD is not detected, likely on a vBIOS designed for embedded PCs.
You can try to flash a different vBIOS, but be careful about GDDR 5 or 6 and TU117B revisions.

It's likely that all Nvidia cards from the HP Zbook G6 will work with a back-light mod, RTX 3000 etc.
Maybe someday, in a distant future, someone will find a dusty old RTX 6000 on eBay and try it!

Great work (as usual )!!

Regarding Turing vbios, I know people is upgrading the EFI versions on them. GOP updater does not work due to being unable to handle Turing vbios structure, but when done manually it seems to work (have not tried that myself). Have to keep images alignment the same (there are additional vbios parts after the EFI), and some cards have two EFI images on the vbios and have to replace both, but it seems to work.
That means there is not a "whole vbios" signature, but of course there can be a self-contained EFI-only signature that works since people is just upgrading unmodded EFI parts... Maybe not worth the hassle to just avoid the backlight mod.

 

[idenis42]

Hey all, it's been a long time, apologies for the slow reply... Great work on the new vBIOS mods!

The HP T1000 works great, and as suspected it's EFI has UGA support like all Turing cards.
Everything "just works" - 4 debug LEDs, boot-selector, target disk mode, internet recovery etc.
Windows 10 drivers work fine, MacOS has no drivers but will boot with un-accelerated graphics.
So we get Mac boot-screens but no Mac drivers, someone at Nvidia has a sense of humor...

Now for the bad news... You MUST do a hardware back-light mod to force the iMac's back-light on.
There are many ways to do it, but a single wire will do, see the 2011 upgrade thread for options.
If you can't solder, push a wire into the back of the connectors, be careful to get the right pins!

There is no way around this, the Turing vBIOS can't be edited, it's protected with a "signature"
so if you change a single bit the Windows driver code 43s, and even the EFI driver refuses to load.
I was hoping to patch the Turing UGA EFI for the Pascal cards, but I'd guess that it is protected to?

The back-light mod should work on the Adlink cards, but check you have all 4 debug LEDs on first?
First 3 LEDs means the iMac LCD is not detected, likely on a vBIOS designed for embedded PCs.
You can try to flash a different vBIOS, but be careful about GDDR 5 or 6 and TU117B revisions.

It's likely that all Nvidia cards from the HP Zbook G6 will work with a back-light mod, RTX 3000 etc.
Maybe someday, in a distant future, someone will find a dusty old RTX 6000 on eBay and try it!

I'm soldered. I have a WX7100 graphics card. And the second card is P5000M. There is no backlight, the screen is black. The wire didn't help. Or was I mistaken? View attachment 2081012

 

[idenis42]

Video card WX7100 backlight works!

 

[imac2011in2020]

Intresting post making Maxwell and Pascal cards work on your 2011 imac,

Recently i managed to get a Gtx 880M running on my 2011 27inch imac,
im looking to upgrade it with a Gtx 980M, I have purchased one around 2 years ago when my AMD 6970 died, ive never managed to get it running on here.

Can any help with this one?

I've once tried to installing the 980m Vbios from a Alienware via nvflash. I successfully installed the vbios but when i booted up the computer i wouldnt get a 3rd light(gpu) to strike up on the board. hence back to the drawing borad.

Many Thanks
Pazz

 

[idenis42]

👉Video card Quadro P5000M support metall 3!!! 👈

 

[Ausdauersportler]

View attachment 2084441
👉Video card Quadro P5000M support metall 3!!! 👈

Can you run MetalBench? GeekBench metal?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

View attachment 2082095 Video card WX7100 backlight works!

Which vBIOS are you using?

 

[idenis42]

Can you run MetalBench? GeekBench metal?

YES!!!

 

[idenis42]

Which vBIOS are you using?

580X_WX7100 and 580x_OC

 

[Ausdauersportler]

View attachment 2084455

YES!!!

This is only working on High Sierra, no support for any NVIDIA card on any later macOS. We went through this long before. You nearly caught me....

 

[Ausdauersportler]

580X_WX7100 and 580x_OC

You are telling me you got the backlight enabled using the wire mode and an EFI boot screen with your AMD WX7100 card? Or was it the P5000?

 

[idenis42]

You are telling me you got the backlight enabled using the wire mode and an EFI boot screen with your AMD WX7100 card? Or was it the P5000?

WX7100

 

[Ausdauersportler]

WX7100

To get this EFI boot screen you need either the EG2 modded iMac firmware or an EG2 modded vBIOS.

Just check the versions you are using: These are in fact EG2 vBIOS versions but your iMac still needs the EG2 modded firmware. Did the same some time ago without the wire-mod. @Nick [D]vB described this more than two years ago on the main 2011 GPU thread.

 

[idenis42]

To get this EFI boot screen you need either the EG2 modded iMac firmware or an EG2 modded vBIOS.

Just check the versions you are using: These are in fact EG2 vBIOS versions but your iMac still needs the EG2 modded firmware. Did the same some time ago without the wire-mod. @Nick [D]vB described this more than two years ago on the main 2011 GPU thread.

I flashed my iMac. vbios also flashed EG2. Black screen without cable. The screen is visible with the wire.

 

[idenis42]

To get this EFI boot screen you need either the EG2 modded iMac firmware or an EG2 modded vBIOS.

Just check the versions you are using: These are in fact EG2 vBIOS versions but your iMac still needs the EG2 modded firmware. Did the same some time ago without the wire-mod. @Nick [D]vB described this more than two years ago on the main 2011 GPU thread.

Can EG2 be installed on the P5000M graphics card?

 

[dfranetic]

I flashed my iMac. vbios also flashed EG2. Black screen without cable. The screen is visible with the wire.

Yes, that is expected behaviour. Unfortunately, if you have that wire soldered in place, there is no brightness control once macOS loads GPU drivers.

Can EG2 be installed on the P5000M graphics card?

No. EG2 drivers are (AMD) GPU family specific (ie. there are different EG2 drivers even for different AMD dGPUs).

 

[m0bil]

iMac Quadro P5000 rom:​

- Enables the internal display.
- Enables GOP boot screen using Opencore.
- Brightness control and sleep/wake work.
- Max GPU clock raised from 1656 to 1910 MHz.
- Max Memory clock raised from 3000 MHz to 4000 MHz.
- Max TDP raised from 100W to 115W.
- Power Limit (%) slider unlocked in Afterburner, to decrease the Max TDP if desired.
- Temperature throttle limits slightly increased.

Windows 10 will automatically recognize card and install Nvidia drivers. You can use NVCleanstall if you wish to update to the latest GeForce drivers.
To enable brightness control on Windows you need to manually add the same registry entries as with other Nvidia cards.

External display is enabled (but not tested) on the mini DP closest to USB ports.

Works on MacOS High Sierra with Web Drivers. To enable brightness control on MacOs, follow @Santa's Little Helper guide for the P3000/P4000 cards. When internal screen is enabled on boot using Opencore, card will work on later MacOS without metal acceleration.

GPU clock can be locked to a specific value using the voltage-frequency curve in Afterburner. The curve itself can't be edited (no undervolting possible).

3 pipe heatsink and install with good thermal paste is a must. During testing, iMac was able to dissipate heat properly and GPU temp was only slightly above 70ºC.

You must use a hardware programmer to flash this rom on the eeprom chip at 1.8V (nvflash will not work, as digital signature is invalid).

Display tables changes based on @Santa's Little Helper work for the P3000/P4000 cards.
Many thanks to @idenis42 for help and time spent testing this card and vbios.

 

[Santa's Little Helper]

Do you mean that the mxm graphics vbios of the Turing architecture on the HP Zbook17 G6 rtx3000 rtx4000 rtx5000 does not need any modification to make everything "work" - 4 debug LEDs, boot selector, target disk mode, internet recovery, etc.?

And also Turing Adlink as well?

Do you have to make a hardware backlight module to force the iMac's backlight on?

I see that the p3200 p4200 p5200 from Pascal is more powerful compared to the p3000 p4000 p5000. Is it possible to patch them separately to add UGA EFI support?

Yes, with the Adlink T1000 card if you get the 4th LED on but a black screen then the back-light mod will enable the iMac LCD! This is true for most Nvidia cards, but you might also need to flash a more compatible Dell vBios. Sadly most HP PX2XX cards are missing an EEPROM chip for the video BIOS, but @m0bil's unlocked Pascal vBIOS should out-perform them anyway.

That means there is not a "whole vbios" signature, but of course there can be a self-contained EFI-only signature that works since people is just upgrading unmodded EFI parts...

Yes, I think the sections are protected individually, I thought maybe the checksum itself was protected (maybe why Mobile Pascal TDP Tweaker tries to preserve it by modifying that power text string?) but even "checksum neutral" byte swaps break the T1000 rom, so it looks like a hash / signature is being checked somewhere? Great work on the P5000, that might even beat my Aetina 1080 MXM card!

Can any help with this one?

I've once tried to installing the 980m Vbios from a Alienware via nvflash. I successfully installed the vbios but when i booted up the computer i wouldnt get a 3rd light(gpu) to strike up on the board. hence back to the drawing board.

Forget the 3rd LED without a UGA / EG2 Mac vBIOS, but check if you get the 4th LED on after the Windows / MacOS web driver loads (install it using remote access). If you have LED 4 on then the hardware back-light mod will enable the iMac screen (and probably show a boot selector with correctly configured OpenCore).

No. EG2 drivers are (AMD) GPU family specific (ie. there are different EG2 drivers even for different AMD dGPUs).

Yes, sadly no Nvidia EG2 drivers since Kepler, this seems to be a unicorn!? The Turing UGA / GOP driver might work if it can be edited. There is also MacVideoCard's "hybrid" UGA driver from their MacPro Maxwell / Pascal cards, sadly protected by Netkas's "Alien" packer, it could probably be defeated but I spent no time on it...

 

[m0bil]

Yes, sadly no Nvidia EG2 drivers since Kepler, this seems to be a unicorn!? The Turing UGA / GOP driver might work if it can be edited. There is also MacVideoCard's "hybrid" UGA driver from their MacPro Maxwell / Pascal cards, sadly protected by Netkas's "Alien" packer, it could probably be defeated but I spent no time on it...

Having native boot screen on Pascal cards would be great. I had thought too about the driver from MacVidCards, as it seems to work on desktop Pascal cards, but reading your comment it seems it's not so easy as to replace EFI part from desktop vbios... first time I heard about Netkas packer too, do you have more info on how this "hybrid" UGA driver works ? I'd like to give it a try...

Edit2: took a look at mvc gtx1060 vbios, I extracted EFI and disassembled it. Most of the content is compressed in a data segment and there is a small code segment with what looks like a loader/unpacker executed at load time. Guess this is the "Alien" packer @Santa's Little Helper refers to. Wonder if just replacing this EFI part on other Pascal cards would work (probably not), it will also requiere sections realignment but that should be easy.
Will leave the extracted EFIs here for reference.

Edit3: added mvc GTX1070 EFI. Pending research...

 

[jay508]

Found the current more complete p5200 HP Dell MSI vbios view are no nvgi header, can only start from other places.

I guess p*2000 series vbios structure and p3000 p4000 p4000 is not the same, vbios inside no nvgi header maybe the driver id in the motherboard bios inside. The graphics card vbios with read the model ID inside the motherboard bios to detect the matching driver.

Perhaps all p*2000 series have no nvgi header, you can only manually select inf to install the driver to.

iMac motherboard bios does not contain any graphics hardware id are directly read the graphics card vbios inside the id to detect identify the driver, vbios inside the graphics hardware id blank 0000 will not be identified. Find ways how to add it in.

Just implement
- Enables the internal display.
- Enables GOP boot screen using Opencore.
- Brightness control and sleep/wake work.

 

[jay508]

Hey all, it's been a long time, apologies for the slow reply... Great work on the new vBIOS mods!

The HP T1000 works great, and as suspected it's EFI has UGA support like all Turing cards.
Everything "just works" - 4 debug LEDs, boot-selector, target disk mode, internet recovery etc.
Windows 10 drivers work fine, MacOS has no drivers but will boot with un-accelerated graphics.
So we get Mac boot-screens but no Mac drivers, someone at Nvidia has a sense of humor...

Now for the bad news... You MUST do a hardware back-light mod to force the iMac's back-light on.
There are many ways to do it, but a single wire will do, see the 2011 upgrade thread for options.
If you can't solder, push a wire into the back of the connectors, be careful to get the right pins!

There is no way around this, the Turing vBIOS can't be edited, it's protected with a "signature"
so if you change a single bit the Windows driver code 43s, and even the EFI driver refuses to load.
I was hoping to patch the Turing UGA EFI for the Pascal cards, but I'd guess that it is protected to?

The back-light mod should work on the Adlink cards, but check you have all 4 debug LEDs on first?
First 3 LEDs means the iMac LCD is not detected, likely on a vBIOS designed for embedded PCs.
You can try to flash a different vBIOS, but be careful about GDDR 5 or 6 and TU117B revisions.

It's likely that all Nvidia cards from the HP Zbook G6 will work with a back-light mod, RTX 3000 etc.
Maybe someday, in a distant future, someone will find a dusty old RTX 6000 on eBay and try it!

This way of wiring, I tried wx4130 p3200 does not work, is it only suitable for Turing architecture graphics card?

 

[idenis42]

This way of wiring, I tried wx4130 p3200 does not work, is it only suitable for Turing architecture graphics card?

You need to flash your iMac.
Have you read the post https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...e.1596614/page-90?post=27485731#post-27485731 ???

 

[jay508]

The latest progress p3200 has started normally to display the inner screen. windows10 system brightness adjustment is normal, power wall limit in 17w performance play is not normal also need to unlock the power wall.

macOS system system brightness adjustment is not working, still need to unlock the power wall in

 

[jay508]

p3200 major breakthrough to solve the power wall problem macOS and Windowsb is limited to 35w

Test Windows10 can work completely system brightness adjustment can work normally at 100w macOS can work at 75w, macOS system brightness adjustment is not yet normal need to modify.

Default frequency test 3dmrk performance is similar to the p4000.