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

[KAVELAB]

Hi

After all I've finally managed to upgrade my iMac. It's now running a Xeon E3-1290, 32GB of RAM and a GTX 1070 8GB. I've asked the seller of the GPU to flash the vBIOS and it worked perfectly. Some grinding to the Heatsink and X-bracket was required to fit the GPU. The new Xeon Processor pulls more wattage than the i7 2600, but gets higher clockspeeds, about 3.7 GHz while gaming instead of 3.5 GHz.

Im running Windows 11 22H2 on it using a legacy (BIOS) install, as I want the internal sound card to work.
Is it possible to enable UEFI Sound Fix in Windows, or do I need macOS to patch it?

 

[KAVELAB]

iMac Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 rom:

- Enables the internal display
- Enables GOP boot screen using Opencore.
- Brightness control and sleep/wake work (tested on Windows 10)

See previous post for some benchmark results with this rom.

Windows 10 will automatically recognize card and install Nvidia drivers version 456.87. 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.

Undervolting, overclocking, frequency locking and voltage-frequency curve editing is fully enabled in Afterburner.
Power Limit (%) slider unlocked in Afterburner, to decrease the Max TDP if desired.
Temperature throttle limits slightly increased.

External display is enabled and tested on the mini DP closest to USB ports. I got up to 4K@60Hz with a miniDP to HDMI passive cable.

Hello @m0bil

In your post for the GTX 1070 ROM you wrote that external Displays, when connected to the MiniDP closest to the USB ports, work. So far, with my GTX 1070 installed (125W BIOS), I cannot get an external Display to be recognized in Windows. I have tried two Samsung PC Monitors (one 4K60 and the other 1440p144) with native DP and two HDMI TVs using an adapter (one LG OLED and the other JVC 1080p). I have reinstalled GPU drivers and tried multiple adapters, but this didn't fix the issue. Do I need to add any registry entries for external displays to work? I also tried the other MiniDP closest to the RJ45 connector, but with no luck.

Thank you

 

[m0bil]

Im running Windows 11 22H2 on it using a legacy (BIOS) install, as I want the internal sound card to work.
Is it possible to enable UEFI Sound Fix in Windows, or do I need macOS to patch it?

For sound to work in UEFI windows you can boot from OpenCore/OCLP to inject the needed DSDT patch, or patch your system bios to permanently fix it. If you decide to patch system bios (hardware programming of bios chip is needed), take a look at this thread as there are more useful mods for a windows install (I'd at least add EnableGOP to have native boot screen with your Pascal card).

 

[m0bil]

Hello @m0bil

In your post for the GTX 1070 ROM you wrote that external Displays, when connected to the MiniDP closest to the USB ports, work. So far, with my GTX 1070 installed (125W BIOS), I cannot get an external Display to be recognized in Windows. I have tried two Samsung PC Monitors (one 4K60 and the other 1440p144) with native DP and two HDMI TVs using an adapter (one LG OLED and the other JVC 1080p). I have reinstalled GPU drivers and tried multiple adapters, but this didn't fix the issue. Do I need to add any registry entries for external displays to work? I also tried the other MiniDP closest to the RJ45 connector, but with no luck.

Thank you

Sorry for late reply, missed your post.
I recently tested this again with an official Apple MiniDP to HDMI adapter and it does not work (using Samsung 4k tv to test), but with a cheap cable I got from Amazon it does work fine:

Also noticed hotplugging the MiniDP once windows is already running does not work, I have to boot the iMac with the cable plugged and tv turned on (seems it has to be plugged when windows loads the Nvidia driver to get recognized).

 

[idenis42]

Quadro P5200 REV D video card has arrived
The video card did not have a BIOS chip. My brother soldered in a BIOS chip.
I flashed the bios into the chip.
Works without problems.
Difference between REV B and REV D -> new chips and parts added.

 

[ZGocZ]

I'm waiting for a Quadro RTX3000 to arrive. If I'm correct it should work without any modifications in iMac 12.2 for Windows use.
I'm not sure if a HW backlight mod is needed for the internal screen to turn on or is Opencore enough?
Can anyone confirm it works without the backlight mod?

Cheers!

 

[m0bil]

I'm waiting for a Quadro RTX3000 to arrive. If I'm correct it should work without any modifications in iMac 12.2 for Windows use.
I'm not sure if a HW backlight mod is needed for the internal screen to turn on or is Opencore enough?
Can anyone confirm it works without the backlight mod?

Cheers!

Card is expected to work fine, but you will need hardware backlight mod to enable backlight (without it you'll see screen is working when pointing to it with a flashlight or similar). Opencore won't help you with backlight.

Please keep us posted on how it goes

 

[ZGocZ]

OK people, RTX 3000 arrived. I've done the backlight wire mod and that works fine. Windows 11 recognizes the card and nvidia driver installer successfully installed the latest drivers (both quadro or regular gameready for RTX2070).
Brightness is always on but I can live with that.
What bothers me is that the GPU isn't boosting. Maximum frequency it runs under full load is 945 MHz which kindof defeats the purpose of replacing a quadro P3000 with OC BIOS. It runs slower than that.
iMac is 12,2 with i7 2600, 16 GB RAM, OWC temp sensor for a 3TB HDD and a 2 TB Samsung EVO SSD.
What I've noticed is that I can't see the GPU heatsink sensor in Macs Fan Control and that the ODD fan is spinning full blast until Macs Fan Control gets loaded.
Could this be some weird SMBUS issue?
I still haven't swapped the card back to P3000 to see if the GPU heatsink sensor reappears.

Quadro RTX 3000 Card is supposedly from a Dell laptop, not HP. Did anyone have a similar experience or any ideas how to get the card boosting to full clock speeds?

 

[m0bil]

OK people, RTX 3000 arrived. I've done the backlight wire mod and that works fine. Windows 11 recognizes the card and nvidia driver installer successfully installed the latest drivers (both quadro or regular gameready for RTX2070).
Brightness is always on but I can live with that.
What bothers me is that the GPU isn't boosting. Maximum frequency it runs under full load is 945 MHz which kindof defeats the purpose of replacing a quadro P3000 with OC BIOS. It runs slower than that.
iMac is 12,2 with i7 2600, 16 GB RAM, OWC temp sensor for a 3TB HDD and a 2 TB Samsung EVO SSD.
What I've noticed is that I can't see the GPU heatsink sensor in Macs Fan Control and that the ODD fan is spinning full blast until Macs Fan Control gets loaded.
Could this be some weird SMBUS issue?
I still haven't swapped the card back to P3000 to see if the GPU heatsink sensor reappears.

Quadro RTX 3000 Card is supposedly from a Dell laptop, not HP. Did anyone have a similar experience or any ideas how to get the card boosting to full clock speeds?

Hmm, could be a SMBUS issue, is the heatsink sensor the only one "missing" ?? Also, can CPU boost ?
For SMBUS issues, an easy test is covering the mxm track, look in this thread for some approaches we tested with P3200/P4200 cards.

I think you're the first testing a Dell card, other option is also try the some alternative vbios from techpowerup. Which vbios version and Device Id is your card: 0x10DE 0x1F36 ?? If so take a look at this vbios list.

 

[ZGocZ]

Yeah, the heatsink sensor is the only one missing.
At first I thought that maybe I've somehow killed the sensor while modifying the heatsink so I connected another heatsink with a known good sensor - that one also didn't show up. Then I've went back to the P3000 and surprise! No GPU heatsink again...
So what could be the issue? I've managed to wreck the motherboard connector?
I have another motherboard lying around and I'll check everything using that but I'm currently stuck with some work and can't get around to it.
I've checked the BIOS on RTX3000 and it's coming from HP, not Dell as the eBay seller claimed.
Another option is using an AMD RX5500XT from a Sonnet puck eGPU enclosure. This would also give me a fully functional macOS but with somewhat lower 3D performance for gaming.
Anyhow, I'll keep you posted. I'm not done with that RTX3000 yet.
There is also a possibility I can lay my hands on a RTX A3000 Ada MXM module from a HP ZBook Fury 16 G9. I expect it to operate in the same manner as the Turing RTX3000. If I get it - I'll post the results here.

 

[Quinten07]

Hi,
I just wanted to share my experience in upgrading the GPU to a Maxwell based one in my 27 inch IMac 2011

So first of I got a Quadro M2200 for 20 euro's from a local marketplace. I thought it might come in handy sometime.
Then I found a IMac 27 inc 2011 with a broken GPU, so the perfect candidate for the Quadro.

I started by just installing the card inside the IMac and booting up the GMRL boot usb. This gave internal screen right away so it seemed hopefull. Then I started modifying the Vbios of the card using the tools mentioned on the first page which did give me a lot of problems since im very new to this sort of thing. But eventually I got it and could simply flash the Vbios on the card without using a modified Nvflash tool. EFI screen started working right away and I installed windows via open core. Everything works fine on windows! The card performs the same as the 1050 mobile version so it is not bad at all for some light gaming.

If someone is to come about this thread and are unable to fix the Vbios themselves and have the same HP Quadro M2200 (although the chance is probably slim) I have attached the working bios below!

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Hi,
I just wanted to share my experience in upgrading the GPU to a Maxwell based one in my 27 inch IMac 2011

So first of I got a Quadro M2200 for 20 euro's from a local marketplace. I thought it might come in handy sometime.
Then I found a IMac 27 inc 2011 with a broken GPU, so the perfect candidate for the Quadro.

I started by just installing the card inside the IMac and booting up the GMRL boot usb. This gave internal screen right away so it seemed hopefull. Then I started modifying the Vbios of the card using the tools mentioned on the first page which did give me a lot of problems since im very new to this sort of thing. But eventually I got it and could simply flash the Vbios on the card without using a modified Nvflash tool. EFI screen started working right away and I installed windows via open core. Everything works fine on windows! The card performs the same as the 1050 mobile version so it is not bad at all for some light gaming.

If someone is to come about this thread and are unable to fix the Vbios themselves and have the same HP Quadro M2200 (although the chance is probably slim) DM me for a working Vbios!

Please attach the vBIOS file in your post. We greatly appreciate and admire your work.

 

[Quinten07]

Please attach the vBIOS file in your post. We greatly appreciate and admire your work.

I have attached the file to my post now, did not know you needed to make a zip file of it but figured it out!

 

[pdafan]

Hi all,

I have just been given a Tesla M6 Mobile, a professional mobile graphics chip.
The specs seems to be very similar to 980m, M5000m.
In the past, I have modified two of my iMac 2011 27" using K610m, K1100m before.

At present, I still have another iMac 12,2 with 6970m and was wondering if I could mod this MXM B card to replace 6970m.
I have scanned through this offspring thread as well as the classic iMac 2011 GFX upgrade thread. Does not seem to find anything useful so far.
Will appreciate any lead or advice from here.
Thanks much!

 

[Quinten07]

Hi all,

I have just been given a Tesla M6 Mobile, a professional mobile graphics chip.
The specs seems to be very similar to 980m, M5000m.
In the past, I have modified two of my iMac 2011 27" using K610m, K1100m before.

At present, I still have another iMac 12,2 with 6970m and was wondering if I could mod this MXM B card to replace 6970m.
I have scanned through this offspring thread as well as the classic iMac 2011 GFX upgrade thread. Does not seem to find anything useful so far.
Will appreciate any lead or advice from here.
Thanks much!

Im very curious if the M6 works because near me there are some available very cheaply, never been able to find anything about them. You could try extracting the bios and flashing the patched bios with the tools in the first page to see if this card works, I would love to see it!

 

[m0bil]

Hi all,

I have just been given a Tesla M6 Mobile, a professional mobile graphics chip.
The specs seems to be very similar to 980m, M5000m.
In the past, I have modified two of my iMac 2011 27" using K610m, K1100m before.

At present, I still have another iMac 12,2 with 6970m and was wondering if I could mod this MXM B card to replace 6970m.
I have scanned through this offspring thread as well as the classic iMac 2011 GFX upgrade thread. Does not seem to find anything useful so far.
Will appreciate any lead or advice from here.
Thanks much!

Post the card vbios here and I can take a look. I think these cards were designed for data centers, have no idea if standard windows drivers will recognize them.

 

[m0bil]

Hi all,

I have just been given a Tesla M6 Mobile, a professional mobile graphics chip.
The specs seems to be very similar to 980m, M5000m.
In the past, I have modified two of my iMac 2011 27" using K610m, K1100m before.

At present, I still have another iMac 12,2 with 6970m and was wondering if I could mod this MXM B card to replace 6970m.
I have scanned through this offspring thread as well as the classic iMac 2011 GFX upgrade thread. Does not seem to find anything useful so far.
Will appreciate any lead or advice from here.
Thanks much!

According to this post in other forum, card should be able to work in the iMac. Some vbios modding may be needed, but since card is almost identical to the 980M it should be easy.
Since it is a Maxwell card, it'll only work with MacOS up to High Sierra, and fully supported on Windows and Linux.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Post the card vbios here and I can take a look. I think these cards were designed for data centers, have no idea if standard windows drivers will recognize them.

There are downloadable Windows drivers for Tesla...

Driver Details | NVIDIA

Download the <dd~LanguageName> <dd~Name> for <dd~OSName> systems. Released <dd~ReleaseDateTime>

www.nvidia.com

GPU modswitches.

gpumodeswitch User Guide

Documentation for system administrators that expalins how to use gpumodeswitch to switch supported NVIDIA GPUs between compute mode and graphics mode.

docs.nvidia.com

 

[colohgc]

Hello m0bil, I need help!

I have a Quadro P5200 MXM card that I am attempting to get working in my Dell Precision M6800. It previously had a P4000 with a rare engineering vBIOS (it is official from NVIDIA as it is signed correctly and I know this because it can be flashed with NVFLASH). I have managed to get the P5200 to partially work by pure accident when adding the P4000 header to the P5200 vBIOS after many modifications of the header and flashing attempts I modified or changed something along the way that actually allows the laptop to boot with Optimus on the P5200. But it isn't acting correctly and I'm having odd performance results. It is not utilizing its full TDP, and I have seen it drop below 10w while still getting 50+ FPS. IDK why and I'm suspecting maybe some of the load is being offloaded to the iGPU or something. I want to see if you can fix it and get it working properly, I'm assuming the key to it working is that header, without it, ACPI_BIOS_ERROR is all I get. I do have a CH341a Flasher. I have included the working P4000 vBIOS, the Original P5200 vBIOS that came on the card, and the somehow partially working one that I suspect still is not fully correct but corrects something in APCI and boots. I do not fully understand how the header works and tried my hardest.

I'll gladly repay you for it working if you desire, I understand you do it for Macs but I assume the concept is the same and you seem to be my only lead.

Thank You,
Shawn Cohn
Owner SC Remote Technologies, USA

@Shawn09345
Thanks to your package of files, I was able to run the Quadro P5200 card in a Dell Precision M6800 laptop.
I used your header and vBIOS from techpowerup. I made the modification in HxD.
- Video card fully works at 120W power limit but only works with Optimus, discrete mode is partially posible (when enabled picture is on HDMI but not on the lid LCD).
- The card's fan starts at 60*C and increases speed as the temperatures up.
- HDMI output works in Windows.
- DisplayPort not tested.
- DockStation video output not tested.

Evidence in the YouTube video:

 

[m0bil]

There are downloadable Windows drivers for Tesla...

Driver Details | NVIDIA

Download the <dd~LanguageName> <dd~Name> for <dd~OSName> systems. Released <dd~ReleaseDateTime>

www.nvidia.com

GPU modswitches.

gpumodeswitch User Guide

Documentation for system administrators that expalins how to use gpumodeswitch to switch supported NVIDIA GPUs between compute mode and graphics mode.

docs.nvidia.com

yep, but this are datacenter drivers. With card in graphics mode this drivers are intended for passing the card to virtualized environments (GPU passthrough to hypervisors) or GRID use (virtual GPU deployments). I think it may be needed to use NVCleanstall to use normal Nvidia drivers with this card...

 

[yezhou1225]

Post the card vbios here and I can take a look. I think these cards were designed for data centers, have no idea if standard windows drivers will recognize them.

I have a HP Tesla M6, and read the ROM, please check attached.

 

[m0bil]

I have a HP Tesla M6, and read the ROM, please check attached.

A quick look at this vbios shows DCB (Device Control Block) and Connectors table are empty. This vbios tables are used to describe the board topology and connections external to the GPU chip. So, I think with this vbios the card will not be able to recognize any kind of display or external output.

Will take a look at Techpowerup to see if there is any other M6 vbios without empty tables...

 

[Quinten07]

Can be added to the performance part of the first page:

Vulkan Geekbench 5 score of the M2200 is 15948

I will run the other benchmarks this weekend as well and update this post.

EDIT: seems I can add the score myself so I just did that

 

[m0bil]

A quick look at this vbios shows DCB (Device Control Block) and Connectors table are empty. This vbios tables are used to describe the board topology and connections external to the GPU chip. So, I think with this vbios the card will not be able to recognize any kind of display or external output.

Will take a look at Techpowerup to see if there is any other M6 vbios without empty tables...

Found another compatible vbios in Techpowerup (84.04.8F.00.0C), but the same thing happens (display tables are empty), and I also noticed it lacks the gpio configuration to drive the backlight brightness adjustments and hotplug interrupts.

So, I think this Tesla cards will not be able to recognize and drive the internal display of the iMac.

 

[JustPassing]

Some people tried gaming on Tesla cards during the GPU shortage, there was a thread on the notebookreview forum. I think they only worked in laptops with Optimus using the intel GPU for display output. Although these M6 cards look like the same design as Quadro cards the PCB traces for the display might not even be connected, so even if the bios can be hacked it still might not work. Be careful because I read some Tesla cards can even damage MXM laptops!

A few years ago there was a lot of very cheap Tesla K40X cards on ebay, the same chip as the TITAN cards but with 12GB, the listing said the cards were taken from a Cray super-computer! They looked like giant MXM cards, the connection is the same, but a closer look found it was really a different server type called SXM, where the pins for the display connections are all replaced with extra power connections, needed for a 250W card.

Maybe it could have worked in Optimus mode but I don't think anyone tried it. Even if it could fit inside I think they worried that those extra power pins might short-out and damage a gaming laptop, and it probably could not supply enough power or cool it properly anyway, I guess the iMac would have the same problems. Those cards are impossible to find now, but I did find some images... 🤣 😂