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m0bil

macrumors 6502
Sep 29, 2020
453
526
Hello guys, I would like to ask you if I want to upgrade my GPU from a 27" iMac 2011 to a Quadro M2000M. To flash the BIOS with a CH341A programmer, do I need any additional adapter, such as the 1.8V or the 3.3V?
The eeprom is 3.3v, not sure if easy to clip, but you don't need a hardware programmer for a Maxwell card (unless you brick it somehow). It can be programmed from GRML linux and patched nvflash, look at first post in this thread.
 

0JVR0

macrumors newbie
Jan 19, 2024
2
0
The eeprom is 3.3v, not sure if easy to clip, but you don't need a hardware programmer for a Maxwell card (unless you brick it somehow). It can be programmed from GRML linux and patched nvflash, look at first post in this thread.
Thanks for your info! I found a YouTube video explaining the process you mentioned. I really appreciate all the effort you're putting into this project. Looking forward to more GPUs being added to the compatibility list.
 

Tim_imac

macrumors newbie
Jan 30, 2023
20
17
Nice work!!

The power control problem with Afterburner and newer Nvidia drivers is happening to other users too, apparently the developer is Russian and has been unpaid from MSI for over a year, so Afterburner is not being updated to work with latest driver updates...

If you send me the vbios that came with your card I can take a look at the power settings, I've seen some mxm HP cards with vbios TDP up to 190W. I won't be able to change power settings but maybe can find a compatible vbios with lower TDP.

Also, take a look in GPU-Z to the sensors tab, while running some benchmark like Furmark, that will show you TDP and PerfCap reason. That may give clues to what is happening above 70% power.
So, just to update on the rtx 5000 that I installed in my imac 2011.

I have got it working stably, but not with the full performance. As I mentioned earlier I have to limit the power to 70% using afterburner as the display will occasionally freeze when the GPU is working hard at anything over the 70% value.

The performance is still very good and my son can play games, but I want to look at it again as I am sure that the card could be set up to perform much better in the imac.

M0bil helped me by checking the logs and established the following:

'sometimes the card seems to be reaching much higher gpu clocks than the one set as max on the vbios (1350 MHZ), if you look at the log sometimes clock jumps to 1845 MHz, voltage to 0.9430v and the PerfCap vRel is shown.' - That is when the screen freezes

I tried flashing a different bios from techpowerup. The original version was:

vbios, it is version 90.04.4F.00.11, device 10DE:1EB5, build date 01/31/19 for board id 0x00EB

I tried this one:

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/229124/229124

It caused the display to go black and I had to re-flash to the old bios using remote desktop to get the display to come back on.

One interesting thing is that when I type NVIDIA-smi -q -d CLOCK

The result shows max clocks

Graphics :2100
Sm: 2100
Memory: 6001
Video: 1950 mhz

So I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions of how I can limit the card from increasing the clock so high occasionally so that I can get more even and better performance more of the time.

Also, is there any potential benefit in down grading the CPU from the current Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz to a lower power one? Would that leave more power available for the GPU or is total power consumption not the important factor here?

Any other ideas of how to improve the stability.
 

wargeron

macrumors newbie
Mar 13, 2024
1
0
So I was able to flash the GPU remotely but I don't get the third LED to light up on the logic board and no boot screen when I put everything back together. Since I was able to flash the GPU through SSH shouldn't that mean that it is working but I have no OS installed, so I created a bootable USB with High Sierra to get started.
Has anyone had the same issue?
 
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macfev

macrumors newbie
Apr 18, 2024
13
2
I would like to thank you to user m0bil for making oc bios for P4000. Your vbioses are pure gold. I can confirm that your bios is working on my Dell version P4000 and MSI 4th gen laptop. Flashed vbios with Ch341a and 1.8v adapter. I also had to modify nvidia inf but all is ok. This gives me +400mhz on core clock. Firestrike went up from 10500 to 12100. Playing the last of us gives me about 5-10 fps extra. I use 100w version. My laptop bios is in legacy mode so maybe this is why this vbios is working. Could you make also one vbios with higher memory clocks? or at least tell me where are placed memory clock values when using hex editor. thanks :)

p4000.gif
 
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macfev

macrumors newbie
Apr 18, 2024
13
2
@macfev Hah! Just signed up to report the same thing! Just tried @m0bil 's OC vbios in an Alienware P18e and my Timespy score went from 4000 to 4800! Many thanks!
I think I also found where are memory clocks located. Today will try to flash my mod. If it works then we will have bios with 1750mhz memory clocks. ;)
 

macfev

macrumors newbie
Apr 18, 2024
13
2
Holy shet that's exciting! Timespy 5000+ letsgoooo
And its working! But I was expecting higher benchmark scores. It seems that card is more blocked by "low" core clock than memory speed. I also rised tdp to 107w. I am considering what TDP to set because I dont want to burn my laptops mainboard 😅 This card when hits TDP limit downclocks to around 1600mhz, sometimes even 1550mhz. Rising TDP would make clocks more stable at higher values but how this will affect mainboard in longterm??

Best thing now would be to undervolt gpu. I noticed that our gpu max clock goes to 1657.5mhz and then it uses 0,881v. What is funny that if max clock was 1657mhz it would use only 0,875v 😅 1mhz lower clock would improve performance by not hitting tdp limit so often.

Dont know if I have skills to find voltage values. I would love to undervolt to 0,85v

quadro2.gif
.
 
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Mumbles86

macrumors newbie
Apr 18, 2024
14
2
And its working! But I was expecting higher benchmark scores. It seems that card is more blocked by "low" core clock than memory speed. I also rised tdp to 107w. I am considering what TDP to set because I dont want to burn my laptops mainboard 😅 This card when hits TDP limit downclocks to around 1600mhz, sometimes even 1550mhz. Rising TDP would make clocks more stable at higher values but how this will affect mainboard in longterm??

Best thing now would be to undervolt gpu. I noticed that our gpu max clock goes to 1657.5mhz and then it uses 0,881v. What is funny that if max clock was 1657mhz it would use only 0,875v 😅 1mhz lower clock would improve performance by not hitting tdp limit so often.

Dont know if I have skills to find voltage values. I would love to undervolt to 0,85v

View attachment 2369879 .
Nice! I've got plenty of thermal headroom still in my Alienware chonker - GPU still barely hits 70c so I wouldn't mind increasing TDP limits a bit.

There's @m0bil 's OC3 vbios that increased the TDP to 115w and max clock even futher. They also increased the voltage a bit in their original OC vbios so maybe they can comment on where to tweak that?
 

Mumbles86

macrumors newbie
Apr 18, 2024
14
2
@macfev If you don't mind tweaking the OC3 vbios file with your mem OC - i'd like to try that out just to see how far I can push this thing without running into thermal problems.
 

macfev

macrumors newbie
Apr 18, 2024
13
2
@macfev If you don't mind tweaking the OC3 vbios file with your mem OC - i'd like to try that out just to see how far I can push this thing without running into thermal problems.
OC3 has higher clocks and voltage so core clock will fluctuate even more. You can try this one and let us know how it performs. I dont think it will be much better, maybe 5% improvement over normal OC version. Problem is that mxm 3.0b slot has tdp limit 100w so everything above is risky for mainboard.
 

Mumbles86

macrumors newbie
Apr 18, 2024
14
2
OC3 has higher clocks and voltage so core clock will fluctuate even more. You can try this one and let us know how it performs. I dont think it will be much better, maybe 5% improvement over normal OC version. Problem is that mxm 3.0b slot has tdp limit 100w so everything above is risky for mainboard.
Wait is it really only 100w? I thought MXM 3.0b had a max power rating of 200w? Though i imagine this would vary per device. I've got a 300w power brick - i wanna use the whole 300w :p
 

macfev

macrumors newbie
Apr 18, 2024
13
2
Wait is it really only 100w? I thought MXM 3.0b had a max power rating of 200w? Though i imagine this would vary per device. I've got a 300w power brick - i wanna use the whole 300w :p
Tommorow I will make mod with TDP 120W. My card uses mostly 90w-100w in the last of us so I think this should be safe for mainboard. I expect about 5000 in timespy.
 

macfev

macrumors newbie
Apr 18, 2024
13
2
Please share if it works out!
This gpu is very power hungry. I set it to 120w but it still downclocks :cool: This happened in benchmarks so propably in normal gaming will not occure. Going higher with tdp limit could damage mxm 3.0b slot 😅

Now we need undervolting. Some guy with his 1060 mobile was able to do 0,8v and 1800mhz core clock. We have plenty space to undervolt! ;) He made it with msi afterburner and curve editor. Dont know if it will work with this card. 🤔

Today will test this vbios and if all is ok I will upload it tommorow. :)

timespy.jpg


Quadro P4000M modded rom:
- based on
m0bil P4000M_OC.ROM
- temperature throttle steps increased above 80 ºC
- max TDP increased to 120W 115W ( to prevent spikes above 120W )
- memory clock raised from 3000mhz to 3500mhz

Things to do in the future (maybe someone could help with that):
- unlock undervolting
- find where are located voltage values in bios: 0.85v;0.862v;0.875v;0.881v;0,893v and 0.9v

if you like this bios please consider donating to m0bil . Thanks to his work I was able to mod this bios.
 

Attachments

  • P4000M_OC115W.zip
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macfev

macrumors newbie
Apr 18, 2024
13
2
I also tested 1709mhz on P4000 but voltage goes slowly up to 0.932v. This is not worth to use considering only 50mhz boost in clock speed with much higher voltage.

On 1696mhz it looks much better. Voltage goes to max 0.912v 0.925v. So this is max safe for this card without undervolting. There is some voltage stepping, not worth changing clocks higher. its better to stay on 1657mhz.

With undervolt I could go above 1800mhz.

Anyway performance boost is now about 25% comparing to default clocks :cool: I am happy with that ;)

1696.jpg
 
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macfev

macrumors newbie
Apr 18, 2024
13
2
Did some more testing. :cool: I overclocked to 1747mhz and set TDP 116W.
In benchmarks its the same because it hits TDP limit but in gaming I can see nice performance improvement.
This card is not for benchmarks but for gaming. So now I think its better to set higher clocks but lower TDP limit to protect card from damage. It will simply downclock itself when we play on more intence areas. Gtx 1070m has tdp limit 115W so I think I will use this limit.

last of us.jpg
 

macfev

macrumors newbie
Apr 18, 2024
13
2
Any other ideas of how to improve the stability.
I also found this vbios:


and laptop model with drivers


dont know if it will work so make backup.
 

darlanc

macrumors newbie
Apr 22, 2024
2
0
Hey guys, I'm trying to update with an nvidia m2000m on my 27 inch imac a1312 from late 2009
Does anyone have the vbios for this gpu? I've already tried what's here in this post, but I don't have access to the bootloader, although I've managed to get an image on the internal monitor and boot into Windows, I can't boot to install macos, could anyone help?
 

galeon34

macrumors newbie
Jan 31, 2023
7
0
Hey guys, I'm trying to update with an nvidia m2000m on my 27 inch imac a1312 from late 2009
Does anyone have the vbios for this gpu? I've already tried what's here in this post, but I don't have access to the bootloader, although I've managed to get an image on the internal monitor and boot into Windows, I can't boot to install macos, could anyone help?
I have the same problem with my M2000m card.
mObil tried to help me and sent me other bios to try, but I still have no display.
If you want I'll attach the bios mObil sent me.
Imac 27 inch 2011.
 

Nguyen Duc Hieu

macrumors 68040
Jul 5, 2020
3,021
1,008
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Hey guys, I'm trying to update with an nvidia m2000m on my 27 inch imac a1312 from late 2009
Does anyone have the vbios for this gpu? I've already tried what's here in this post, but I don't have access to the bootloader, although I've managed to get an image on the internal monitor and boot into Windows, I can't boot to install macos, could anyone help?

There are links to M2000m vBIOS in the first post.

I would just sell the M2000 and buy the M3000/M4000 with higher performance and not as high price. M2000 is more popular because its smaller size, thus can be sold at good price while the iMac 27" can accommodate the bigger cards.
 

darlanc

macrumors newbie
Apr 22, 2024
2
0
There are links to M2000m vBIOS in the first post.

I would just sell the M2000 and buy the M3000/M4000 with higher performance and not as high price. M2000 is more popular because its smaller size, thus can be sold at good price while the iMac 27" can accommodate the bigger cards.
Were you able to install MacOS with this card? here I couldn't get display when I try to start with macos.
 

Nguyen Duc Hieu

macrumors 68040
Jul 5, 2020
3,021
1,008
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Were you able to install MacOS with this card? here I couldn't get display when I try to start with macos.

Quadro M4000m can only be run with Mac OS High Sierra. I haven't tried the M2000 yet (It was offered at 1.5 time the price I paid for my M4000 when I bought)
And I didn't install High Sierra. Too lazy to do.
I just grab a pre-installed SSD clone from another HDD, added OCLP EFI, nVIDIA driver and then installed it inside the iMac.
 
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