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

[ZGocZ]

I don't know. Perhaps you are correct.

There is a post that affirms that iMac 2009, 2010 use eDP protocol in the link below. Perhaps you can crosscheck with the poster about it.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2009-2011-27-imac-as-an-external-display.2378570/post-32406254

There is also a Technical Datasheet issued by LG as well. On page 6, it clearly stated that "It has been designed to apply the 8Bit 4Lane Display port interface." Perhaps you can crosscheck with LG about their LCD panels.

LM270WQ1-SDA2 datasheet, lcd equivalent, LG

LM270WQ1-SDA2 datasheet, LM270WQ1-SDA2 lcd equivalent, LG, Features and benefits, Stock and price

datasheet4u.com

You have studied this topic far more than me. I just see the connector on the board. This confused me before as I remember clearly that i.e. A1312 2009 states in system information that the protocol used for monitor communication is eDP and the connector on the motherboard is clearly LVDS.

Googleing around reveals similar issues with Quadro P3000 in laptops that have had their intel integrated graphics turned off in BIOS. Maybe driver expects some kind of intel HD to be present in the system for the display to work? Sandy Bridge iMacs have this so the card works but shuts off display on earlier CPU's.

It would be great if someone can confirm that P3000 works in i.e. A1312 late-2009 27"

I have two P3000 cards flashed with imac BIOS and both work as expected in 2011 imacs - both 21.5" and 27". I know that the card isn't intended for A1311 but it was for testing purposes only.

 

[ZGocZ]

For the time being I've inserted a RX5500XT from a sonnet puck in there and it works happily. Still, I would really like to use the P3000 card so if anyone has any ideas - I'm willing to experiment.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

For the time being I've inserted a RX5500XT from a sonnet puck in there and it works happily. Still, I would really like to use the P3000 card so if anyone has any ideas - I'm willing to experiment.

From your initial description, I suppose that the hardware was working fine. The issue is lying in the Windows driver.
I would suggest a trial solution as follows:

1. Install High Sierra and OpenCore Legacy Patcher to a small portion of the SSD. Confirm that the Mac OS is working fine with the internal display. (i.e. Mac OS has driver for the internal display)
2. Add the Windows SSD and boot to Windows.
If no display => Remote control Windows session and un-install Windows driver, install NVIDIA drivers for P3000
If still no display, try tinkling with the inf file or regedit (this is just a direction for you to research, I don't know in detail how to do it.)

Quadro Desktop/Quadro Notebook Driver Release 418 | R418 U8 (426.50) | Windows 10 64-bit | NVIDIA

Download the English (US) Quadro Desktop/Quadro Notebook Driver Release 418 for Windows 10 64-bit systems. Released 2020.2.28

www.nvidia.com

Download The Latest Official NVIDIA Drivers

Download the latest official NVIDIA drivers to enhance your PC gaming experience and run apps faster.

www.nvidia.com

Installing Display Miniport and User-Mode Display Drivers - Windows drivers

Installation Requirements for Display Miniport and User-Mode Display Drivers

learn.microsoft.com

 

[m0bil]

For the time being I've inserted a RX5500XT from a sonnet puck in there and it works happily. Still, I would really like to use the P3000 card so if anyone has any ideas - I'm willing to experiment.

I agree with @Nguyen Duc Hieu and think the problem may be the windows driver. You can use DDU to fully get rid of the Nvidia driver and try other or older versions of the driver using NVCleanstall.

 

[Herver]

Please anyone tell us if you got external display working with a Maxwell card. It's mention in bios posts that it should, but I haven't read anyone actually confirming that it does. Thanks !

 

[Terros]

Can someone please point me to where to flash the eeprom on the same 1070m as the bios rom user? Where the actual chip is?

 

[Tatewaki]

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.

Should work 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 acceleration.

Card TDP is 115W, so 3 pipe heatsink and install with good thermal paste is a must. On my testing, iMac was able to dissipate heat properly and GPU temp was only slightly above 70ºC. Card performance is great even on demanding games at native 2560x1440 resolution.

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). If your card comes with an ISSI IS25WQ040 flash chip check my notes about programming it.

Clock will go up to 1910 MHz on boost2 mode and close to 2050 MHz when overclocked. The limit to performance is 115W TDP so you'll see a lot of Pwr and vRel PerfCap throttle when card goes at that higher clock rates.
I may release a 125W TDP vbios later on (beta testers are welcome). My iMac seems to have no problem providing the extra 10W of power but, while overall performance is better, framerate seems to be not so stable due to throttle.
All testing has been done on an iMac 12,2 with i7-2600 and 12GB ram.

NOTE: There are many different hardware versions of this card, some early 2016 versions even had hardware design problems (think they were MSI 1.0 version). This rom is specific for the non G-Sync GTX 1070 with Vendor/Device ID 10DE:1BA1, standard MXM form factor that looks like this (actual picture of my card). Cards with Device ID 1BE1 are G-Sync and will not work with this rom.

Edit1 (13/02/2022): I've added a 125W and slightly higher standard clocks version of the vbios. The power and clock values are copied from some vendors vbios for the card, so should be safe. I've been using it for a couple of weeks and found no issues. Temperatures are just 2 or 3 degrees higher than the 115W and stay on the low 70s while real gaming.

Is this also working with native boot screens?
Or is open core a must?

Is there a Getting started to have the basic install of opencore?

Regards

 

[Tatewaki]

I have my gtx 1070 now.

i used the GTX1070_R1.ROM (115W) from @m0bil.
with that i injected the EnableGop via vBiosInsert.sh.

i flashed it to the chip via AsProgrammer.

so far so good. The card shows picture and is woring with native Boot Picker.

But in Windows after installing the driver, the driver is stopping with code 43:
"Windows has stopped the device because it reported problems. (Code 43)"

MacOS High Sierra is not booting and the boot procress bar is freezing on that place, where the web driver would load.

I was not able to test this card in another enviroment. Is this a sign of a general problem with the hardware?
or could the modded bios be the cause?

 

[Tatewaki]

I checked with the original ROM and get the same error. So it seems my GTX 1070 is defect. 😢
I will ask the dealer for a replacement and test again with EnableGop via vBios.

 

[m0bil]

I checked with the original ROM and get the same error. So it seems my GTX 1070 is defect. 😢
I will ask the dealer for a replacement and test again with EnableGop via vBios.

¿ what Nvidia driver version are you using ?
¿ have you tried an older driver (you can use NVCleanstall for that) to see if it may be a driver version problem ?
¿ what vbios came with your card, have you checked it is a non-gsync version of the card ?

Error 43 is very generic, it means the driver finds something it does not like and unloads...

 

[Tatewaki]

¿ what Nvidia driver version are you using ?
¿ have you tried an older driver (you can use NVCleanstall for that) to see if it may be a driver version problem ?
¿ what vbios came with your card, have you checked it is a non-gsync version of the card ?

Error 43 is very generic, it means the driver finds something it does not like and unloads...

i checked different versions newest and some odler by NVCleanstaller. Always with DDU beforehand.
regarding the bios its a non-gsync card with 10DE:1BA1 in ID

it was a very cheep offer 99€. and on the board i saw some SMDs "R 005" on places where the reference pic in your post did not have resistors. i guess they did not belong there by default :-D

 

[idenis42]

i checked different versions newest and some odler by NVCleanstaller. Always with DDU beforehand.
regarding the bios its a non-gsync card with 10DE:1BA1 in ID

it was a very cheep offer 99€. and on the board i saw some SMDs "R 005" on places where the reference pic in your post did not have resistors. i guess they did not belong there by default :-D

Take this bios. It should work on your graphics card.

 

[Tatewaki]

Take this bios. It should work on your graphics card.

What makes you believing this? Did you have similar problems in the past?

 

[idenis42]

I had a problem in the past.

 

[Tatewaki]

Take this bios. It should work on your graphics card.

What can i say :-D
Its working. many thanks.
the driver is not installed by plug n play, so i head to force intall the driver but its working. 😁

 

[Tatewaki]

Is there a tutorial how to unlock the afterburner features in the vBios ROM?

 

[m0bil]

Is there a tutorial how to unlock the afterburner features in the vBios ROM?

I have not followed this issue closely, but afterburner had problems working with newer nvidia driver versions (it seems the developer was russian and was unable to receive payments from msi due to sanctions). I know there have been recently some releases after a long time of being semi abandoned, but have not tested them. Are you using the latest ones from guru3d?

 

[m0bil]

Take this bios. It should work on your graphics card.

Ouch! I had completely forgot about this vbios version we made for your card. Thanks for bringing it up

 

[plemyash]

Hi, guys. I have imac 27" 2011. I bought m2000m to upgrade it. I flashed all of vbios's from this thread, but still no working display. Can you help me, please?

 

[Tatewaki]

Hi, guys. I have imac 27" 2011. I bought m2000m to upgrade it. I flashed all of vbios's from this thread, but still no working display. Can you help me, please?

What os is booting by default on your iMac?

Are you sure, all connectors from your monitor are connected correct?

How did you flash the vBios?

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Hi, guys. I have imac 27" 2011. I bought m2000m to upgrade it. I flashed all of vbios's from this thread, but still no working display. Can you help me, please?

Sell the m2000m and buy M4000m. It has a proper vBIOS.

 

[plemyash]

What os is booting by default on your iMac?

Are you sure, all connectors from your monitor are connected correct?

How did you flash the vBios?

I have two ssd. First with High Sierra and second with win 10.
I installed win 10 using old gpu and set up TeamViewer to flash new gpu over remote access.

 

[Mumbles86]

Has anybody looked into Tesla P6 cards? There's quite a few of these getting decommissioned. Could they work with the stock vbios? Can they be possibly be flashed with a P5000 vbios for better compatibility?

edit
Found the earlier discussion on page 26

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/imac-2011-maxwell-and-pascal-gpu-upgrade.2300989/page-26?post=32733975#post-32733975

At best these cards could be used in systems that use the iGPU to drive the screen, but have no way to drive the display directly. Flashing with a P5000 vbios likely won't add display capability but I'm curious if the OC P5000 vbios here would be stable and at least add more performance. Not to mention allow using standard drivers and not need the nvidia GRID ones. Is this a bad idea?

 

[Terros]

Ouch! I had completely forgot about this vbios version we made for your card. Thanks for bringing it up

I had the exact same card/issue too now. Might have to make this an official bios under the 1070 section

 

[Mumbles86]

@m0bil I've managed to get a Tesla P6 working. By default the Cisco vbios wouldn't let the system POST but I found an HP vbios that works. Could I bother you to look into increasing the power limit and clock speeds to match something like the P5000? The default 90w sucks pretty bad