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

[Ausdauersportler]

Since you are quite skilled, and no pre-cooked vBIOS for GTX1080 on page #1 yet, I think you can go ahead and cook a vBIOS for yourself.

EnableGop: Pre-OpenCore GOP support for EFI-era iMacs and Mac Pros

You wait ten years for a driver to enable pre-boot graphics on unsupported GPUs in EFI era Macs, and then two come along at once... This post is to announce a firmware driver to enable the native Apple boot picker and early macOS boot progress bar (plus other parts of the firmware UI: target...

forums.macrumors.com

Which would need to use OpenCore (if one would read the fine print in the EnableGop documentation). Creating an OC config as described here for other Nvidia cards could help before spending time on modding a vBIOS only to get the EFI picker working.
Last but not least one might have to modify the connector information within the vBIOS to get eDP support - this is beyond my capabilities.

Edit:
OpenCore can be used to boot Linux. Usually we start using the OCLP app which auto generate a hardware tailored config which has to be adjusted to support Maxwell/Pascal cards for macOS brightness control as described here on this particular thread.

But it may or may not solve your issue to drive the internal display. Sometimes it is the lacking EFI driver which does not enable the backlight on boot, sometimes it is additionally lacking vBIOS support to drive such a backlight. There is a special hardware solution (small PCB with cable connections to be included between power supply and display driver board) to enable and maintain the backlight on boot.

All you need you can find here - unfortunately there has never been a recipe published how to modify a Nvidia vBIOS in depth to support eDP.

 

[Fmanghi]

Which would need to use OpenCore (if one would read the fine print in the EnableGop documentation). Creating an OC config as described here for other Nvidia Cards could help before spending time on modding a vBIOS.
Last but not least one might have to modify the connector information within the vBIOS to get eDP support - this is beyond my capabilities.

Good point. The problem is that i don't even know it opencore works under using linux and rEFInd.
I have installed a package from AUR, and it has installed these files:

Spoiler: Files

/boot/EFI/OC/.contentFlavour
/boot/EFI/OC/.contentVisibility
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/ArpDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/AudioDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/BiosVideo.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/CrScreenshotDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/Dhcp4Dxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/Dhcp6Dxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/DnsDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/DpcDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/Ext4Dxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/FirmwareSettingsEntry.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/Hash2DxeCrypto.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/HiiDatabase.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/HttpBootDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/HttpDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/HttpUtilitiesDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/Ip4Dxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/Ip6Dxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/MnpDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/Mtftp4Dxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/Mtftp6Dxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/NvmExpressDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/OpenCanopy.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/OpenHfsPlus.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/OpenLegacyBoot.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/OpenLinuxBoot.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/OpenNetworkBoot.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/OpenNtfsDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/OpenPartitionDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/OpenRuntime.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/OpenUsbKbDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/OpenVariableRuntimeDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/Ps2KeyboardDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/Ps2MouseDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/RamDiskDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/ResetNvramEntry.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/RngDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/SnpDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/TcpDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/TlsDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/ToggleSipEntry.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/Udp4Dxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/Udp6Dxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/UefiPxeBcDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/UsbMouseDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Drivers/XhciDxe.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/OpenCore.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Tools/BootKicker.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Tools/ChipTune.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Tools/CleanNvram.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Tools/ControlMsrE2.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Tools/CsrUtil.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Tools/FontTester.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Tools/GopStop.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Tools/KeyTester.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Tools/ListPartitions.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Tools/MmapDump.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Tools/OpenControl.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Tools/OpenShell.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Tools/ResetSystem.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Tools/RtcRw.efi
/boot/EFI/OC/Tools/TpmInfo.efi

The package that this script installs is taken from here:

GitHub - acidanthera/OpenCorePkg: OpenCore bootloader

OpenCore bootloader. Contribute to acidanthera/OpenCorePkg development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Is it relevant? Is it not?

 

[DynamiteZerg]

OK, I've finally gotten round to the RTX3000 card.

I've exchanged the motherboard and now all sensors are operational. This enabled the RTX3000 boost clocks which failed the last time around I wanted to get this thing working. You can see the end result in the screenshots. Not bad at all...

Hi there! I was reading your journey with the RTX 3000 on your iMac on Win11. I am new to this forum and also to the RTX 3000, and so have some queries I hope you can help me with me.

From your posts you mentioned - "RTX 3000 arrived. I've done the backlight wire mod and that works fine." and also you found out from the vBIOS it is a HP and not a Dell as claimed by your seller. Did you have to do anything to the vBIOS, like flashing another version or does the existing vBIOS on the card work right away?

Is your RTX 3000 similar in layout to this HP RTX 3000?

Pardon Our Interruption...

Or is it similar in layout to this one? I am trying to get this one for my Dell M6800 but the seller said another buyer tried it on his M6800 and it didn't work.

Pardon Our Interruption...

 

[DynamiteZerg]

I have rev.D of P5200m card and soldered EEPROM chip Winbond W25Q40EW 1.8V, my Dell have EDP screen.
You must select Switchable Graphics to ON in BIOS without this the lid screen will black.
The only way to flash vBIOS file into graphic it's use external programmer like CH341a with 1.8V adaptor.

This 120W mod it safe olny on rev D and presumably on C. The rev A anb B of this card have weak power section and it may explode.

edit:
In my erlier post I wrote wrong words:
''discrete mode is partially posible (when enabled picture is on HDMI but not on the lid LCD).''
I tested again this option and his not work. Sorry for my mistake.
HDMI port olny work in Windows with optimus mode.

Hi there! Thanks for replying to my queries on your Youtube channel!

 

[JadeRover]

I'm sorry I cannot help you with a dell vbios, and is off-topic here. The main reason for the p3000 underperformance is that max clocks are limited by nvidia on the vbios. I managed to overclock it by 20% to 30% by copying the max clocks table from the P5000 vbios.
There is nothing to gain by replacing the shunts, don't do it, if you look at gpu-z perfcap the card never reaches max power using the standard clocks. For the same reason Pascal TDP tweaker won't help you.
You can use envytools to gain insight into vbios internal tables. For editing I use a simple hex editor like Hex Fiend.

Hi, I know this is quite an old post/thread but I am also in the process of upgrading to a p3000.

I know that on my dell laptop I tested the card on there is a magical HP bios, https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/259549/259549 that makes the card boost up to 1805Mhz but unfortunately this bios is limited to 75-80w.

Editing it with MobilePascalTDP tweaker bricks the GPU (BIOS refuses the cheksum I guess).

I tried your 1657Mhz bios and it can boost up to 115w in furmark however in games and rendering it never goes above 65w for me.

I would like your guidance on how to modify these bioses.
I found the power limits inside the bios so I can change these no problem. How can you fix the checksum ?
Thanks a lot, your BIOS' are really wonderful.

 

[G3llings]

Hey everyone,



I picked up a 27" iMac 2011 yesterday for $30! He said it booted to black screen, and being that it had the 6970m I figured it was a dead card, but it turns out somebody had pulled the hard drive and forgot to connect the power cable for the monitor! Awesome! Only issue is the 6970m is having driver issues under windows and results in a black screen after the driver is installed (I have already disabled the iGPU).



I have an HP m1000m lying around but I see a GOP rom was never successfully created here. Anyone willing to give it a shot and I can test it? It should perform relatively closely to the m2000m but seems to be much more common in the the HPs and cheaper.



Edit: Looks like I missed it. @derplayer posted a vbios in post #751 but it hasn't made its way into the table in post #1 (which I own but take no credit for all of the work that everyone else has put into it).

 

[G3llings]

Well I was able to ssh into the GRML usb in order to flash the m1000m with @derplayer GOP vbios but still no internal or external screen, even after windows is booted. Not sure where to go from here. The 6970 enables the screen so I know the screen is not bad, and the m1000m was working when I removed it from the HP.

 

[G3llings]

I installed now High Sierra and Windows 10 on SSD. High Sierra booted with the basic GPU driver. But after installing the NVIDIA webdriver it stopped to work (black screen after boot). To make it work, i needed OpenCore. I couldn't change the boot parameter in safe mode, because partition mounting is locked there?
But i found out that when the Mac goes into sleep mode and wakes up, the GPU starts to work properly and the blackscreen disappears temporary until reboot. From here on, i could edit the OpenCore's bootargs and added "agdpmod=vit9696" to it. This fixed all blackscreen issues and the webdriver now runs fine.

View attachment 2388678

I did some first benchmarks, but noticed then that my CPU cooler is dead and doesn't spin anymore. For the other running fans i use Macs Fan Control. Now im waiting for a replacement to be shipped that i bought.

Geekbench benchmarks on High Sierra: Seems to look fine?
Geekbench CPU
Geekbench Compute

On Windows i had issues with the Intel iGPU. I tried to flash the iMac firmware with your patches to disable it, but my programmer threw errors because of overvoltage protection with a clip at reading. With the iMac connected to power, the erroes were gone, but the readed-out binary blob was garbage . I bought a cheap CH341A because i saw on YouTube that it works better with the iMac 2011. Maybe this one will work (i also want the turbo OC patches haha). But for now, i just blacklisted the iGPU driver in safe mode.

I also ran some Witcher 3 to test the GPU driver on Windows for a short time without a CPU cooler 😅.

View attachment 2388664

Any chance you have a copy of your EFI folder? I'm wondering if my OC is screwed up. It was working before the GPU upgrade but won't enable the screen with the m1000m.

 

[G3llings]

We tested one such card and, while it worked, it had some performance issues (stayed at low power state). There is the possibility that your card behaves differently or the trick used to fix the p3200/p4200 works on this card too. So, if you want to give it a try, read the vbios from the card and post it here or send it to me.

@m0bil Is there a link to this vbios? I have an m3000m on order and would love to test it.