iMac 27 i7 2009 with PC 6970m 2GB turns off while playing video game.

[guillepunx]

Hi everybody!

Some days ago I put a AMD 6970m 2GB from a Alienware laptop on my iMac 27 from 2009. My old ATI 4850 512MB is still working but I wanted a better GPU on my mac. I choose the pc version because I earned it on ebay for only 55€.

Of course I have not boot screen but I don't care and on the about this mac screen it says "AMD Radeon HD 6xxx 2048 MB" that it's ok with me.

On Photoshop it recognizes the video card as an AMD 6970m 2GB and works perfect on almost things, but when I put a game like Homeworld Remastered Collection after a while the mac turns off. I have tested other games but same thing.


I have no idea why this happens.
Some help here?
Thanks for your time
Guille.

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Heat generated by the video card.

 

[guillepunx]

Heat generated by the video card.

But do you think that it's only related to thermal paste, heatsink or something similar?
I used Hardware Monitor App and it read on Graphic Processor Heatsink, between 39ºC and 59ºC
Never seen more than that.

Thanks for your reply!

 

[guillepunx]

I replaced the termal paste for some better and it works perfect, but I think that there is another problem.
The Os don't recognice de specific videocard, so it don't read the GPU Diode temperature, only the temperature from the heatsink.

Maybe I will try to flash the videocard with the original Mac GPU Rom while I'm on windows... Hope not going to destroy the videocard.

 

[Mackata]

I replaced the termal paste for some better and it works perfect, but I think that there is another problem.
The Os don't recognice de specific videocard, so it don't read the GPU Diode temperature, only the temperature from the heatsink.

Maybe I will try to flash the videocard with the original Mac GPU Rom while I'm on windows... Hope not going to destroy the videocard.

Hi,
I want to install a 6790m (PC) in may iMac 27" 2011 and would be very interested in your experiences. Plese tell me, what I have to do exactly to get the best result.

 

[guillepunx]

Hi,
I want to install a 6790m (PC) in may iMac 27" 2011 and would be very interested in your experiences. Plese tell me, what I have to do exactly to get the best result.

Sorry didn't see this before. I still use the iMac with 6970m 2gb from an Alienware laptop with efi bios from an original apple card. Used bootcamp to flash the apple bios on the new card.

Works perfect with boot screen. Only thing to consider is to use Macs Fan Control to ensure the videocard not overheat, as apple SMC can't read new card gpu temp.

 

[Mackata]

Hey,
I'm still interested and would like to flash the card. Can you give me detailed instructions how to flash the card? I'm a total beginner.

 

[guillepunx]

Hey,
I'm still interested and would like to flash the card. Can you give me detailed instructions how to flash the card? I'm a total beginner.

First of all you need to know that this really risky if you are not used to this kind of stuff, because if something goes wrong, your new card is going to become a brick that should be hard to become alive again.

Then you need before star the process a working bootcamp, if you have it with XP sp3 should be better for the software that you are going to use.

And I need to know the exact of card and amount of vram that it has. Your better choice is 6970m 1gb or 2gb. But also you should know that those cards, and old ones too, don't have Metal support, so you are not going be able to install Os X Mojave. (may be yes, but without gpu acceleration)


On normal desktop machines like mac pros it much easier as you can put the card that you are going to flash on a normal pc an flash it from ms-dos (the more secure way to do it), but as this card are same design for laptops (MXM III standard), you're going to do it it self on the iMac on Windows, that is less secure to do this kind of stuff. (other way should be using a pc laptop with mxm connector inside, but I never tried that).




When you know the exact card that you are going to use, I can give you some links with info and the tools. But again, this is dangerous, so be concern about that. You should feel comfortable using windows cmd.

EDIT: Also this weekend I would try to install Mojave beta on my i7 860 late 2009 27 iMac to test it.