iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade

[Dilli]

Finally Got my Graphic Card Delivered GTX765M Dell Alienware Nvidia. Now I am waiting for two more orders. A. The Eeprom Bios Programer and B. k5-Pro/K4-pro thermal paste. Meanwhile, I would install the card and see if my iMac boots well. Next stage would be to get the boot screen setup using @Nick [D]vB and @FlorisVN notes and procedures. Thanks to all. Will get back with news on how the card works.

 

[FlorisVN]

Finally Got my Graphic Card Delivered GTX765M Dell Alienware Nvidia. Now I am waiting for two more orders. A. The Eeprom Bios Programer and B. k5-Pro/K4-pro thermal paste. Meanwhile, I would install the card and see if my iMac boots well. Next stage would be to get the boot screen setup using @Nick [D]vB and @FlorisVN notes and procedures. Thanks to all. Will get back with news on how the card works.

View attachment 876746View attachment 876747View attachment 876748

good, card looks good to me..
And yes that is the bios chip indeed..

happy modding ! 😉

 

[Dilli]

Yes I was lucky to get an almost brand new card at a good price. 🙂

 

[Dilli]

I think I will try the linux/ virtual box method for vbios update.

 

[Clintimac2011]

Good afternoon/evening/morning

This might seem a bit of a weird request but I want to know what's the best gpu with windows compatible only as I want to make my 27 inch i5 2011 mac vr compatible using a thunderbolt for the USB 3 capability the other as a display port for a hdmi and well a gpu that will work in windows (other upgrades include i7 and more ram as I got 20gb and a ssd)

 

[Momos1]

Someone ask about it, but still no answer.
Can we do flashing procedure on PC using MXM to Pcie adapter ? Without eeprom programer ?
Something like this:
https://pl.aliexpress.com/item/3295...chweb0_0,searchweb201602_8,searchweb201603_55

 

[highvoltage12v]

Good afternoon/evening/morning

This might seem a bit of a weird request but I want to know what's the best gpu with windows compatible only as I want to make my 27 inch i5 2011 mac vr compatible using a thunderbolt for the USB 3 capability the other as a display port for a hdmi and well a gpu that will work in windows (other upgrades include i7 and more ram as I got 20gb and a ssd)

Hey everyone, I have huge news as of this minute. WX7100, full clock speeds in Windows 10, no more 300mhz lock, nothing. Latest amd drivers, everything the way it should be, ramps right up to max clock speed, everything running fantastic. I used ATI flash and replaced my original vbios with this one. Full boost, everything. I can't believe I got this thing working, this project has been months in the making and I couldn't have done it without you guys. Feel free to ask any questions if you have them, ect. I'm feelin' good fellas.

I would have to say the WX7100 is the fastest card you can put in your iMac. However you will have to do the dyinglight mod to have backlight at all on the internal LCD @Ooze seems like your rom working great?

 

[jborko]

Hey everyone, I have huge news as of this minute. WX7100, full clock speeds in Windows 10, no more 300mhz lock, nothing. Latest amd drivers, everything the way it should be, ramps right up to max clock speed, everything running fantastic. I used ATI flash and replaced my original vbios with this one. Full boost, everything. I can't believe I got this thing working, this project has been months in the making and I couldn't have done it without you guys. Feel free to ask any questions if you have them, ect. I'm feelin' good fellas.

Ooze have you achieved boot screen as well?

 

[Ooze]

Ooze have you achieved boot screen as well?

No boot screen yet.
[automerge]1573690194[/automerge]
But there is other news. I am liquid cooling the GPU in my imac now. Been working on the build for a while and it's not finished yet but I can't wait to show you all what it looks like.

 

[Dilli]

Finally made the cut of the heat sink to adjust the GTX765M Graphic Card. I just used the file to grind the edges. Tks to @jborko for pointing it out. The cutter wheel would have made it more rough and unclean.

I had to make a small cut to the cross member too for adjustments.

Now I await the K5-Pro thermal kit prior installing the graphic card

I could not wait so I installed the card which fit perfectly and used some Arctic silver and thermal paste lying around. After fixing everything I plugged in the ac cord and to my surprise I got the startup chime and optical drive movement(which apparently was dead earlier without and sound except for full fans).
However, I only got Black Screen with full fans ON and NOTHING.

My apprehension is if my machine did not show the display how can I run UEFITool to take my bootrom dump and insert Nick's bootrom patch.Only after this stage I van make the dump to flash the bootrom.

What could be the reason as there is no display. I check the LED and only 1 & 2 are lit. All my connections are perfect. Perhaps, in previous post it has been said LED3 will come on after installing bootrom and Nick's file.
Then I have to wait for the programmer to be delivered and follow the next step. Anyone who faced similar issues please provide your inputs which would indeed be great help.

 

[hijglander]

Finally made the cut of the heat sink to adjust the GTX765M Graphic Card. I just used the file to grind the edges. Tks to @jborko for pointing it out. The cutter wheel would have made it more rough and unclean.

I had to make a small cut to the cross member too for adjustments.

Now I await the K5-Pro thermal kit prior installing the graphic card

View attachment 877019


I could not wait so I installed the card which fit perfectly and used some Arctic silver and thermal paste lying around. After fixing everything I plugged in the ac cord and to my surprise I got the startup chime and optical drive movement(which apparently was dead earlier without and sound except for full fans).
However, I only got Black Screen with full fans ON and NOTHING.

My apprehension is if my machine did not show the display how can I run UEFITool to take my bootrom dump and insert Nick's bootrom patch.Only after this stage I van make the dump to flash the bootrom.

What could be the reason as there is no display. I check the LED and only 1 & 2 are lit. All my connections are perfect. Perhaps, in previous post it has been said LED3 will come on after installing bootrom and Nick's file.
Then I have to wait for the programmer to be delivered and follow the next step. Anyone who faced similar issues please provide your inputs which would indeed be great help.

As far as I can tell from reading this forum you don't have a DELL/ALIENWARE Graphics card installed. So my guess is that you need to update the vbios on the card to either a DELL/ALIENWARE one or, and this would be preferred, update the vbios to the version Nick created.
But smarter people than me on this subject are reading this topic and might disagree.. listen to them!

 

[Dilli]

As far as I can tell from reading this forum you don't have a DELL/ALIENWARE Graphics card installed. So my guess is that you need to update the vbios on the card to either a DELL/ALIENWARE one or, and this would be preferred, update the vbios to the version Nick created.
But smarter people than me on this subject are reading this topic and might disagree.. listen to them!

Sure tks. I too feel the vbios needs to be updated for the GPU to activate.

 

[FlorisVN]

Finally made the cut of the heat sink to adjust the GTX765M Graphic Card. I just used the file to grind the edges. Tks to @jborko for pointing it out. The cutter wheel would have made it more rough and unclean.

I had to make a small cut to the cross member too for adjustments.

Now I await the K5-Pro thermal kit prior installing the graphic card

View attachment 877019


I could not wait so I installed the card which fit perfectly and used some Arctic silver and thermal paste lying around. After fixing everything I plugged in the ac cord and to my surprise I got the startup chime and optical drive movement(which apparently was dead earlier without and sound except for full fans).
However, I only got Black Screen with full fans ON and NOTHING.

My apprehension is if my machine did not show the display how can I run UEFITool to take my bootrom dump and insert Nick's bootrom patch.Only after this stage I van make the dump to flash the bootrom.

What could be the reason as there is no display. I check the LED and only 1 & 2 are lit. All my connections are perfect. Perhaps, in previous post it has been said LED3 will come on after installing bootrom and Nick's file.
Then I have to wait for the programmer to be delivered and follow the next step. Anyone who faced similar issues please provide your inputs which would indeed be great help.

Better use a dremmel next time.. 🙂
Much easier, and gives much nicer results.. 😉

LED 3 will never light up withouth EFI mods or original AMD card !

 

[Dilli]

So I am now waiting for CH341A Programmer kit to arrive to get the EFI modding done. @FlorisVN noted about LED3.

 

[FlorisVN]

Someone ask about it, but still no answer.
Can we do flashing procedure on PC using MXM to Pcie adapter ? Without eeprom programer ?
Something like this:
https://pl.aliexpress.com/item/3295...chweb0_0,searchweb201602_8,searchweb201603_55

Hi, I understand your question but I dont think anybody here has tried/tested this.
I think in theory it should work fine, I would suggest try it out and share your results here !
I would say when using an adapter like this, use tools like Nvidia nvflash or similar AMD flashing software tools..

This could be indeed perhaps a third way and different way of flashing the vbios of MXM cards.
[automerge]1573744649[/automerge]

Good afternoon/evening/morning

This might seem a bit of a weird request but I want to know what's the best gpu with windows compatible only as I want to make my 27 inch i5 2011 mac vr compatible using a thunderbolt for the USB 3 capability the other as a display port for a hdmi and well a gpu that will work in windows (other upgrades include i7 and more ram as I got 20gb and a ssd)

Like @highvoltage12v also said, properly the AMD WX7100 will be the fastest EFI mod compatible card atm.
Just recently user @Ooze has managed to get AMD Drivers to work under Windows Bootcamp.

So I think this answers your question..

I think at least 1 mini display port should also work with these AMD cards, but I have not test this myself.
But mini-display port to HDMI adapter could be what you need on this one..
Other users like perhaps @Ooze or @Nick [D]vB might give a full answer on this, if external display outputs work with a WX7100..

 

[passatgt]

ok so I had to go the Raspberry pi way. I have connection to the bios chip it lists AS gd25q20(b) (256 kB, SPI) Did a backup called Flash.dat. When i try to write the recomended .rom file i Get error: image size doesn’t match the Flash chip size. Look at attached image. Need help

You can add padding at the end of the rom with this command:

truncate -s 256kB new.rom

This will change the size of the .rom file to 256kb and you can flash it this way.

 

[Vovan]

Hi,
I`ve installed Quadro K2000M in my iMac 27" 2010 after the native Radeon HD5750 broke down.
There is black screen while booting then evereything is OK. As long as K2000M supports metal I decided to upgrade from High Sierra to Catalina, but native installer still treats my Mac as not supported. I tried patcher from Dosdude but when it comes to installing from USB Flash I cannot chose USB boot disk as there is no access through Option at boot. I tried "Install on this computer" option in the patcher but again I cannot disable SIP in terminal in start menu...
Is there a way to disable SIP from running OS? Or any other way around?

 

[StereoNewt]

Hi,
I`ve installed Quadro K2000M in my iMac 27" 2010 after the native Radeon HD5750 broke down.
There is black screen while booting then evereything is OK. As long as K2000M supports metal I decided to upgrade from High Sierra to Catalina, but native installer still treats my Mac as not supported. I tried patcher from Dosdude but when it comes to installing from USB Flash I cannot chose USB boot disk as there is no access through Option at boot. I tried "Install on this computer" option in the patcher but again I cannot disable SIP in terminal in start menu...
Is there a way to disable SIP from running OS? Or any other way around?

so with this new GPU you wont get a boot menu until a modded vBios comes out (i think thats what its called) comes out and you cant install a macOS update without the boot menu, same goes for SIP

 

[Ooze]

Hi, I understand your question but I dont think anybody here has tried/tested this.
I think in theory it should work fine, I would suggest try it out and share your results here !
I would say when using an adapter like this, use tools like Nvidia nvflash or similar AMD flashing software tools..

This could be indeed perhaps a third way and different way of flashing the vbios of MXM cards.
[automerge]1573744649[/automerge]


Like @highvoltage12v also said, properly the AMD WX7100 will be the fastest EFI mod compatible card atm.
Just recently user @Ooze has managed to get AMD Drivers to work under Windows Bootcamp.

So I think this answers your question..

I think at least 1 mini display port should also work with these AMD cards, but I have not test this myself.
But mini-display port to HDMI adapter could be what you need on this one..
Other users like perhaps @Ooze or @Nick [D]vB might give a full answer on this, if external display outputs work with a WX7100..

I have done testing that shows one of the displayports absolutely works with the WX7100 in my machine. Which is pretty amazing. Not only does it work, but using MiniDP to HDMI converters also works 100%.

 

[FlorisVN]

I have done testing that shows one of the displayports absolutely works with the WX7100 in my machine. Which is pretty amazing. Not only does it work, but using MiniDP to HDMI converters also works 100%.

Thats good, than it's the same for the compatible Nvidia cards..
They also have one MiniDP output working atm.

This could perhaps be changed in the future by more vbios editing, who knows..
But for most of us I expect one MiniDP should be enough.. 😉
[automerge]1573810199[/automerge]

so with this new GPU you wont get a boot menu until a modded vBios comes out (i think thats what its called) comes out and you cant install a macOS update without the boot menu, same goes for SIP

yep thats correct, as far as I know atm there is no EFI mod available for these Quadro cards.
If a custom vbios will be released for these cards, then yes a EFI bootscreen will be possible someday.. 😉
upgrading to a unsupported MacOS like Mojave/Catalina will ALWAYS still require SIP to be DISABLED.
[automerge]1573810297[/automerge]

Hi,
I`ve installed Quadro K2000M in my iMac 27" 2010 after the native Radeon HD5750 broke down.
There is black screen while booting then evereything is OK. As long as K2000M supports metal I decided to upgrade from High Sierra to Catalina, but native installer still treats my Mac as not supported. I tried patcher from Dosdude but when it comes to installing from USB Flash I cannot chose USB boot disk as there is no access through Option at boot. I tried "Install on this computer" option in the patcher but again I cannot disable SIP in terminal in start menu...
Is there a way to disable SIP from running OS? Or any other way around?

You have a 27" Imac, I would highly reccomend you go for a compatible Dell/Alienware GTX765/770/780m card or compatible AMD card.
Since there is a EFI bootscreen mod available for these cards thx to Nick ! 🙂

atm your Quadro K2000M does not have a EFI modded vbios.
So if a bootscreen is important for you, go with a compatible card for your iMac !

 

[geoRG77]

I have done testing that shows one of the displayports absolutely works with the WX7100 in my machine. Which is pretty amazing. Not only does it work, but using MiniDP to HDMI converters also works 100%.

Hi Ooze,
can you please test Target Display Mode as well? That would be really interesting if it worked.

 

[FlorisVN]

Hi Ooze,
can you please test Target Display Mode as well? That would be really interesting if it worked.

I am also curious to know if Target Display mode is working on these AMD cards.. 😉
As far as I can remember, test results with an AMD card has not been posted here.. ?

 

[Vovan]

your Quadro K2000M does not have a EFI modded vbios.
So if a bootscreen is important for you, go with a compatible card for your iMac !

I think 2010 iMac is not worth buying another card.

upgrading to a unsupported MacOS like Mojave/Catalina will ALWAYS still require SIP to be DISABLED.

How do you think if I install Catalina on an external SSD on a supported Mac and then install this SSD into mine and boot from it via System preferences > Startup Disk - will it do the trick?

 

[jborko]

OK, so I got into trying, but I think my card is DoA or something is very wrong with it. To get you into perspective, I got GTX-780M (I though it was Alienware but apparently it is not). I posted pictures previously here. When I put the card into the iMac there is no screen (all is black). So I immediately tried to remotely connect to the machine. Seems that Windows boots fine as I can connect over Team Viewer, but the caveat is that I cannot do anything with it... This is what I am seeing. (trails are mouse movements).

Any ideas?

In parallel to this, I purchased card compatible eeprom, so I was thinking to flash that chip and solder it to the card/replace the original one. However, if this is due to other problems no point of going through that?

What do you guys think?

EDIT:

The question still stands, but I just got an idea... Running a script that will start immediately after windows boot and will automatically flash the card. I still have not figured how to program it, but I will give it some thoughts tonight.

 

[FlorisVN]

OK, so I got into trying, but I think my card is DoA or something is very wrong with it. To get you into perspective, I got GTX-780M (I though it was Alienware but apparently it is not). I posted pictures previously here. When I put the card into the iMac there is no screen (all is black). So I immediately tried to remotely connect to the machine. Seems that Windows boots fine as I can connect over Team Viewer, but the caveat is that I cannot do anything with it... This is what I am seeing. (trails are mouse movements).

View attachment 877265

Any ideas?

In parallel to this, I purchased card compatible eeprom, so I was thinking to flash that chip and solder it to the card/replace the original one. However, if this is due to other problems no point of going through that?

What do you guys think?

EDIT:

The question still stands, but I just got an idea... Running a script that will start immediately after windows boot and will automatically flash the card. I still have not figured how to program it, but I will give it some thoughts tonight.

I dont know if you have posted this before, but have you tested your card first with MacOS.. ?
And tested external display ports under MacOS.. ?
Does this work.. ?

Do Windows Bootcamp secondly, first try MacOS..
step by step.. 😉