It has Samsung memory. I don't, I just wasn't sure if that 0E.bin was for Elpida or not. I don't know if it's dead, because it is recognized, but I will contact the seller and see what I can do. Thanks for your time!
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iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
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Ausdauersportler
macrumors 603
It is not sufficient to become recognized by the iMac on boot. The problems of a dead or dying card start after the boot screen (you do not even get this) when the operating system is enabling the graphics mode and puts load on the card. Later on during benchmarks you can see more artifacts and problems.
A card is only considered working if it boots an operating system and survives normal load tests as we mentioned on the first post.
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Aesthetica
macrumors member
Looking at the system requirements for Borderlands 2 (fairly low end cards from 2008), you could definitely run it on the 6970 as is. I can recommend the K4100m though, it won't play everything out there but after finally getting round to gaming on it (did the upgrade last year for that very reason) I've found its handling everything I want to play at something around PS4 / Xbox One level.
Few rough 'benchmarks' from what I've been playing the last few weeks:
Tomb Raider (2013) - macOS. 2560x1440, High Settings, 40-60 fps
Hitman (Demo) macOS - 720p Low Settings about 30fps
Hitman (Demo) Windows - 1080p Low (I think) Settings - 40 - 60fps
It Takes Two (a game from 2021!) - 2560x1440, Low Settings (looks amazing still) 30-fps. I can get 60fps if I use resolution scaling
Alien: Isolation - Windows 2560x1440, Ultra Settings, 60fps
Will add more here as and when I play them!
It looks like from opengl benchmarks the 780m is the best card I can get without going with the expensive and unfindable rx480 mobile, or the amd wx4170 or wx7100. It looks like its better then the k4100m also?
I am willing to spend up to $300 to get this working nicely. Borderlands was just an example. We will probably want to try other windows games later. I am open pascal cards if I can get games working in highsierra on them also.
Do you have a working internal lcd with the 4100m? The first page says no to that.
My recommendation is that it's not necessarily worth spending $300 on the best GPU possible, as for that kind of money, this would be an uncertain life extension for an already 11-year-old computer. Most of the GPU options listed here would still provide a welcome upgrade to your computer, even if they aren't technically the fastest ones possible.
The WX4130 and WX4150 along with some of the higher-end GCN AMD cards would all be much better performers than the stock GPU, and most are relatively easy to find for sale under $100. While RX480/WX7100 are hard to find, most of the other AMD models are easier to come by. To make some basic comparisons between GPU models, I recommend you take a look at gpu.userbenchmark.com.
Here's a rough comparison between the WX4150/RX460M and the stock GPU: https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compa...-4150-Graphics-vs-AMD-HD-6970M/m306249vsm8552
I believe it would be a faster, better (macOS) supported GPU with superior Metal support (which means that games leveraging Metal will run faster) than the NVIDIA K4100m, and it costs about the same. https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-Quadro-K4100M-vs-AMD-HD-6970M/m9721vsm8552
Using OpenCore and flashing a new VBIOS are necessary steps for a working computer (including internal LCD backlight) for most of the GPUs listed here.
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Aesthetica
macrumors member
Ah good point. When I bought my k4100m the 780m didn't have brightness control (looks like we've come a long way!) so maybe that is a better shout.
Everything does work flawlessly including internal display on the K4100m.
How can you tell if an 880m will allow for the internal lcd to work or not? It seems like some people have issues with this? Why is there no metal score for it? Are there any other amd cards worth trying?
The WX4130 is (~$30) cheaper than the WX4150 I mentioned before, and it is essentially just as powerful, as the modified VBIOS will unlock some of the features disabled by default.
While experimental AMD GPUs are often way cheaper, and some of them approach similar levels of performance to the WX4150, they may require a bit more tinkering to get them working, and at least right now, none of them are quite as reliable/well tested as the WX4150.
I recommend that you get either an AMD WX4130 or WX4150 for your iMac as long as you are able to perform the hardware modifications potentially necessary for them to work. The AMD cards are more efficient/less power-hungry, better supported by modern Mac OS versions, and they are much faster at Metal-related tasks (demanded by many recent games) than any of the NVIDIA GPUs.
As best I can tell, the K4100m costs roughly the same as the WX4150 for less performance, and the prior GPUs in the NVIDIA list are all less powerful as well.
See here for more 880m information (a search of this thread for everything mentioning the 880m): https://forums.macrumors.com/search/3218200/?q=880m&t=post&c[thread]=1596614&o=relevance
Skimming the above posts, it seems to me like the 880m is probably not the best choice, as the majority of posts I saw were complaining about issues with it. Even some of the initially successful posts were followed with failure updates, so I'd stay away from that model GPU personally.
Another reason I would personally not get a super high-wattage GPU like the 880m, is that it will place greater thermal demands on your computer, and it will push the PSU exceedingly hard compared to the more efficient AMD options.
So 4130/50 sounds like the best bet for the currunt operating system.
So you think the 4150 is better at gaming then the 780m? All the benchmarks say its slower, but because apple and metal its faster? I would be stuck at big sur with the 780m I think which is absolutely fine. The 4150 is better for longer gaming sessions though because of heating?
I haven't ruled out an m4000 or a p4000 maxwell card. I would just be stuck with high sierra which is where I am at now anyway. I only need this to work for maybe 4-5 years.
My hope is I can just us my hackintosh install files for the open core installation and copy/paste it in.
For games that rely on the Metal API, I believe that the WX4150 would be faster; however, games that use other APIs may not be quite as fast as on the 780m. Both GPUs would be considerably faster than the stock iMac GPU though.
The 780m will produce more heat and draw more power from your computer's PSU. You will need to Dremel your computer's heatsink in order for it to fit properly, and this GPU produces so much heat that the special 3-pipe heatsink variant is also required to dissipate the heat.
In contrast, the WX4150 is a smaller, more efficient, and cooler-running GPU, so no heatsink modifications will be necessary for it to fit, and the stock iMac heatsink will be adequate.
I have heard that the used high-wattage GPUs (like the 780m) have a higher likelihood of being defective, as they may have been constantly exposed to high temperatures during their previous lives inside gaming laptops. There is a warning about this phenomenon in the NVIDIA section of the documentation.
OpenCore for Hackintoshes is not quite the same thing as OpenCore Legacy Patcher for iMacs. This means that you will not be able to copy and paste the configuration files that your Hackintosh uses into your iMac configuration. The good news is that OpenCore Legacy Patcher is arguably simpler to use than plain Hackintosh OpenCore, as there is a GUI program that will essentially configure and install all of the OpenCore software for you. It's more than likely that you will not need to change a single setting before running the program and installing OpenCore Legacy Patcher.
Hi everyone
I recently acquired a good condition mid 2011 imac 27 with i7-2600 and hd6970M 2gb. the computer restart itself when cold start, it did that a few times and once warm will work. I took the video card out and baked it 10 minutes at 400c and put in new high quality thermal paste and thermal pad. the thermal pad is a bit of a chore some i had to stack to reach the distance of the gap, the thermal pad i got comes with 3 thicknesses, 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0mm, good thoughtful product. Once put back, all is good, 100% success and it's been great for over 1 month now with daily use.
I installed windows 10 pro on this machine. just pure install, no bootcamp and no mac os. I like it this way as it is a great all in one gaming machine now.
the above information hopefully someone find useful if have the same symptom. there was no artifacts just reboot when cold. it's funny the seller had the computer on when i went to buy it i guess to hide this issue. still it was a great deal for 300 cad with a 1TB corsair ssd inside and 2gb variant of this video card.
I signed up just to ask one question. I see everyone seem to keep the computer with mac os. So if i am to put in a better mxm video card like gtx 880 8gb, would windows pick up the driver like a regular windows pc does? i see all the effort with bios and stuff is to get around mac os's driver limitations. But i don't know maybe the motherboard is picky since it doesn't have bios updates.
I had good luck lately baking two other cards, a hd6870 and hd6850 desktop cards. got them both pretty much free since they have artifacts once driver is installed. same thing 10 minutes 400, worked awesome after.
the machine is awesome can run at max 1440p set to high or ultra and games like outlast, outlast, fallout 3, etc older games runs smoothly. i cashed out my 2070 a while ago and now i am pretty happy with this set up just for casual gaming. just wonder if i can put a better card in that i can play newer game later. maybe because it is full windows it can even handle 9 series and 10 series cards? anyway hopefully someone give me a reply, i think these 2009 to 2011 imacs are golden with it's removeable screen for easy access of internals. it's not exactly easy taking the MB out and service the graphics card but seriously as far as apple product go these older stuff is so well designed.
I played with macs quite a bit lately started from a 17 inch g5 power supply replacement, then to 20 inch imac, 17 inch imac intel model and fully strip down a 17 inch macbook pro 2007 down to cleaning keyboard layer by layer since it had coffee spilled inside it. I love this 17 inch imac, it is so ahead for it's age. love it so much i put in a 500gb samsung ssd i had sitting around and now it is just so fast even with a dual core 2.5ghz, 6gb ram i put in. only paid 40 bucks for the imac and also got a 4th gen ipad for free that is ic locked and i used my other 27 inch 2009 imac and a dcsd cable to change serial to get it working again. the seller is original owner for both and forgot the password on the ipad lol.
this summarized myself a bit. i have decent knowledge with fixing stuff, i break some fix some and definitely fix more than break stuff. i still have a lot more projects around home that's waiting for me to work on that involves smd soldering. putting that aside now since having a second baby on the way : )
lastly facebook marketplace is too addictive. i got everything above there lol. small city but lots of deals and not as competitive as larger cities when a deal shows up. i cut down on repair stuff now as wife complain i spent too much time.
I recently acquired a good condition mid 2011 imac 27 with i7-2600 and hd6970M 2gb. the computer restart itself when cold start, it did that a few times and once warm will work. I took the video card out and baked it 10 minutes at 400c and put in new high quality thermal paste and thermal pad. the thermal pad is a bit of a chore some i had to stack to reach the distance of the gap, the thermal pad i got comes with 3 thicknesses, 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0mm, good thoughtful product. Once put back, all is good, 100% success and it's been great for over 1 month now with daily use.
I installed windows 10 pro on this machine. just pure install, no bootcamp and no mac os. I like it this way as it is a great all in one gaming machine now.
the above information hopefully someone find useful if have the same symptom. there was no artifacts just reboot when cold. it's funny the seller had the computer on when i went to buy it i guess to hide this issue. still it was a great deal for 300 cad with a 1TB corsair ssd inside and 2gb variant of this video card.
I signed up just to ask one question. I see everyone seem to keep the computer with mac os. So if i am to put in a better mxm video card like gtx 880 8gb, would windows pick up the driver like a regular windows pc does? i see all the effort with bios and stuff is to get around mac os's driver limitations. But i don't know maybe the motherboard is picky since it doesn't have bios updates.
I had good luck lately baking two other cards, a hd6870 and hd6850 desktop cards. got them both pretty much free since they have artifacts once driver is installed. same thing 10 minutes 400, worked awesome after.
the machine is awesome can run at max 1440p set to high or ultra and games like outlast, outlast, fallout 3, etc older games runs smoothly. i cashed out my 2070 a while ago and now i am pretty happy with this set up just for casual gaming. just wonder if i can put a better card in that i can play newer game later. maybe because it is full windows it can even handle 9 series and 10 series cards? anyway hopefully someone give me a reply, i think these 2009 to 2011 imacs are golden with it's removeable screen for easy access of internals. it's not exactly easy taking the MB out and service the graphics card but seriously as far as apple product go these older stuff is so well designed.
I played with macs quite a bit lately started from a 17 inch g5 power supply replacement, then to 20 inch imac, 17 inch imac intel model and fully strip down a 17 inch macbook pro 2007 down to cleaning keyboard layer by layer since it had coffee spilled inside it. I love this 17 inch imac, it is so ahead for it's age. love it so much i put in a 500gb samsung ssd i had sitting around and now it is just so fast even with a dual core 2.5ghz, 6gb ram i put in. only paid 40 bucks for the imac and also got a 4th gen ipad for free that is ic locked and i used my other 27 inch 2009 imac and a dcsd cable to change serial to get it working again. the seller is original owner for both and forgot the password on the ipad lol.
this summarized myself a bit. i have decent knowledge with fixing stuff, i break some fix some and definitely fix more than break stuff. i still have a lot more projects around home that's waiting for me to work on that involves smd soldering. putting that aside now since having a second baby on the way : )
lastly facebook marketplace is too addictive. i got everything above there lol. small city but lots of deals and not as competitive as larger cities when a deal shows up. i cut down on repair stuff now as wife complain i spent too much time.
Hello,
I managed to successfully flash GOP vbios onto and install an AMD w6170m card into my 2011 27 inch iMac. At first, the LCD wouldn't come on and I assumed the card was dead, but after a double NVRAM reset, I was able to boot into macOS Monterey with no issue. However, the system will only fire up the LCD on a warm boot- either after a restart from macOS itself, or an NVRAM reset. This means I have to reset NVRAM on every boot to get the LCD to fire up, which is a bit of a pain Sleep/Wake is also still broken for me despite using OCLP 0.3.3, which I think is supposed to fix it. I was just wondering if there was a fix for this or if having to reset NVRAM on every boot is a known issue with the W6170m??
I managed to successfully flash GOP vbios onto and install an AMD w6170m card into my 2011 27 inch iMac. At first, the LCD wouldn't come on and I assumed the card was dead, but after a double NVRAM reset, I was able to boot into macOS Monterey with no issue. However, the system will only fire up the LCD on a warm boot- either after a restart from macOS itself, or an NVRAM reset. This means I have to reset NVRAM on every boot to get the LCD to fire up, which is a bit of a pain Sleep/Wake is also still broken for me despite using OCLP 0.3.3, which I think is supposed to fix it. I was just wondering if there was a fix for this or if having to reset NVRAM on every boot is a known issue with the W6170m??
Ausdauersportler
macrumors 603
Unfortunately there is no fix for this painful behavior, even not with using more recent versions of OpenCore. You have to disable sleep/wake - otherwise the system will crash on wake and you may even do not get around the NVRAM reset on boot.
Support is experimental and I am afraid there might be no solution for this card within the iMac12,2 at all - it looks like a hardware incompatibility.
Ah okay, unfortunate there is no workaround as of yet but the mac is still usable despite the quirk. I've made sure to turn off sleep/wake now. Would the EG mod be beneficial in this situation or does that only enable the backlight and not the LCD itself?
Ausdauersportler
macrumors 603
The EG mod is limited to those cards with available EG vBIOS versions - which are the Polaris cards, only.
Nevertheless you can apply it to your firmware (does not hurt) and you might be better prepared for things to come.
Getting good at vBios voltage/frequency table tuning will let you get much better performance out of kepler cards, they can run at much higher frequency at slightly reduced voltages aswell, you just have to learn how to do the tuning. You can also use msi afterburner on windows to get the same result, but vbios modding is a permanent and set-and-forget solution. I would not waste money on the top cards as they are likely TDP limited, a k3100 would be a good middle ground
Undervolt these cards please. Will last much longer, maybe even forever if you take 0.1v out all the states, frequency can stay the same.
Hello,
For some months I bought an AMD WX4130 card in order to equip the 21.5 inch 2011 iMac of my son. This machine is currently running well with a k2100m GPU and Big Sur (with Catalina Loader directly stored on internal ssd). Aim of this change is to have a better support with Monterey. Here are pictures of both sides of the card.
@dfranetic explained that some HP/Dell cards require a mod to work on 21.5 inch iMacs models (removing 2 jumpers to disconnect TMP431B). Mine looks similar to that of @m0bil. I am not sure if this card requires a mod.
My questions : is this mod mandatory to make the card POST on this 2011 iMac 21.5 inch? If yes, where are located those 2 jumpers please?
For some months I bought an AMD WX4130 card in order to equip the 21.5 inch 2011 iMac of my son. This machine is currently running well with a k2100m GPU and Big Sur (with Catalina Loader directly stored on internal ssd). Aim of this change is to have a better support with Monterey. Here are pictures of both sides of the card.
@dfranetic explained that some HP/Dell cards require a mod to work on 21.5 inch iMacs models (removing 2 jumpers to disconnect TMP431B). Mine looks similar to that of @m0bil. I am not sure if this card requires a mod.
My questions : is this mod mandatory to make the card POST on this 2011 iMac 21.5 inch? If yes, where are located those 2 jumpers please?
m0bil
macrumors 6502
Your card lacks the U1301 IC (the temp IC) located in the back of the card, so no mod should be needed (and anyway the mod is needed only for the 2010 iMac and yours is 2011). Good luck!
Hello, I am new here🙂
I have an coming project for my personal interesting and Steam Games.
I will build an 27" iMac 2011 for "Low end" Gaming!
And i understand everything to upgrade the iMAC, but with the GPU I need held.
Whats the highest GPU that don't need many work like Plug and Play🙂
Or is the work for an bigger GPU easy?
I buy next Month an 27" iMAC
i7-2600 (or i5 and later upgrade to i7)
8GB RAM for the first
GPU- i don't really now:/ (I think 780m, but its has only 4GB RAM/ better 8GB?)
Only Windows 10 or better 11 (because I have an ready USB haha)
It is only a Project, and I will play my Steam games🙂 but don't ned to Play the new Battlefield or something else!
And my Games from 2015 up to 2018 should have round 50 to 60 FPS
THX for the answers!
PS: i am from Germany, sorry for my English🙂
Edit: i have read the P3000 is the best way for gaming, or the P4000.
What did you think?
I have an coming project for my personal interesting and Steam Games.
I will build an 27" iMac 2011 for "Low end" Gaming!
And i understand everything to upgrade the iMAC, but with the GPU I need held.
Whats the highest GPU that don't need many work like Plug and Play🙂
Or is the work for an bigger GPU easy?
I buy next Month an 27" iMAC
i7-2600 (or i5 and later upgrade to i7)
8GB RAM for the first
GPU- i don't really now:/ (I think 780m, but its has only 4GB RAM/ better 8GB?)
Only Windows 10 or better 11 (because I have an ready USB haha)
It is only a Project, and I will play my Steam games🙂 but don't ned to Play the new Battlefield or something else!
And my Games from 2015 up to 2018 should have round 50 to 60 FPS
THX for the answers!
PS: i am from Germany, sorry for my English🙂
Edit: i have read the P3000 is the best way for gaming, or the P4000.
What did you think?
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m0bil
macrumors 6502
If your goal is windows gaming on iMac, take a look at this thread.
Paco Cook
macrumors newbie
Hi I upgraded my imacs GPU to a AMD 6970 and it worked nicely on high sierra, the I installed patched sur, and discovered the graphics are slow, I tried to donwgrade it back to High Sierra but it wont boot on any lower than catalina. It shows boot screen, then blank and stops and sometimes restarts. No even on recovery!
edwardgeo
macrumors member
You should use carbon copy cloner or time machine(easy way) to downgrade os. Mojave is apfs filesystem os, that filesystem is unsupported on bootloader, only open core. You can't find recovery because it could be erased. Oses after El Capitan often do a lot of failure with disk partitions. Also os could simply delete opencore or something else. Boot USB stick macos and copy content of hdd, if it's important and do a clean install on erased hdd. With install assistant manager restore user or files.
I don't know if imac support internet recovery, but that could be useful for browse files and disks to get clear understand what is happening
I think the best option would be to backup your computer (if there is any data you care about), then reformat the hard drive (using Disk Utility), and reinstall High Sierra completely from scratch.
Unfortunately, many of the tools that allow for unsupported operating systems to be installed sometimes come with the side effect of messing up the operating system files. When this happens, I think that a clean install of the operating system is often the best choice.
The AMD 6970 does not have native Metal graphics acceleration, so unsupported operating systems will have poor graphics performance. OpenCore Legacy Patcher contains some experimental graphics acceleration patches for your model of GPU, so these could be useful in speeding things up. The GPU patches are still in a beta phase, so they might not be perfect, but would likely be better than nothing.
For better support in newer operating systems, take a look at the other GPU upgrade options described in the first post of this thread. Many of these GPUs support Metal and work quite well under modern macOS versions.''
(Something else to consider is that the AMD 6970 is highly prone to failure, and may be defective. I would probably try troubleshooting with a clean install of macOS first before messing with the GPU again though.)
Stefanox2410
macrumors regular
Greetings to all, how are you?
I have a question i am going to buy a grx 880m 8gb coming from a clevo laptop. I intend to put it on my imac 27 mid 2011, I have read many things but I cannot understand.
Would work ? Is there to flash?
I would like to understand before buying it
Thanks so much
I have a question i am going to buy a grx 880m 8gb coming from a clevo laptop. I intend to put it on my imac 27 mid 2011, I have read many things but I cannot understand.
Would work ? Is there to flash?
I would like to understand before buying it
Thanks so much