Upgrade iMac 27" late 2009 video card?

Hello everyone!

Another broken 4850 graphics card on a late 2009 iMac. I am getting pink vertical stripes and booting up is not possible either in os x or in windows.

Anyone can point me in a replacement? All the alternatives I can find are quite expensive.

And additionally I got a quote from a shop in Munich for a new replacement with 3 months warranty for a bit less than 300 Euros (together with installation).

Does that sound like a fair price? Any cheaper alternatives?

Thank you very much in advance

Apostolos

Hi,

I ended up my taking my mac to the service after I had tried an ati radeon 6870m from alienware without success. The physical replacement operation was not too difficult, but I had neglected to setup the default boot partition to windows and hence only got a black screen. As my old card is not working enough to boot the computer, I had no way of attempting to flash the card with an apple efi from netkas forum. Anyways they do not have "a straight out of the box solution" for mobility version. Also I could not be hundred percent sure if the card that I bought from an auction site was working or not, so there were just too many unknowns to fix the machine myself. My quote was 320 including work. They would have sold me an old card without return option for 230, so I rather took the option with a warranty. It might be that I was just unlucky with the card that I found, since on some forum, 6870 was mentioned as one of the few non-compatible cards. However, I cannot confirm if the more recent gpu cards are working without flashing or not. Finding any mobility versions with sensible prices from online auction sites turned out to be very demanding. I wonder if I would have bought nvidia k4000m for about the same price I am paying now, would I have much better card instead of the old sucky one.

-Janne

I´m having the same problem. I also dont find anywhere to buy it at a reasonable price. I live in Europe and due to tax/custom I prefer to find a reseller/shop in Europe.

Have read somewhere that you can replace it with e.g. newer Geforce 660M but the cards I find are from Acer/HP and so on and I´m guessing it then needs to be flashed. As I reckon flashing requires a Windows system its not an option for me.

Call Apple and tell them what happened or take it to an Authorized Repair Centre. Ask them you want to claim under consumer Law. In UK it is 6 years in Europe it varies but 5 years is the norm, they may repair it free of charge.

I just had the same issue on my Late 2009 iMac recently and got the GPU and screen replaced free of charge. There is some info on Consumer Law even on Apple's website but it is small print

Another imac 27" late 2009 ati radeon 4850 has bit the dust. It runs ok in safe mode but wont boot up otherwise and hangs on the white screen. In safe mode it looks fine except when browsing the web in chrome it has a constant refresh that looks like "venetian blinds" radiating up the screen.

Ive checked the RAM and thats fine. The mac also wont boot up diagnostics mode, but Novabench couldn't test the GPU as it said it may be incompatible. I have two options of either finding a replacment gpu and attempting to install that which seems even more difficult due to lack of options for a replacement or taking it to apple and im sure paying a relative fortune to get the same (?) gpu model installed.

If anyone has advice on what i should do let me know.

Hi everyone,

My 4850 just died on late 2009 I7 iMac. as mentioned before these cards that can be found online are very expensive for some reason.

I'm looking to get my iMac alive again so i was looking at compatible cards that might be cheaper and still could run the system.

As i did so, i found that Radeon 6770M, 512MB (originally for mid 2011 27" iMac) can be found for much less and even almost half the price tags of some 4850.

http://applecomponents.com/items/661-5967_card-video-amd-radeon-hd-6770m-512mb/0 000005111?pn=1&s=661-5967&per_page=30

My questions are, is this card compatible with the late 2009 i7 iMac?

is someone here tried this kind of replacement and it succeed ?

how is the 6770M performance compared to the 4850, considering they're both 512MB?

I'm open to any card that will work on my configuration (except 4670), is someone selling a compatible card?

this is exactly what I replaced my 4850 with in iMac 2009, the 6770m. Works great, similar performance.

My 4850 has also just died, funny they all start dying around the same time!

The 6770M looks interesting and much easier to obtain but doesn't seem to have the same power as the 4850.

Although it's looking like the way to go, just to get things going again.

If anyone has a 4850 up for sale please let me know!

Any other compatible replacements?

Hello every one....

My configuration is :

iMac 27" late 2009, Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz, Radeon HD 4670 256MB, 8GB RAM and updated last month SSD 120GB Kingston against DVD.

OS X El_Capitan also on board...

I don't need to play games with high FPS, but I got problem with plays video files smoothly, mean a new HQ video files 1440p and 4K from GoPro...

It can plays few FullHD 1080p at one time, but 4K movies are plays with freezing....

With new standard 1440p from YouTube plays smoothly with outstanding picture quality in1;1 pixel to native 27" 2560x1440p...

but video files from GoPro in just 1920x1440 (4:3 aspect) with 45mbit/s are jerky like the 4k from GoPro (60mbits)...

Also many different 4k movies with smaller bitrate doesn't play at all....

4k demo redepic 15.67 MBIT/s plays with freezing also

Using the iMovie I convert my sample GoPro 799mb file with 60mbit/s to different quality, and just lowest profile with 10mbit/s (file is 133mb) can play with no freezing frames, but quality of video is very poor, many pixelating... Comparing it to outstanding YT video files 1440p with 60fps it's a big diffrent in quality....

So....... my question is..... the changing my GPU card to something new like You all do here solve my problems and my iMacs will be can plays video files with even 60mbit/s smoothly or it its nor possible with my Core 2 Duo ???

Could You anyone check Your video improvements on Your oldest 2009 machines, with Core 2 Dou or i5 with new video card??

And the price for 600$ for HD 6970 is so too high for very old component, for 600-800 You can buy whole 27" iMac...

I'm wondering that is option for cheaper card for eg 4850 or 6770 to satisfy me for playing 4K videos and is any chance for change the my processor core 2 Duo to i3,i5 or i7...

Sorry for my english at all, I'm not so good in it...

Regards, Tomasz from Poland.....

My iMac 11,1 (late 2009) with core i7 860 and Radeon HD4850 died recently... The video card stopped working and displays pink/green stripes when loading or in safe mode. In normal mode it stays stuck at a gray screen (with no stripes nor cursor). I went to an Apple Store, here in Canada, and they refused to do anything about it because it's not a recognized problem... If less than 1% of a model is officially affected by a problem and the warranty is over, they won't do a thing about it!

Did anybody here try to upgrade the 2009 Imac to one of the Nvidia cards supported by Mac. I've seen some people doing this in 2011 Imacs, but was wondering if it would be worth it in a 2009 and. if not, I'm planning to install the 6970M 2GB. Anybody can be specific about the performance difference?

Have you found a source for the 6970?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=imac+hd+6970m+2gb

http://www.allpartsmac.com/NEW-IMac-27-AMD-Radeon-HD-6970M-1GB-2011-661-5968.htm ?gclid=CjwKEAiAk7O0BRD9_Ka2w_PhwSkSJAAmK…

https://www.macpartsdepot.com/index.php/661-5968-27-inch-imac-mid-2011-a1312-car d-video-radeon-hd-6970m-1gb-amd.html?gclid=CjwKEAiAk7O0BRD9_Ka2w_PhwSkSJAAmKswxq 33OKlzr0CYXqxsKnwbH1ZsbkJ6BKRckT45dtatrRhoCJNDw_wcB

Thanks for the links, appreciated. When the time comes I want to avoid eBay.

Can anyone who had done the upgrade do the 2 gb hd6970m tel me if i have only to replace the card itself, of also the heat sink plates ?

(in can buy only the card for a reasonable price, but i have to set over the original cooling parts, but does that fit as wel of is the cooling part different for both cards?)

regards joerie

The netherlands