Upgrade iMac 27" late 2009 video card?

Hey, well done brave move! Did you get the Mercury playback engine on Premiere Pro CS6 running with OpenCL acceleration on the 4850 at all?

Be very interested to know as I might do the same upgrade myself.

Thanks!

Stuart.

Awesome find, this thread. I still have a iMac 27" late 2009 3.06 C2D that needs a new video card. The old one malfunctions (AHT points out graphics card).

Does anyone still have a 4850 or better lying around? They seem rather expensive on the web (and non available for the 4850).

I'm located within Europe (Dutch)

Thanks for the quick and prompt response. Yes, I tried there since I ordered stuff before from that website.

The 4850 is out of stock (it has been for a while) so I can't seem to order that one.

They only in stock video card that reasonavly prices is the ATI Radeon 5670 512MB for €170 inc. VAT.

However, I wonder what the gain is with this card. I need a new card either way.

I went from a 4850 to a 6670 but the gains in performance were not as extreme as I hoped.

Without overclocking, I got a nice 20% FPS increase, but the biggest thing was how much cooler my machine ran due to the change in die size of the new GPU.

All in all, pleased, but still think I should have bought a slightly more expensive card with 1g of VRAM on ebay.

Hello,

StefanKuijl , i still have my HD4850 512 MB from my imac Late 2009 ( i7 860) , I could sell you at a good price . It works perfectly in very good condition, i have replaced it with a HD6970M 2GB .
Please contact me if you are interressted, i live in France (Elsass), and it is easy and fast to ship it to Deutschland.

Best regards.

I purchased the HD4850 from Youpala and it's currently on it's way. As for resellers, only www.thebookyard.com should be able to help.

I installed 16Gbs of RAM and a 256GB Samsung 840 SSD in my iMac. With the HD4850, I'm satisfied. It still remains a 3.06C2D, but I only use it for general basic tasks.

friedMac, I do.

I bought an HD4850 which is perfect from Youpala (in this thread a few posts up), but yesterday I bought a 2011 iMac model.

So, this card is still packed in the packaging I received it in. it comes witht the heatsink and temp sensor. If interested, email me at stefanvanderkuijl@gmail.com

I live in the netherlands, so spain es no hay problema 😉

Hi Youpala, finaly your card arrived to Spain, I bought it from Stefan. 🙂 . I found in the box a little plastic bag with 2 silver square tape with an arrow in each of it... I doon´t know what are ...

Does anybody remember the position of the temp sensor cable, I can´t put it back... I didn´t removed the card myself, the technical service did it. After 2 months waiting for the grafic chip, I decided to change the grafics by my own. So they gave me back the Mac with the graphic card remooved. I haven´t seen the position of the sensor cable, so, now I have to guess the position as I can´t see down the Mother Board.

Hi everybody,

i was out few days, as i see my HD4850 love traveling 😁

So, as i remember, i 've taking the HD4850 (how had be replaced by the HD6970) into the plastic bag and shipped to StefanKuijl ; there where 2 silver square who i did't use into my Imac late 2009 case; maybe it was for le Imac 2011 case ?!

So I am happy to know that my HD4850 found an new owner !

Enjoy and thanks to AppleForum's people !

Hello , i have exactly the same config as yours, in my Imac Late 2009 with the H6970M , but i've no bugs or freez with this original firmware.

I can Play Game (TF2) and it never goes up to 55 °C with any bugs.

Have you plug correctly the V-sync cable, because when i was put it with the new card, it was not correctly plug and i had withe screen on boot .

Best regards.

Hi Youpala, Thanks so much for your reply. Per your success story, I will tear it back down and check the V-sync cable again. I was rather meticulous with the install and had an expert with me. I'm hoping it is not the card, because I waited 4 months to install the card after purchasing, and the vendor will probably not take returns 😟

If anyone else has similar experience with late 2009 please let me know.

Hi Youpala,

Please tell me:

1. Have you seen higher temperatures with the new card?

2. What temp do you run at idle and during a game?

3. What speeds do you run your fans at now with the new card?

I've seen some people post about running ODD at 3000. I'm running it that high now but it is loud, and I'm not sure that it needs to be that high.

Thanks 😕

Make sure the synch cable AND heat sensor cable are correctly plugged in. The synch cable might cause flickering, white screens while the heat sensor will turn your fans up, maybe overheating your card

Thank everyone for your help on troublesooting the new 6970M. I took the card to a local shop to run diagnostics. It turned out that the card that I bought from applecompoinents.com was faulty, and the online company I bought it from will not replace or refund the card. applecomponents.com misled me to believe that they purchased the card directly from Apple, but when I requested the purchase information so that I could have Visa honor a warrenty, they did not have a receipt. I'm wondering if the card was just an old used card, or just faulty. Either way, I don't recommend this company. I'm out almost $600 bucks.