Does the MID 2011 27 inch Imac have BOTH the AMD RADEON 6970M & INTEL HD 2000 graphics cards???

Does anyone know if the mid 2011 27 inch imac has an intel hd integrated graphics card as well as the amd radeon 6970m?????? i always thought that was the only gpu i had(amd radeon 6970m) until i used a temperature monitor app and it displayed BOTH the amd radoen 6970m and also an INTEL HD 200 grahics card(integrated) iam going to attempt to disable the integrated card so that it only uses the radeon 6970m. But i dont want to mess with the bios if it isnt true. I cant find anywhere online where somebody has confirmed that the 27 inch 2011 mid imac has both cards built in. please let me know if you can help. thank you very much in advance.


If it does i will try to disable opr at least change the configuration of which card is prioritized in the BIOS in windows 8.1 There is a great youtube video that shows you how to easily change the configuration so that it uses the primary gpu instead both the primary and integrated cards.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtDkczrf5fI



THANK YOU IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR HELP WITH THIS MATTER!!

27 inch intel imac 3.4 ghz 16 gigs -OTHER, Mac OS X (10.7.2), AMD RADEON 6970M 2048 RAM

Posted on May 2, 2015 11:32 AM

Reply
9 replies

Sep 14, 2017 1:14 AM in response to Acuraice

I know I'm a couple years late, but that's what the internet is about...


I was trying to test out that same Radeon 6970m on my 2011 iMac as you, and in the test results, I do have an integrated Intel HD Graphics 2000 as well. It came back with no benchmark results though, and I've never been able to find how to run or disable it, it just seems to... be there.


I have no idea what it's about. But it's definitely physically there.


And that video is neat, but as Loner T said, there is no GUI for your Mac's BIOS, or rather UEFI. But if I go with all of the information I can find within my machine, that HD 2000 is very disabled.

May 2, 2015 11:46 AM in response to Acuraice

Are you certain the software for Temperature sensor correctly identifies the source?


From iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011) - Technical Specifications


Graphics

  • 2.7 GHz
    AMD Radeon HD 6770M graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR5 memory
  • 3.1 GHz
    AMD Radeon HD 6970M graphics processor with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
    Configurable to AMD Radeon HD 6970M with 2GB GDDR5, only at the Apple Online Store.


There are Intel HD2K and IntelHD2010 GPUs, but there is no HD200 that I am aware of.

May 2, 2015 11:55 AM in response to Loner T

i have the 3.4 ghz (up to 3.8 with hyper-threading) mid 2011 27 inch imac. It has 16 gigs of ram and an amd radeon 6970M with 2 gigs of vram. I actually just had the card replaced by apple thursday bc it was displaying vertical lines and black screens. They replaced it free with apple's graphics card replacement program. Thank God bc its out of applecare. I was looking for better temperature monitoring apps bc i only use lubbos fan control while in bootcamp. Works great to adjust the fan speeds and keep my imac running cooler but always displays crazy incorrect temperatures for everything and also only in Celsius. So i just searched and download/installed several temp monitor apps. 9 out 10 sucked and either didn't recognize the gpu i have or only had Celsius modes. I finally tried the amd monitor app from amd 's website and another i cant remember the name of it since i tried so many. Both the amd monitor app and the last one i tried showed BOTH the amd radeon 6970m as well as the intel hd 2000 integrated graphics on board. I was puzzled because i knew the integrated cards existed in macs but usually only the macbook pros or macbook airs.,not the imacs models. I have heard time and time again that disabling the integrated card in the bios results in much better performance with gaming bc it only uses your primary better gpu card and not both or just the integrated one. But i want to be sure before i mess with the bios. I will definitely at least load the bios to see what it says and if it only shows the amd radeon 6970m then i know its not true. But if shows both i will definitely try \to disable the integrated one to see if i get better performance while gaming in windows 8.1 in bootcamp. I usually can play all the latest and past games in hgh to ultra settings on 2650 x 1440 with my radeon card. Works perfectly,u just have to keep the fans high and limit your playtime to avoid overheating or damaging the imac or gpu. If you are more familiar running ,monitoring apps and can actually understand what all the info means, can u please tell me what yours says. Assuming you have the same 27 inch model i have or close to it.

May 2, 2015 12:59 PM in response to Acuraice

1. Macs do not have a BIOS UI, but only CSM-BIOS. This has no user-interface.

2. For dual-GPU Macs, Apple's EFI will suppress the "integrated" GPU, but all such machines have publicly documented Tech Specs.

3. There is no benefit that Apple would have in hiding such a fact. System Report -> Display/Graphics or ioreg command will give you every bit of hardware detail. If OS X does not show the card, it is not there.

4. If the replacement of you logic board was done incorrectly, and a MBP logic board was put in, instead of an iMac Logic Board, it should be brought tp the attention of the AppleCare folks. The recall also includes other non-iMac machines. Please see http://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/ for the 2011 MBPs which also have AMD Radeons.

May 2, 2015 1:05 PM in response to Loner T

That's what i've always thought. But still i will definitely see what he bios or CSM-bios tells me about the gpus. There's a lot of things apple hides form the everyday user. Example: did you know there is a hidden partition next to the recovery partition that contains data for the apple internet hardware test?? Neither did i until i went to the apple store and they were apple to diagnose my gpu problems when all i would get was a black screen. they simply booted from this hidden partition by accessing the internet hardware test and boom my screen worked again, at least for the test. This whole situation reminds me of how in my older 21 inch imac dual core duo i was under the impression that i had an amd radeon hd 2600 pro, yet when under windows i could see it as an amd radeon XT. 2 different cards. I had to manually install the drivers for the hd 2600 pro to get the performance i wanted in bootcamp for gaming at that time. After i installed the correct drivers, the card read properly in device manager as the hd 26000 pro and not the XT ****** version. I just cant shake that the amd monitor utility and the other temp monitoring app i tried both showed 2 cards, the amd radeon 6970m and the intel hd 2000. Theres another instance where i saw the video ram displayed as 8 gigabytes when i should only have 2048 mb or 2 gigs. How can that be i said?? Now it makes sense if there is also an integrated card. Its combing the total vram from bOTh cards and system shared memory to display that total vram of 8 gigs.Anyays thnak you very much for your comments and your help. I will report back what the bios or csm bios tells me.

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Does the MID 2011 27 inch Imac have BOTH the AMD RADEON 6970M & INTEL HD 2000 graphics cards???

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