Chosen Solution
Hello, I’ve been looking around to see if I can swap out my current graphics card for a better one. Having seen many conflicting and sometimes confusing answers I thought I’d ask on here in the hope someone has tried and tested! I have an early 2009 24 inch iMac Intel Core 2 Duo 3.06ghz with 8gb RAM and the GPU is an ATI Radeon Mobility HD 4850 I saw a guide on here that showed someone successfully changing theirs, but what I wanted to know was if it was possible to upgrade to a different card with more memory, 1GB or higher. Things that worry me are, would another card fit ok? would there be overheating issues? and is there Apple firmware that needs to be pre installed for it to work? Many thanks in advance
First these graphics boards are not your standard PCI board. So you can’t just put anything in. You currently have the top of the line system with the ATI card within this model series. So I’m at a loss what you are looking for as a replacement. Here is a user created guide on the IFIXIT site that goes into the process of replacing the card Graphics card replacement. As you can see its a big job and the price for the ATI card is around $450 in case yours is bad. Given the age of your system you may want to invest in a newer model Vs trying to goose this one up a notch if that is at all possible. Sorry ;-{
Technically you can replace the Graphics unit with another, but the compatibility is not tested for larger-memory card. However, keep in mind that you will have to use the same board as in your current iMac, which makes the mission very very hard. If you find your system slow, think about replacing the HDD with SSD. This will increase App launch speed significantly.
Hey guys Do you think I can replace the current GPU with a unit from the 2011 iMac generation?
Hello. I’m having the same problem… I would like to update to a GPU model which runs the metal API. Any possible suggestion? Many thanks
I have tried to install a quadro k1000m into the iMac 9.1 24inch early 2009 with the plastic backside and the smallest processor and I found out it has no graphics card to switch, it must be an onboard model. It seems like only the model with the 2,6 ghz processor has an onboard gpu.
