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Model A1312 / Mid 2010 / 3.2 GHz Core i3 or 2.8 & 3.6 GHz Core i5 or 2.93 GHz Core i7, ID iMac11,3

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Is it possible to upgrade GPU on this iMac?

iMac 27" 3.2GHz i3 (Mid 2010) ATI Radeon HD 5670, 512 MB RAM

Hi everybody,

I can buy this iMac from a friend of mine, but I want to use it for photo editing using: Lightroom, Photoshop and so on... but for example Lightroom's minimum system requirements are at least 1 GB GPU and the one that is in this iMac is 512MB. Is there any other GPU for this iMac that will run with no problems? If yes, can anyone please tell me the type of GPU I can use?

Thank you in advance.

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

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Frankly, I don't think this is a good deal for you, If you are serious about getting into graphics.

First lets look at the CPU as it's only a Intel i3-550 Processor 3.20 GHz which only supports 4 concurrent threads which will be a bottleneck for any real graphics work. The best in this line was the Intel i7-870 Processor 2.93 GHz which offers 8 concurrent threads (double).

While you can upgrade the MXM GPU card its a lot of work and you would still need to find one (they tend to be expensive):

  • ATI Radeon HD 5750 1 GB - Apple P/N 661-5579 (about $270 US)

Which is the upgraded card for this system.

These two boards are from the 2011 model which can be fitted but you need to exchange the heatsink as its not designed to work in your system:

  • ATI Radeon HD 6970 1 GB - Apple P/N 661-5968 (about $375 US)
  • ATI Radeon HD 6970 2 GB - Apple P/N 661-5969 (about $475 US)

Here is a user created guide that goes over what he did to make these work: Graphics Card Upgrade

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Thank you very much... I'll not buy it then.

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Samo will be eternally grateful.
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