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Whats the safest upgrade for a Late 2009 iMac 27” 2.8 core i7 (I7-860) currently my machine is running an ATI Radeon 5670 512mb and i think i can only run os high sierra at the moment I’m not sure which cards were prone to failure and also I want to avoid overheating by getting a too powerful card for my older 2.8 i7. But I was thinking of going with either the 2011 ATI Radeon 6770 512mb, 6970 1gb or 2gb? Is this the max I can do safely on this logic board? I want to be able to run OS catalina smoothly and run video games and video editing/rendering in final cut pro
Save your pennies! The MXM GPU boards used in the 2009 through to the 2011 models all face the same issues of heat breakdown. The problem is two fold: The apps & games required more performance than what the graphics boards at the time could offerThe cooling system where pushed beyond what they were designed to offer. Just compare the cars we had in the 50’s and what we have today 60 MPH was pushing it back then with a standard sedan, Today with a low end car we can push 100 without breaking a sweat! Graphic services has likewise made large strides in performance! So… Getting back to your desires “Run OS catalina smoothly and run video games and video editing/rendering in final cut pro” You really need something much more powerful! I would buy a used 2015 27” iMac and then look at loading up the RAM and putting in a PCIe/NVMe blade SSD if it has a HDD or Fusion Drive. As an example I do image processing knitting multiple images into very large backdrops. My 2011 27” iMac just can’t handle it, I use a 2013 MacPro with 32 GB of RAM and a 2 TB blade SSD. And its still runs hard with an eight core Xeon CPU! While I’m sure you are not going to push your iMac like I’m pushing my Mac Pro you still need to consider what is needed.
