If was making that purchase today I might go for a 2017 iMac instead. At the time I was unimpressed that the 2015 21.5'/4K machines only had iGPUs. At worse your GPU choice might not work at all leaving wasted time and effort.įor what its worth when I've been using an eGPU with a 21.5' 2011 iMac (6770M) since late 2016.

All cards are supported in 21.5 and 27 iMacs with the exception of the Late 2009. Nvidia cards are supported up to Big Sur. As of Feb 2021, the recommended card which has Monterey support is the M5100 Firepro. Option C: Follow the example of the 27' 2011 owners with bad 6790Ms and physically disassemble the iMac to replace the old gpu with a metal capable MXM GPU. There is a size B card for the 27 iMacs and a size A card for the 21.5 Macs. Discovery: NVIDIA Discrete graphics card (Quadro recommended) with the latest drivers. Since 2011 iMacs lack Apple's official eGPU blessing you will need to disable System Integrity Protection and make kext edits. Ansys Products (other than Discovery, Speos, and VRXPerience), Windows Platforms: Discrete graphics card with the latest drivers and compatible with the supported minimum, OpenGL version 4.5, DirectX 11, Shader Model 5.0. The simplest, most future proof, and only option with official Apple support. So, ranked from lowest to highest risk (and highest to lowest expense) That isn't to say you can't but rather a warning that you would be dabbling in hackintosh territory where every MacOS upgrade risks needing system reconfiguration or a broken setup. Apple does not support GPU upgrades on 2011 iMacs. Apple on Monday updated a pair of support documents relating to the release of macOS Mojave, outlining legacy Mac Pro compatibility via graphics card upgrades and support for Boot Camp on certain iMac models.

Metal 1.2 compatible graphics card