Replace 216-0810005 GPU with 216-0810028 ?

dr. moast

New member
Hi everybody,

as the prices for 216-0810005 keep rising and the supply is short these days, my supplier told me that the manufacturers in china are using 216-0810028 as a subsitute. They seem to alter the BIOS to make them work with the 820-2915 boards. However, I have searched the web and couldn't find any information about this. The supplier can't give me any more information as the manufacturers don't share any details about this.

We have a very high demand for the GPU replacement on these boards and cannot serve all of our customers due to the lack of good GPUs and having an alternative would be great. Is anyone of you familiar with this?

Best regards!
 

dukefawks

Administrator
Send these boards to Apple! Free repair until the end of the year. No 0028 will not work on Apple boards, on PC boards you could edit the BIOS but not on Apple.
 

dr. moast

New member
Thanks for the quick reply.

We certainly know about the free repair programme, but our customers mainly chose us over a free repair by apple because they know that we

- don't put a refurbished board with unknown history into their device
- have a turnaround time of 24 hours

So sending the boards to Apple with a wait of around 4 weeks is not an option unfortunately.

About the bios, where is the information regarding the GPU stored? In the generic SPI ROM or is it embedded somewhere else? If so, why would it be possible to do that change on PC boards but not on Apple? It's not that I don't believe you, I just want to learn something here :)

Thanks!
 

dukefawks

Administrator
Honestly I could probably fix the BIOS but I have no inclination to do so. If you have no experience with UEFI on the Hex edit level I can also not teach you. Just buy the expensive chips and suck it up or send them to Apple.
Is $40-$50 dollar really too much for a chip when you can charge $250 for a repair?
 

dr. moast

New member
Well we do ME cleaning, but that's as far as my experience in BIOS editing goes.

No, 40 $ is not too much for a chip and it's not the 10$ savings that we could have from using another chip (which would be sucked up by the time spent to figure out the BIOS tweaks anyways). But as I wrote we have a very high demand for those repairs and the supply of new, young 216-0810005 is not stable enough.

That's the problem, not the money.

Wouldn't it be cool if we could figure out a way to make this work? I am happy to help and test, but as I said my knowledge in BIOS stuff is limited.

Best regards!
 

dukefawks

Administrator
I have no plans to start with this until 0005 chips are impossible to get, which is probably never. Better is to replace with 0810001 and swap the strap resistors if needed.
 

G.Beard

New member
I have no plans to start with this until 0005 chips are impossible to get, which is probably never. Better is to replace with 0810001 and swap the strap resistors if needed.
Honestly I could probably fix the BIOS but I have no inclination to do so.

Uhem ..... How much are we all going to have to club together and pay you to get you interested in a BIOS mod :) since the 0005 are all to shit for now 0082 could be an option.
And if not, what strapping resistors need to be changed from 0005 to 0084 / 0001?... Or do we have to sit and use our brains.
 
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ALB-Repairs

Member
I was thinking something similar, using a same architecture chip from the next series up. Yet to try it. Bound to be some bios tweaks required. And honestly tweaking EFI Vbios sections is way beyond me, i dont say it lightly either, i spent a solid few days trying to get a few different non Imac cards to work in imac's and fell over completely when it came to tweaking the EFI part of the bios. Not easy stuff, so id probably stick with the questionable 005's

Surely you are looking at the wrong chips anyway, The 216-0833000 has the same core config (as stated on wikipedia) as the 005's and 084's, Which makes me think that the chip could be partial for downflashing and running as a 6750M or 6770M. Its probably not that simple though, and nobody would know what the fuck to do with strapping to make it work.

Meh- May try it anyway see if i get anywhere. just gota wait for a 2915 that belongs to me first...
 
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dukefawks

Administrator
Chip DEV_ID is different. In theory should be possible, but I have no intention of messing with it unless there are still no new chips in 3 months or more.
 

ALB-Repairs

Member
Okay, thanks, im assuming Chip DEV_ID would be stored not only in the video bios but the EFI section of the video bios aswell?

Ive learnt allot through the netkas forums, however i am absolutely useless when it goes to doing anything in the EFI part of a video bios.
 

ALB-Repairs

Member
ive soldered one, Duke is right, Stay well away until a bios has been built. 216-0810084 replaced with 216-0833000

Its no display at all, i will change the DEV-ID in the VBIOS however i doubt that will get it to display as far as i remember it will also need to be changed in the EFI side of the VBIOS. I dont have the skills to decompose and edit EFI DEV-ID

Im sure duke does but he doesnt sound to enthused about messing with these.
 

G.Beard

New member
any reason?

Hang on, the DEV_ID for the 3000 chip (DEV_ID 0x6840) is not in the AMD7000controller.kext anyway. Even if the device ID is changed in the BIOS, there would still be no native support for the card in the OS. Same for the 7610M.

Chip DEV_ID is different. In theory should be possible, but I have no intention of messing with it unless there are still no new chips in 3 months or more.

Dukes edits for the iMac cards worked in the OS is because the DEV_ID (0x6738) for the chipset he was using (6870) is already in the AMD6000Controller.kext so there is native support for the chipset.

Sadly, I don't think the same device id BIOS edits will work out as well for the 3000 and 0028 chips on the MBPs because there would be no QE/CI without ACPI or kext edits. It may be possible just to add the device ID to the kext info.plist but then after every update the user would need to have the edited kext put back in S/L/E for graphics to work properly.
 
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