Early 2009 iMac graphics card upgrade?

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Early 2009 iMac, 24-inch model, 2.93GHz processor, NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 graphics card, 8GB RAM
Hi, I'm new to this forum (and macs to be fair) so please forgive me if I sound a bit silly. I've recently just purchased an early 2009 mac, 24-inch model, 8gb RAM, 2.93GHz processor with the NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory in it. From my understanding, looking at google, I can upgrade my graphics card to an ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card, is this correct? And/or is the anything else I can upgrade it to?
 

chscag

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There were actually 4 different graphic cards used in that model iMac (early 2009 24")

Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130, or ATI Radeon HD 4850

Graphics Memory 256 MB shared (GeForce 9400M), 256 MB (GeForce GT 120), 512 MB (GeForce GT 130 and Radeon HD 4850) GDDR3


As you can readily see both the GeForce and ATI cards use the same amount of VRAM but with the ATI card being somewhat faster.

Swapping out a graphics card in an iMac is not something that you can do at home very easily since the entire display panel has to be removed to gain access to the inside of the machine. And I'm not sure it would be worth the effort even if you could obtain an ATI card.

A Mac is not like a PC where you can tear into them and make modifications. They're just not designed for that. The GeForce card you currently have may not be as fast as the ATI card but you probably will never be able to tell the difference between them.
 

pigoo3

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Although it would seem to be possible to swap the graphics card in this model iMac…it is very very very rarely done.

- Nick
 

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