Since my mid-2012 Macbook Pro 15" Retina has just been sent back to Apple for a logic board replacement, I figured I'd add my information as a point of reference.
Background and usage:
This is my personal laptop, but I also use it a lot for work (sysadmin). I do a lot of "heavy" work on it - virtualization, Adobe Creative Cloud apps, rendering/encoding/streaming video, etc. Never had any problems until about a week and a half ago.
Issues encountered:
Loaded up a 1080p movie and tried to AirPlay it - much stuttering, then a hard freeze. Restarted, closed all other apps, tried again, same result. Restarted, then attempted to play the movie via HDMI cable from MBP -> TV. Immediate hard freeze on connecting HDMI cable. At this point the only way I could get it to boot was via Safe Mode (shift + power on). All of this pointed strongly towards a GPU issue, including the fact that Safe Mode bypasses the problem by disabling hardware graphics acceleration.
Troubleshooting:
I'm a sysadmin and I really didn't want to give up my computer, so I went with the "nuke it from orbit" approach to rule out software issues. First step: TM backup of existing setup to external HD. Mavericks had just dropped, so I downloaded it, wrote the installer to a USB key, then used Disk Utility on the installer to reformat the laptop hard drive and did a Clean Install of Mavericks.
As suspected, I still had the same issue. I ran Internet Repair through Mavericks (D + power on) with all extended tests, but it passed all of them. Obviously there was a problem though, so there had to be evidence of it somewhere. I booted into Safe Mode again and enable SSH Remote Login. I then restarted the computer normally, and it failed as usual (stuck on grey screen with Apple logo, or stuck on unresponsive login screen).
Despite the GUI being frozen and useless, most parts of the system were up and functioning so I was able to SSH in and look at the logs, which showed clear evidence of GPU issues.
Executing "$ sudo dmesg > log-01.txt" gave me a boot log that ended in this error over and over again:
NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! Exception type = 0x8 DMA Engine Error (FIFO Error 8)
The kernel panic log gave the following source:
panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff7fac6bffac): "GPU Panic: [] 3 3 5f 1d 0 8 0 3 : NVRM[0/1:0:0]: Read Error 0x006100c0: CFG 0x0fd510de 0x00100406 0xc0000000, BAR0 0x102c00000 0xffffff8201cd2000 0x0e7150a2, D0, P2/4\n"@/SourceCache/AppleGraphicsControl/AppleGraphicsControl-3.4.12/src/AppleMuxControl/kext/GPUPanic.cpp:127
Backtrace (CPU 2), Frame : Return Address 0xffffff81fe92bb30 : 0xffffff802a622f69 0xffffff81fe92bbb0 : 0xffffff7fac6bffac 0xffffff81fe92bc80 : 0xffffff7fab095cf8 0xffffff81fe92bd40 : 0xffffff7fab162e26 0xffffff81fe92bd80 : 0xffffff7fab32863d 0xffffff81fe92bd90 : 0xffffff7fab136b04 0xffffff81fe92bdb0 : 0xffffff7fab1db6e2 0xffffff81fe92be30 : 0xffffff7fab07df20 0xffffff81fe92bef0 : 0xffffff7fab04aa1c 0xffffff81fe92bf20 : 0xffffff802a64a15a 0xffffff81fe92bfb0 : 0xffffff802a6d6aa7
Kernel Extensions in backtrace: com.apple.driver.AppleMuxControl(3.4.12)[A4934A66-0E30-36E9-984A-650481102449]@0xffffff7fac6b2000->0xffffff7fac6c4fff
dependency: com.apple.driver.AppleGraphicsControl(3.4.12)[661E3C87-5B97-3272-88FF-B9BA9B6E24ED]@0xffffff7fac6aa000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOACPIFamily(1.4)[045D5D6F-AD1E-36DB-A249-A346E2B48E54]@0xffffff7fab8f0000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.8)[447B4896-16FF-3616-95A2-1C516B2A1498]@0xffffff7faacba000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(2.3.6)[38E388A5-92D6-3388-B799-F2498E582287]@0xffffff7faaff2000
dependency: com.apple.driver.AppleBacklightExpert(1.0.4)[E04639C5-D734-3AB3-A682-FE66694C6653]@0xffffff7fac6ad000
com.apple.nvidia.driver.NVDAResman(8.1.8)[3A2A3C2D-E129-3190-A682-E831B38F0FBF]@0xffffff7fab045000->0xffffff7fab2affff
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.8)[447B4896-16FF-3616-95A2-1C516B2A1498]@0xffffff7faacba000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport(2.3.6)[86BA68C6-18DD-30A1-ABF6-54597AD6C277]@0xffffff7fab035000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(2.3.6)[38E388A5-92D6-3388-B799-F2498E582287]@0xffffff7faaff2000
com.apple.nvidia.driver.NVDAGK100Hal(8.1.8)[3CF8C2FA-83E6-39E3-A5B7-C7CC839B8C75]@0xffffff7fab2ba000->0xffffff7fab469fff
dependency: com.apple.nvidia.driver.NVDAResman(8.1.8)[3A2A3C2D-E129-3190-A682-E831B38F0FBF]@0xffffff7fab045000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.8)[447B4896-16FF-3616-95A2-1C516B2A1498]@0xffffff7faacba000
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: kernel_task
Mac OS version: 13A603
Resolution:
Obviously I can't fix a graphics hw issue when the component is integrated into the logic board, so I made an appointment at the Apple Store. They had to run their own diagnostics on it to check it in (passed, BTW), but I had provided enough evidence of a problem that they didn't give me any static, declared a logic board replacement necessary, and sent it off to Apple. Laptop is currently covered by AppleCare so it will be a warranty repair. I should have it back by the end of next week.
NB: The ability to boot into Safe Mode allows you to change passwords and delete any sensitive data from the machine before you send it back to Apple, if you like.
Hope this info helps someone - being without your computer is a PITA.