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nmonkee Author

Level 1

8 points

ATI Radeon X1600 GPU problem

I purchased a MacBook Pro with an ATI Radeon X1600 GPU in 2006. Several weeks ago the GPU failed and I was advised that a replacement logic board was needed and this would cost upwards of £500 by various Apple authorised repair centres that I contacted.

The system is not worth £500 in working condition.

It appears that I am not the only one that has found this issue, long after the warranty on the system had expired. In addition a number of people have began on online petition to raise awareness of the situation.

Several months ago a more recent MacBook Pro (circa 2008) with an NVIDIA GPU failed and I was able to have the logic board replaced for free as this was a known fault, even though my system was out of warranty.

I was very annoyed to find that the hardware defect in ATI GPU's has not resulted in the same replacement program. I therefore had to pay an engineer to attempt to fix the system through a component level repair, which failed. My 4 year old system that cost me a lot of money is now dead.

I expected a lot more longevity from this system, and I am sorely disappointed. I am feeling a little ripped off.

I am the current of owner of a iPhone 4 (2010), MacBook Pro 13" (2010), iMac (2010), iPhone 3G (2008), MacBook Pro 15" (2008) and one dead MacBook Pro 15" (2006).

As you can see I have spent a lot of money on Apple products and accessories, My very first purchase has now died due to ATI GPU failure and I have already replaced a logic board on a 2008 system due to an NVIDIA GPU failure.

I have never hesitated to recommend Apple products before, until now!

I'd like Apple to acknowledge this issue and offer customers with the faulty hardware replacement logic boards, I'd expect Apple to recover this cost from ATI who manufactured the faulty hardware.

I hope that this post serves to raise awareness of the issue and prompts an appropriate response.

Thanks for reading.

Dave.

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Sep 6, 2010 8:59 AM

89 replies

imzeek2u

Level 1

0 points

Jan 26, 2011 7:01 PM in response to stham01

Hi stham01. I understand the impulse to just move on (grin). I debated since I didn't buy the MacBook Pro 17" to start with (it was purchased by my employer). Since it was no longer covered by the extended warranty, my boss told me I could have it if I wanted to bite the bullet. So I opted two weeks ago to go to an Apple Store (Syracuse, NY), lay it all out to a Genius and I was offered the $310 flat rate repair option. They replaced the logic board and assured me that if it failed again or there was some settlement within a year (even though the normal warranty I believe is 90 days) that I could return to get restitution - given the apparent rate of occurrence evidenced by these threads I referenced. Given that my wife was using a PowerBook 12", I thought it would be a decent (inexpensive) step up for her. I brought the laptop in on a Sunday and received the repaired MacBook Pro 17 on Tuesday via Fed-Ex priority service (yikes). Everything's just fine with the repaired unit - working great and my wife's adjusting to the gigantic step-up from the PB 12". I help her pick it up. 🙂 Given the fact that it's a 17" model with a wide-range or expansion options, I thought $310 for the repair was a good deal; especially since I didn't pay for it originally. Just thought some of you might want to know that there's an option available if you want to rekindle the life of your MacBook Pro, even though it's now long out of warranty. Good luck to all of you.

sonnoio

Level 1

0 points

Mar 1, 2011 4:38 PM in response to Distant Future

Hello, I came to this thread as part of my research into similar issues with one of my two 20" imac core duos (2006). One of them is fine (bought it used but in exc shape). The other I bought for parts as non-working; got it to work but it has some of the freeze and display issues reported on your thread. I have disassembled both units, clean them, replaced the thermal paste, change the processor in one of them to a core 2, and tested the problem unit with both leopard and snow leopard.There is no question that the problem is more evident with 10.6 compared to 10.5, which would probably point to drivers as one issue. And then there is heat dissipation, and perhaps soldering issues. Do you know if others have tried the driver removal on the imac's too? Thx, Enrique

May 2, 2011 4:04 PM in response to nmonkee

Yesterday this issue appeared for the first time on my Macbook Pro (late 2006) and the Apple assistance center told me that I have to replace the logic board for 740 euro.

http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/1556/photo3bg.jpg

http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/361/photo5co.jpg

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/3117/photo2tak.jpg

Speaking with the technician, I've understood that this is a common issue on this Macbook with this ATI X1600, and it is usually caused by heat.

What do you think about a class action? Maybe against ATI?

I've looked over the web and I've found the "Hagens Berman LLP".

This is their website and it is possible to tell them about our claim (there is a button on the left): http://www.hbsslaw.com/home/

Jun 22, 2011 12:28 AM in response to nmonkee

I have a 15" Macbook Pro (Dual Pro, early 2007) with ATI Radeon X1600 graphics card, running Snow Leopard OSX, and having exactly the issues mentioned in the original (and many subsequent) posts.

I had extended Apple Care, but of course, this has now run out. It's really disappointing that Apple is not acknowledging that this is a recurrent hardware defect that affects many customers, or doing anything to rectify the situation.

Jun 30, 2011 4:48 PM in response to Paul Melzer

I live in Brazil and it seems that I have just the problem with my ATI Radeon GPU. I just left my MBP to be verified by Apple Authorised Technical. I tell them about this issue but I feel that Apple will not acknowledge that is a hardware problem itself. Anyway... I wonder if I could upgrade my GPU if the only way is replacing it. Is that possible?

Jul 4, 2011 8:59 AM in response to Distant Future

I'm having a problem that seems very much like that described here with my mid-2007 17'' MacBook Pro 2,1.

I'd never seen anything like it until a few days ago. I had one dead pixel, but that'd been there since soon after I bought the machine. Then late last week I bought Bit.Trip Beat in the Steam sale, and mid way through the first level the graphics glitched and the machine froze, requiring a hard reset. Now it's looking light what seemed like a bargain game for £1.75 is going to end up costing me £2,000 for a new MBP.

Recognising that it'd mean putting all gaming on hold for a while, I've deleted the X1600 driver files as described above. Most urgently, I just need the machine to be stable enough to use for regular day to day tasks like browsing, e-mail, and managing my iPhone. Deleting the drivers does seem to have made the system more reliable, and I've not experienced any hard freezes since doing so (It's stayed up long enough to do a Time Machine backup of my photos from the weekend, which is something of a relief). However, the glitches haven't stopped - in fact, they almost seem to have gotten worse, as they now mount up where previously the system would hang. Some graphical processes seem not to work: e.g. I can't go into edit or name modes in iPhoto; Grab produces only blank white files where the screenshot should be, so I can't post a picture of what's happening. And, most annoyingly, Safari now seems to hang on certain web sites. So far I've noticed this forum, IMDb, and the download page for Applejack as being problematic. I'm managing to post here as I accidentally discovered that closing the lid of my MBP, waiting for the standby light to start pulsing, then reopening lid would cause the page to finish loading and a Flash error message to appear.

The problem occurs both in OS X and in Vista under Boot Camp. I've not tested as extensively under Windows, as a functional work machine is more important than a functional games machine. It shows all the signs of being a hardware problem, whether that's a PRAM corruption, or something that's actually melted inside. I guess I'm looking for either a reliable software means of disabling the 3D acceleration while I save for a new machine, or some kind of PRAM fix that solves the problem. For the moment, any advice on how to restore the drivers would be greatly appreciated, as just copying the backups of the deleted files back into place doesn't seem to work...

Jul 13, 2011 2:40 PM in response to nmonkee

Just looked over this post, and I have a mid 2006 model Macbook Pro 15" that also had video errors, and although I do not know if it is related, corrupted system files that I am about to fix by reinstalling the OS. Since it was already 4 years old, AppleCare was out of the question and we weren't about to spend money on computer repairs.

The display picture started going out a little over a year ago, and we fixed it within around a 1 week period. The video issues were mixed, but my display wouldn't work and the computer was inoperable. After troubleshooting and different attempts, my dad, who works at Cisco Systems, took it to his work to try and heat the solder connections back up using a special machine in his building.

I do not know what the machine is or called, but the computer was displaying properly after he tried this and the computer was functioning like normal. The computer has ran solid with no software/video errors, and since then it has only needed the fans cleaned out and the disk repair I mentioned earlier.

danikinf

Level 1

0 points

Sep 9, 2011 12:29 AM in response to nmonkee

Having spent the last 48 hours reading thousands of posts on this subject, I've finally found a fantastic workaround. If you're reading this thread you've probably already tried everything short of logic board replacement. I found a great post about disabling the ATI card in question by deleting the ATIRadeonX1000 kext from /System/Library/Extensions. While this kills all the artifact and crashing problems, this severely hampers your usability from a web standpoint. You can't watch any flash videos, youtube is out, and kiss Netflix goodbye. Turns out that the wonder of Google Chrome gets around this issue. With Chrome installed, flash, Netflix, and youtube all play properly. Woohoo! Gaming is still disabled, but with full web functionality, I can live without.

Sep 9, 2011 10:49 AM in response to danikinf

Thanks a lot. That's helpful. What about iPhoto? Have you had any luck with that? When I tried deleting the kexts I couldn't edit any photos.

danikinf

Level 1

0 points

Sep 10, 2011 4:13 PM in response to James Clayton

Hi James,

I haven't had any luck getting the iLife products working. So far it looks like Garage Band will run without any problems, and iPhoto will open and show photos (editing doesn't work). iMovie won't run as it gives you a QE warning saying your machines isn't running a compatible graphics card. I've managed to get the card to run for a while if I lower the screen resolution to 1280x800, but eventually the lockups start again. I'm going to take it apart in a week and reapply thermal paste to the whole machine. I have a feeling it's getting a lot hotter in there than it should.

Matt

Sep 10, 2011 5:13 PM in response to danikinf

Thanks a lot. I guess I soldier on with the hangs then. Working sometimes is better than working never. That or continue the search for a rich benifactor.

Do let us know if you have any luck with the thermal paste.

Nov 9, 2011 8:59 PM in response to nmonkee

Hi i notice you all have the same problem and one of my customers brought the same laptop in to me with the same problem. and i put in a NEW hard drive and installed snow leopard and i could only reproduce the problem with the same conditions, on for a few hours and hot and using quicktime not browser or hulu or VLC player did it.

anyways.

I usually RE-BALL nvidia stuff, but this customer wants it fixed and is willing to let me try reballing the GPU on this one, and i ordered the Stencil and Balls for the ATI x1600 so i can re-ball the GPU

Re-balling is where i use a machine to heat-up and remove the GPU from the board and then remove the solder balls and attach new ones.

these machines were made right when everything was becoming ROHS (restriction of hazardous substances) i.e. No LEAD and they didnt quite get the solder formula correct, these GPU's get cold fractures and sometimes this happens.

in apples infinate wisdom this is by far the most complex and utterly TINY logic ive ever seen!!

so i might be able to fix this problem for you guys.

is there any interest in the repair?

more then likely this repair would be able to fix most graphical problems on most laptops.

I do this regularly on HP's, dells and such, so im quite confidant.

ill keep in touch with my progress.

Nov 10, 2011 8:44 AM in response to Field of dreams22

I'd certainly be interested if the process was shown to work and could be done at a reasonable price. I suspect in your case it'd mean shipping my machine across the Atlantic though, which might be prohibitative.

I took my machine into the Manchester Apple Store the other day and they tested it with alternate moniters and alternate boot drives and ultimately came to the same conclusion as most poeple here: the logic board need's replacing. At £400, it doesn't really seem worth it. If I were happy to go PC I could get a better spec new laptop for less. Grr.

Nov 19, 2011 7:59 AM in response to danikinf

It took me slightly less time but I eventually found this thread, and am back up and running thanks to disabling the graphics card.

My only niggling problem that remains is that I have a grey rectangle still attached to the cursor (actually a rectangle of thin grey lines if you look closer) that doesn't go away whether starting up normally or via safe boot. Does anyone have an idea what may be causing this?

Joeyhf

Level 1

0 points

Nov 23, 2011 7:37 AM in response to Soapytwist

Same problem here.After 3 years my Mbp with Ati X1600 is useless.Battery was opened due to heat i think .After battery was replaced MBP runs fine with disabled graphics card only.Still have gray vertical barcode attached to cursor.😟

Planned to buy new iMac but seems apple doesn't care much about problems.

Think of buying iPad and iPhone,that's all what apple can offer.Better to build good pc than have iMac with short life.

A bit dissapointed with service 😮

ATI Radeon X1600 GPU problem