MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

When you're stuck on an island and the machine you depend on for everything suddenly dies, you kind of go with what works. I had applecare, so I just needed someone authorized. I'm sure they got their moneys worth from Apple.

I feel your pain though. I use my mac for work. I'm back to my old 2008 MBP until they get this all sorted. If you read through this discussion thread, I think you'll realize this is a pretty widespread issue. If it works for you with the system set to use only the integrated card, then you're better off than I was. I'd use it until something comes out from apple.

Welcome to Apple Version 1 bliss 🙂

Story submitted to Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/submission/1504006/2011-MacBook-Pros-Confirmed-To-Crash-Unde r-Load

I voted it worthy.

Thanks John,

I wouldn't have tried to make it public if Apple had bothered to pickup their phones on a Sunday.

Interesting finding...

My music continues to play after it's crashed, which as a friend pointed out suggests the CPU is still working and it hasn't KP'd.

I noticed my CPU got to 97deg(c) before the fans kicked in and cooled it back down to a stable 88deg(c) - note this is while forcing the laptop to use the HD3000 graphics.

Hi there,

So I've been doing a bit more playing regarding this issue.
Decided today to stay in Windows 7 via Bootcamp. And guess what. Not a single crash. I've been playing games, done a handreak encode, and some 3D rendering in Softimage. All of which maxed out the cpus.
Nothing. Stable as.

So. I'm pretty sure now the issue isn't overheating. I think the issue is the ATI drivers under OSX.

It's quite funny that Apple have released a product that's more stable in Windows than it is under it's native OS! 🙂

Anyhow, I have hope now that it will be driver / firmware update. And until then I'm staying in Win7.

Si

Sid Merrett wrote:
I've had my MBP 2.3 15" for 5 days.
It has now frozen or locked up about 6 or 7 times.

Each time, the fan(s) were spinning audibly.
Last time it happened I was running Handbrake converting video.
Machine froze, no mouse movement - completely "dead" and had to hold down power button to shut off.

Twice it has happened when running BioShock - in this case, in one instance at least, I Apple/Tabbed out of Bioshock to go into finder and do something and the screen went black, OSX seemingly unable to "get out" of Bioshock and the whole thing froze - ALT/APPLE/ESC etc did NOTHING.
Had to hold down power button again.

Also, I have had similar behaviour, when fans were spinning loudly and thus, presumably the machine working relatively hard, but the mouse would stay responsive to movement but clicking did not work for anything. Again, Apple/Tab etc would not work, could not force quit anything - effectively the same problems as above, but the mouse would at least move.
Only way to fix = hold down power button.

In each instance, the machine started up fine, immediately and most recently (such as right now) I am running Handbrake again and typing this post, and the MBP appears fine.
Thus, the problem does NOT occur everytime the CPU/GPU is under load, but it HAS ONLY happened when the CPU/GPU is under load.

Rather worrying and I will be talking to Apple first thing Monday morning!

Same behaviour for me, if i video encode and leave the machine alone it completes successfully but if encode and do anything else like browse the web then i get the freeze, not always but usually when some flash content runs as well. I don't believe it is the flash or the video encoding that is the problem but loads they require together..

It just has to be a fault in the CPU/GPU..

I don't see how a software fix would help unless it intentionally throttles something back. Unfortunately I'm sure that would be the route other than a recall. I've never known Apple to admit to any fault.. iphone4 death grip being the last prime example.. Response? We're holding it wrong.

yikes. this reminds me of the old 2009 SATA thread.

anywho.. just adding to the bucket. experiencing a hard freeze here as well. Open Xcode4, build one of my apps, freeze. No KP, just mouse and graphics freeze. CPU usage is high according to activity monitor, kernel_task is using the most cpu when it happens. No GPU intensive activities are going on. It happens every single time without fail, even after a fresh boot. Fans going full blast.

I just opened this project tonight since getting this machine a few weeks ago so I could make some fixes. Pretty bummed.

Tried the suggestion in previous posts about disabling the ATI gpu via that tool, and disabling graphic switching so it always used the ATI gpu.. didn't seem to matter. I did discover that when connected to a 27" cinema display, the onboard graphics won't drive it, ie: force it to the intel graphics, and nothing happens when the display is connected. I don't know if that's true for smaller displays.

Hmmm... now I can't get mine to crash no matter what I do...

Been running the CPU at 100% (at 93deg) encoding video for the last hour and no crashes.

Seems the problem is intermittent?

Message was edited by: Madhat

I can't seem to re-create the problem once i un-tick 'automatic graphics switching' and go with the high end graphics

I video encoded and run some heavy flash websites and i could not re-create my problem thus far.

Is anyone else's HD 6750 or HD 6490 running with x8 PCIe lanes instead of x16? Or is it just me and 1 or 2 other people?

You can find out what yours is running at in System Profiler under Graphics/Display then selecting your Radeon chip.

I found out using Sisoft Sandra in Boot Camp that the Sandy Bridge platform in my CPU has been configured as two x8 PCIe ports, one for the GFX and the other with nothing attached. It should be configured as one x16 for the GFX only. It can also be configured as one x8 and two x4 ports according to the Intel website.

I don't know if I should take my MBP back or see if a firmware update with the correct configuration comes out, if one even does come out. Apart from the GFX running at half the bus speed everything else seems to be functioning normally.

Yeah mines only running at 8x ***!

Chipset Model: AMD Radeon HD 6750M
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x8

8x may be correct...

Read this: http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=12021055&postcount=7



"The Sandy Bridge platform, currently only has 16 available PCIe lanes. Edit: Thunderbolt conenctes via a 4x PCIe conenction. A quick google search provided me the following link http://electronicdesign.com/Content/...62390_fig3.jpg. Therefor the GPU cannot utilize the full 16 lanes as 4 are already being used, and there is no "12x" specification, so the GPU utilizes 8.

The 8x PCIe bandwidth for the GPU should not affect performance. In very few situational circumstances would High end desktop GPU's, perhaps in multi GPU configurations see some performance increases from 8x to 16x, but in every review that I have seen its only marginal (< 5%). The Notebook version of the 6750 GPU should not see any adverse effect at all as it does not provide the fill rate or bandwidth even close to high end desktop GPUs. "

Message was edited by: Madhat

That seems to make sense as the 2nd x8 port on my system in Sisoft says it is running at 4x with nothing attached. If only I had a Thunderbolt peripheral to see if it comes up there. It's to bad Thunderbolt cant use a port on the Cougar Point support chip, but it doesn't look like it will make much difference.

I just wanted to make sure there was nothing wrong with my system.

http://electronicdesign.com/Content/UserStorage/14946/62390_fig3.jpg
This diagram of Thunderbolt shows an x4 interface to the PCH which in the MBP is the series 6 (Cougar Point) chip. So it shouldn't use the lanes from the CPU unless Apple has done it a little bit different. I'll have to go back in Windows and see if there are any available PCIe ports on the Cougar Point chip and if not then Apple must have resorted to using some of the CPU's.