2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

Here is my update from my trip to Apple store.

Bottom line I am paying another $310 to perform the exact same repair done 142 days ago. While the store employees were sympathetic to my position they could do nothing to offset the cost. They gave me a repair number and suggested I call 1-800-APL-CARE to see Apple would do anything for me - that call went nowhere as well. The store and Apple care kept saying they have never heard of this issue, I said you have support forum with over 589K views and that's only one thread, how could you not know?.

I started my Mac and sure enough five minutes into it screen goes wacky. I asked why would I want to pay $310 again to repair with same parts as before? Will I be here six months from now again? No valid response given.

Warranty on last repair is 90 days but genius suggested I check with my credit card company to see if they offer longer - they do not, 90 days there as well. Suggestion is for this redo I should use Amex as the warranty is likely longer.

When asked if I had purchased extended warranty when origianlly bought, I explained that Best Buy persuaded me to buy there renewing warranty which covers everything - but failed to mention that it only lasts 2 years, expiring ironically 6 months before my graphics attack.

I questioned rep on phone about the fact that graphics failing at two years has never happened on my other machines, and for it to occur again less than six months later cannot be good engineering - he essentially said stuff happens and if they here about it enough Apple will fix it as they have done with other things. Righhhhhhht.

I am in bind, I've got a thousand dollars in Adobe on this machine, I can't afford another $2K for a new MacBook Po, I spent nearly $2K on this machine, paid couple hundred for Best Buy support which expired, put in a new SSD for $400 because that's what seemed to be the issue back in December, paid $310 in January, and will pay another $310 in a couple of days.

Other canned response was to go to http://www.apple.com/feedback/ because nobody at Apple has heard about this issue but they will certainly fix it if it is deemed an issue.

Sad, sad, sad - I've lost a lot of respect for this company.

Here is my 15" MacBook Pro, starting to go haywire at Apple store. Crashed slightly hereafter. I'd show you my January pic of similar ...but there on my other hard drive, actually in January I was seeing concentric pink circles emanating from center of screen 🙂

..and this morning:

Everyone, just get it reballed. Pay using your own money and then never buy an apple product again.

Tell every one who will listen how apple treat their customers.

Wait for their 45.6 billion in revenue to go down as we all slowly start to switch and laugh.

Steve is looking down in disgust at every apple employee. Not one of them is doing anything. Not escuslating in meetings. Every one is being quiet.

Apple hate google and samsung. Lets give them record profits. Bye bye apple. Your rotten now.

I have the same issue 15-inch MBP late 2011, ran the Apple Hardware Test with out any problems detected. Previously I could work for a couple of hours, but next day I tryed to backup and it is completelly unresponsive. This is a real pain

Well, just got a call from a local service, they offered to replace 17" MBP (late 2011) board for about $600.

Does it worth the money or better to buy a new mac for next couple of years?

The screen below I got every time I try to boot in recovery mode. It doesn`t look georgeous!

Here's picture of my MacBookPro8,3 which I forgot to insert on previous posts:-

ABOVE is when the MacBook Pro crashes with a 'blue' screen (with thin stripes), when attempting to Power-up.

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BELOW is also when the MacBook Pro crashes, however on most occasions it's usually a 'grey' screen when attempting to Power-up the MacBook Pro (the colouring on the photo looks slightly bluey-violet tinted, however to the eye it is grey)

The other third main type of graphical glitch-anomaly experienced with system freezes/crashes, is one where it happens when on Desktop and/or in a program and basically the display either goes stripy or the desktop shifts from the center of the screen to one side, or there's dashes running down the screen and even a combination of all three.

Actually, the Geforce doesn't even show up in the System Profiler anymore:

My problems were also more serious than just graphic issues. My rMBP restarted when using the NVidia Card and mostly after that the screen stayed black after reboots. PRAM reset, SMC reset didn't work. Sometimes the whole system crashed and rebooted. All this on freshly installed 10.8 and 10.9. That's why I searched for a way to disable the NVidia Card from the start.

Thought I'd pass this along...my email to Executive Offices.

[Apple Exec Team]-

I have been operating without any video kernel panic issues since I picked up my Mac from repair. However, the fans are on almost all the time. This is concerning to me and I want it to be part of my case notes (Case #xxxxxxx).

To my point, I am simply surfing the web and using Microsoft Word right now and have the Mac sitting on an active laptop fan in a 72 degree room, yet fans are running at 5500 rpm.

This will be helpful for [Senior Tech Advisor]:

This is not normal behavior of a healthy MacBook Pro and is indicative of excessive heat inside the case.

Hi,

I have a late MacBook Pro 2011 with discrete graphics, and after finding out about this issue I've gotten a bit worried. I've noticed some slight graphical glitches (image attached) from time to time, and always thought it was just a software bug. Now I'm worried that this laptop, my main working machine, will suddenly die on me. I have multiple backups, but I really don't want my thesis work to be sidetracked by this problem. Is this sort of glitch the type of thing I should be worried about? I haven't noticed any glitches larger than this. They usually appear in the titlebar of terminal windows, if that helps to diagnose the problem.

I'm just curious if Apple is doing anything about this problem without requiring the user to pay for the repair?

I feel sorry that some people still don't understand the issue correctly , Here is an example with clear pictures for a HP DV7 motherboard, the first picture show the GPU removed and the old solder still on the motherboard , the second one show how dust and dirt form an isolating layer under the solder that attaches the GPU to the logic board, look at the brown residue on the soldering pads , the last pictures show you the same soldering pads after cleaning the isolating layer of dirt that caused that computer to keep shutting down and restart with no video display, after reballing the GPU chip and reinstalling it the computer is now working as good as new, that is the real cause of all the GPU failure on any computer brand or model, no manufacturer can prevent that from happeneing as long as there is dust in the air and a cooling fan inside the computer, what I say I prove with real pictures so no one can argue its reality or think that I am trying to defend a manufacturer.

Here are some more pictures (different from my previous) - basically there are many different display symptoms and characteristic anomalys experienced as a result of the same fault. They usually end with an eventual freeze/crash and occasionally don't. When the system crashes it may take a few attempts, several attempts or even a couple of days to eventually get a successful Power-up (as did with me only recently).

Normally when the fault occurs on 'power-up', it's usually a blank Grey screen that never ever reaches the desktop and sometimes a Blue screen with faint thin strips that also never makes it to desktop leaving no option to hold the Power Button down to forcefully power-off the MacBook Pro. (I've posted the blue and grey screen pictures previously on Page 390).

However below shows the fault/defect occurring while I was in the Desktop (which I hadn't posted yet). It's important that all affected owners where possible post their pictures of the fault occurring.

ABOVE: The fault occurs and loses graphical display integrity and system responsiveness from the user

ABOVE: A black bar appears where it shouldn't and the Desktop has been 'split' towards the right hand side where it can be seen that the Dock, the Menu Bar and Desktop work area are clearly split where the whole display has been shifted to one side by apprx 25% with the cut-off edge wrapping around to the other side

ABOVE: This image is similar to the one before it but without the black horizontal bar.

These are just more examples to the many others and being graphical related it therefore similarly varies .

Hello.

just joining the flow of failed GPU's in 2011 macbook pros here.

for anyone it interests -

i have a Late 2011, 15" MacBook Pro, base model. (6750m dGPU) and 2.2 Ghz Core i5 Processor.

i'm based in the uk, London.

i purchased my MacBook Pro on Marh 12th 2012.

it just died last sunday, but i do believe i was experiencing early warning signs of its incoming failure (sudden system freezes/crashes. including to black screen. force restarts)

but sunday it simply went to a blue screen with vertical dark lines. since then i managed to boot up once more, and i wrote it off as just another crash.. and stupidly i decided to continue working as i always did - Intensive CPU work - like video editing /encoding.

and then konk, it died. and has not been able to boot up since, it stays at the white/grey screen with the apple logo gone. sometimes it will eventually turn blue with dark vertical lines.

it also gets very hot and the fans kick in very loudly as if i was doing CPU intensive work..

i'm going to call apple care very soon, but before i do, i must return the original 500gb HDD to the laptop - which i happened to be using as an external drive - so it has data on it i must extract first. as soon as i've done that i will be taking this to the apple store / calling apple care.

updates to come soon.

Hey there guys,

prety sad that my first post has to be related to this but oh well. Same exact problems as everyone else. Early 2011 MBP, 15 inch, Radeon 6490M, purchased in Spain.

<Edited by Host>

Just adding my burden to this thread. Was not aware of this issue until I myself experienced this with my early 2011 MBP 17".

First the screen started to get distorted, garbled, showing left side of screen on the right side vica verca, and then finally the blue screen appeared, together with the fan maxing out on the RPM's. Unresponsive and sounding like a jetengine, I finally turned the machine off, let it cool down, and I'm still able to start it up and use it for Excel, simple webpages and stuff. But immediately when trying to use graphic heavy programs, it agains bites the dust, and leaves me in a very dark blue place....

It saddens me that such a fine and extremely expensive piece of hardware suddenly stops working after 3 years of loyal service, maybe this fault is the ultimate Kill-Switch and part of the "expiration of products to force us into new purchases" philosophy so many are talking about these days :-)

Adding photo as suggested previously... Not really hoping for any help though...

Another early-2011 17" MBP owner here. I'm getting vertical stripes on boot, and then it locks up and heats up to the point where it's too hot to touch, and the fans are spinning at maximum speed. At that point all I can do is power it down.

Starting it up again will often result in a normal, successful boot into OS X, but sometimes I'll just get the stripes again and have to keep trying. Last night I was doing this cycle for like three hours before it finally booted into OS X successfully.

sitting here on my freshly repaired early 20011 MBP 17 ($310 from apple depot)..... very hot on my lap and just went to a black screen with cursor only visable, had to hard reset and back to normal-ish...but very hot on my lap.