Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

If it is your first logic board failure I urge you to find a local Greek reballing service who can replace your GPU with a new one, ideally with leaded solder, with far less thermal paste and inform them to polish the CPU and GPU die contact plates on the heatsink to a mirror shine.

This should cost no more than 250 euros maximum and will be a far more effective long term repair than a refurbished Apple depot board.

And retain your receipt for any possible reimbursement from Apple in the future - but don't rely on it happening.

This night is one of my worst nights ever..after simple web browsing with my early 2011 macbook pro as usual, suddenly all frozen, restart the mac and pinky horizontal lines appears and after that white screen with working loud fans....searching the internet with my still working ipad and here I am.....oh Apple oh Apple what the f.. have you done???

Joining the group of Macboook Early 2011 plaged by the GPU problem.  My MacBook 17" was working fine until last week, now the only way to get it working is disabling the AMD GPU.

More new people..

Search online for the relevant information. Take action. 6200 plus needed. Also, please take these steps:

1. Call Apple Support or make an appointment with an Apple Genius and have them send a report to the higher level engineering team-This is the best thing you can do for now, we need more reports

2. Send in Feedback using the Feedback form, I think Apple is obligated to read the feedback they get

Rememember; the trolls feed on getting people's attention and replies.

The reactions they get to their poking is their driving force. No amount of reason is going to make them stop. They have no compassion, as they're often somewhat narcissistic.

If everyone just ignored these couple of trolls abusing this forum (and using reporting valid posts as their tool), at least they might loose their interest in trying to divert the conversation here on the long run.

Then again, I'm not sure if that really does any good, as it is also rather clear that this forum is biased; only opinions and links in favour of the company hosting this bulletin board are allowed.

The main reason this thread is alive at the moment seems to be the fact that it's the most popular one around. It's been going around in circles for months now; real solutions to the problem aren't there until Apple provides one, if they ever do.

Workarounds have been posted here a zillion times, but they get buried in the past pages as the cycles of this conversation keep turning.

Apple as a company isn't going to react here.

Other forums, ones allowing free speech and open conversation, places without these trolls, might be a better place.

Keep in mind that the 'X more needed' counter is just that; a counter. Whenever a figure is reached, it just starts counting to another bigger number. There's no specific amount of signatures that would automatically do something.

At the moment, I think the petition just acts as one statistical tool and counter of the people involved, people having the same manufacturing defect in their Macbook (and having searched online enough to actually find it).

I'm not even sure if the original poster of the petition can send the list of signatures to Apple?

Anyway, the media has been picking those numbers up quite nicely (as well as the whole subject), which helps this subject get more publicity and hopefully in turn aid in the process of getting Apple to actually do something about it in the long run.

As Apple has been ignoring this issue for well over a year now, with tens of thousands of customers and multiple headlines in the media around the world, I'm not too hopeful on anything happening unless the lawsuit progresses, though .

Inkalypse wrote:

 

I specifically asked the guy at the store if the replacement would be a new or refurbished part and he said it would be new. Gah. This is so stupid.

No. Apple is going through 2011 logic boards real fast, and refurbishing means little more than a quick reflow in this case.

Ok had my 'repaired' MacBook Pro with replaced Logic Board back from Currys/PCWord. Had it back for two weeks, and it's had very moderate usage (since I've been mainly using my new work 2014 MacBook Pro instead). However, I have been busy preparing a Christmas Quiz in Keynote on it in the evenings. As I have GFXstatus installed I noticed that Keynote keeps switching between integrated and discrete GPUs every time it goes between full screen mode, and editing mode. Anyway - on Thursday night I got all sorts of hangs and glitches happening. I got some garbled graphics in Safari, and a weird line at the top of the screen. Immediately I took some grabs on my iPhone, and also saved my presentation to an external drive, and decided to switch to working on my new 2014 instead. The internal temperature reading was showing 60 degrees via the fan control app.

I don't know why I'm really posting it here, other than the fact that it concurs what others are saying about repeated failures. I'm typing on this machine again now, but it's just a matter of time before this ticking time bomb fails completely.

As (thankfully) I have a backup machine - I think may strategy will have to be the multiple repair/fail approach, and hopefully push for a replacement.

obwianMacobi

Thanks for the update, useful info for me. I've been delaying on a Sale of Goods repair with Currys/PCWorld in the hope Apple might do the right thing, but looks like I'll need to use the repair-and-fail route too.

My Macbook Pro is already running on fourth logic board since its initial failure last May. So it has been 'repaired' at the local Apple authorized service three times now. Apple support line told me it would have to be repaired three times before they can offer any alternative solutions to the problem.

No reason why other than it has to be done.

The initial 'repair' cost me over 600 €, latter ones falling under the warranty.

Basically I'm just waiting for yet another failure, since it is rather obvious by now that replacing the logic board is only a temporary remedy to the problem.

Also affected by this MBP 2011 GPU issue.

Thankfully, at the first sign of the problem I investigated on the internet and found that I could deactivate the discrete GPU using gfxCardStatus. I am right now writing from my mac and looks to work OK. However, forget about games or photoshop...

The worst of this is that there seems not to be a real and solid solution to the root isse. Motherboard changes seem to not make a difference (which is normal, since the same underlying HW issues may be present in the new motherboard)

I really hope Apple makes an official statement about this. Making new motherboards that would guarantee the fix would be a nice first step.

I had my entire reply to you removed but contrary to the T&C no such email notification of why has occurred has been recieved in 4-5 hours, perhaps that is also yet more rules not being applied correctly and uniformly as it should be, though you should find the entirety in the email notification. Hopefully my email to the chairman will soon rectify these anomalies, so I shall remove the part of legitimate constructive criticism and paste back the purely 2011 related comments.

It has been going around in circles for probably 9 months now. Facts on the ground are:

Unless a miracle occurs with anything legal, based on a flawed lead free solder argument I believe that is ultimately incorrect us 2011 users are mostly on our own with only the option to pay a horrendous flawed refurb board option which plainly is not a long term fix.  I do not believe due to the lead solder rules they can in reality actually offer this long term fix anyway.  I have sent feedback to change their engineering guidelines and disgustingly they simply do not care about us or our brand loyalty and our shame at being left to foot the bill.

If you do not live in a country with strong consumer laws and have not had AppleCare and your GPU packs up for the first time - forget paying Apple, get a new GPU reballed with a local reballing specialist; ideally with lead solder and highly polished heatsink die surfaces with some decent thermal paste.  Failure rates are pretty impressive, I have 9/9 still working with this method and oldest is over a year now.  And furthermore over a dozen re-pasted and re-profiled that way and none of them have failed, not one.

Apple's repair path is a charade of multiple logic board swaps, and days, possibly weeks of having no MBP until after this torment with repe Apple finally give in and you have a 15 retina.  As a 17 inch owner I do not want that option, I want my replaceable SSD, big screen and my MBP to work, not overheat and prematurely fail.

Gfxstatus is not a fix, it is a bodge/kludge/hack to simply keep your 2011 going.  As it forces OS X to use the Sandy Bridge HD 3000 graphics and there are mid to long term consequences as on full load CPU plus its integrated GPU you run the risk of overheating that part too and that needing a reball too. Purely a short term option till you find a reballing service.

Until Apple shock me and engineering takes its place rightly overruling both legal and PR which in my heart is what a great company I believed Apple was until this disgraceful shenanigans happened for the past year.  Until they do I am afraid they tarnished their image for the first time since the 90's when Steve Jobs left and they had more Mac variants that I could never remember them all, almost 20 years ago.

Question:

My MBP has not only the AMD failing, but also the intel gives a scrambled screen. Can still boot into scrambled intel with AMD drivers removed, but useless of course.

Would reballing and replacing both chips give me a machine that would last for another two years? Mine has never been serviced (saw on the net that the "repair" was useless anyway) or opened as it blew out a few months out of the 2 year warranty. I'd drop some cash and have a reball plus a superdrive replacement for a SSD, *If* the thing would last for two years. Then I might be interested. What's your take on it? I am sure that Apple will do nothing about this, and having a fancy paperweight is no option.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

JP

Sent to Apple Executive Relations Today...

Well, my latest Final Cut Pro project must be rebuilt from scratch now. I woke my MBP from sleep and the 'video snow' that flickers on the external screen occurred (newly introduced with my 3rd logic board replacement). After a few seconds, the MBP went to a black screen and nothing but a hard boot would bring it back to life.

As I review my three logic board replacements and the thousands of posts in the discussion, I am left with the following indisputable facts:

• Apple's professional users have been disappointed by a product with the word PRO in its name. This is tarnishing the Apple brand in countless ways.
• Several level of Apple employees have been instructed to tow the following line: "We do not know about this as an issue, so your computer is its own separate repair case." Shame on Apple.  We are smarter than that. The evidence of your cover-up is simply everywhere.
• Repairing this issue by swapping logic boards is NOT a solution. All it does is re-introduce another flawed board into the equation and waste people's valuable time, both ours and yours.
• The volume of affected users is now increasing rapidly. In turn, this is bringing forthcoming litigation, bad press and less than flattering light to Apple.

If my machine was a lemon onto itself and I didn't buy AppleCare, that's just bad luck. Shame on me. If there is a design flaw where Apple can't solve the issue, that is negligence. SHAME ON APPLE!

I have documented more than a month of lost time and revenue with this MacBook Pro. It is time to look at this as you have with other flawed machines I've had in the past. Three strikes and you're out.  Get me a replacement machine that eliminates the flaw.

I just picked up my Early 2011 Macbook Pro from my local Apple store after repair, at my expense.  All they offer is a 90 day warranty, my question is; should I run some apps to give the GPU and logic board a work out to see if it will break again during the warranty period or baby it.  How many people have had multiple boards replaced and at what intervals were they.

Thanks for the input.

TJMooseman