Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

I switched to Mac because Apple was a more reliable company, I paid double the cost of a normal PC, now I'm stuck with this big white brick

I have an early 2011 15 inch MacBook Pro with the same issue and was posting this so maybe apple can see that this is a huge a huge problem. I'm going to try to call them and see what they tell me about the issue.

So what's the worst thing that can happen when you have gfxCardStatus run the Integrated GPU all the time?  What if you try to play a game or do video editing?  Could the system crash, or would it just get really slow?

slapple1 wrote:

 

So what's the worst thing that can happen when you have gfxCardStatus run the Integrated GPU all the time?  What if you try to play a game or do video editing?  Could the system crash, or would it just get really slow?

I've been running a gfx stress test, using only the Integrated GPU; the system will become very slow and hot after a while, but - in my case - it won't crash. As soon as I run the stress test using the Dedicated GPU, the system will crash in a matter of minutes.

mikkelnl wrote:

I've been running a gfx stress test,

What are you using to stress test?     Might be useful for those of us that need to show a fault to Apple.    

Wojzo wrote:

 

mikkelnl wrote:

I've been running a gfx stress test,

 

What are you using to stress test?     Might be useful for those of us that need to show a fault to Apple.    

This one: http://www.geeks3d.com/gputest/

Same problem here. Its an early 2011 macbook pro 15".  I am struggling with this problem for about 2 months. I think I am completely ****** up because apple does not have any branch in my country and I have to send my macbook abroad. I really can't afford a new logic board.

Same with me. Early 2011, blue screen whenever a video, animation (even the finder's cover flow!) is shown or the camera is turned on. As long as I don't run any of this, everthing seems to be OK. However, a MB was of course bought to handle with all the media stuff. >:-/ And it sometimes takes more than half an hour to see the login screen again (system hangs on startup).

Can't believe that the problem started with the end of the 2-year's (limited) warranty -- on the very last day! I went to an authorized Apple retailer to find out whether there's a programme for that but there isn't any. The Apple hotline "feels very sad about this" but can't do nothing about it.

There is some media coverage about this issue in Germany (http://www.ifun.de/macbook-pro-2011-mit-grafikproblemen-beim-modell-2013-streike n-eingabegeraete-49438/#comment-198900 and http://www.maclife.de/thema/macbook-pro/macbook-pro-2011-berichte-ueber-defekte- grafikkarte-haeufen-sich) with reference to this thread.

Hopefully Apple comes to the conclusion to enlarge warranty on goodwill. 2 years are just too short for such a great brand (and price)! I have an iPod, iPad & iPhone which work well.

Since I got fed up and bought a new machine - what do you think I should do with the old one? Sell it as faulty? Or hang on to it and hope Apple sort this mess out? :-/

Same issue here. Early 2011 MBP 15". Started in the beginning of October. I thought I had a bad Hard drive or memory, so I went ahead and replaced both of those. Problems persisted.  Finally today I got the system to run long enough to force it into integrated only mode.  It's been running for 5+ minutes, which is by far the longest it has run without a kernel panic.

I'm going to try and hobble along and see if this will become a recall repair. If not, I guess I'm not buying any more MacBooks. I am really happy with it, but at the price a 2 year lifespan is absurd.

Same behavior as described by kapkema in post above.

Macbook Pro A1286 Feb 2011

Core i7 @2GHz, AMD Radeon 6490M 256Mb.

Occured 2 times temporarily after update to Mavericks.

Since 2 days Problem now is permanent.

System only boots to Single User Mode.

All other methods end in vertical blue bars, grey/white/black screen.

System log shows lots of kernel messages as below:

Kernel: GPU hang state 0x0000000

           Trying restart GPU.

Seems that I can't apply Mavericks either. It closed all applications (including gfx) which caused another crash during the install. Now my disk is corrupted again since it's some half installed state... not good.

@kapkema.

My little silver boy also tried to fool me around with disk corruption.

Lot of error messages somehow poited to harddisk or SATA controller.

It let me boot from OSX 10.6. original install DVD a last time with HDD removed

and plugged via USB after setup was loaded.

I was able to do a clean install and it run smoothly for 12 hours.. but that was just a fake.

It now is absolutely unable to initialize any graphic mode anymore.

Would you please try booting to single user mode and grep system log in /private/var/log/system.log

I can see massive error logs from Kernel and Windowserver wondering if You see same messages like me.

I can't even boot to Single User Mode anymore after the failed Mavericks update.

"Error loading Kernel Cache" while trying to boot into Single User Mode.

I had to reset SMC and PRAM several times as it ignored single user mode serveral times for me too.