Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

I was told that this problem was being caused by software (Sophos Antivirus in this case). I contacted Sophos and told them what I had been told, but they were unable to replicate the issue. At the time, I was unaware that this issue was affecting tens of thousands of 2011 MBP users, but I never really believed the reason I was given at the Genius Bar (Apple computers being immune to viruses is pure propaganda, in my opinion).

Yosemite makes more demands of the CPU and GPU than Lion does - I've seen it eat a few machines in my office, hence I stuck with Lion - so that could well be a factor, but the majority of cases highly suggests this is an issue affecting the discrete graphics card. For the record, the last straw for my GPU was trying to watch a video through an external display.

Apple have been known to 'convince' users to accept their 'advice' during repairs, so I hope you backed up the MacBook before you sent it off to them.

Good luck.

MGSH wrote:

 

Yosemite makes more demands of the CPU and GPU than Lion does

How does it do that, does it run at greater color depths, or higher resolutions? does it have faster response requirements?

What is this difference that can "eat" machines.

I had no problems with my first MBP purchased in 2007.  Four years later, I replaced it with a new MBP and had no problems with it until the graphics card died.  I was planning on replacing it in 2015 when it reached its fourth birthday.  It's a pretty safe bet I will not be replacing it with another MacBook.

Hello CSound, just curious what your profession is? Some sort of technical engineer? Best, Stu

Just got a call from my reballer, my MBP is up and running again. Will give you an indepth report once I pick it up tomorrow.

History of Apple Care Interventions on my MacBook Pro (late 2011) during 3 years:

2 hard disk failures and replacements (09/2012 and10/2014)

2 chargers magsafe replacements (-- and 10/2014)

3 logic board replacements (-- ; 09/2014 and 11/2014).

After Yosemite installation graphic pixelated glitches started appearing in a random, daily basis.

I have installed gfxCardStatus and issues usually arise when dedicated AMD Radeon HD 6770M is used.

I leave you the most up to date portrait of my mac (see photo): this happened after I woke up my mac from a 20min sleep.

I have not paid a 2.649$ MacBook for experiencing all this frustration plus time and money loss.

I won’t certainly buy a Mac computer ever again (or any other overpriced product), nor I will ever recommend it to anyone else.

MacBook Pro (late 2011) | 2,5GBz Intel Core i7 | 8GB Ram, 1333 MHz DDR3 | AMD Radeon HD 6670M 1024 MB | OSX Yosemite 10.10.1

getstu wrote:

 

Hello CSound, just curious what your profession is? Some sort of technical engineer? Best, Stu

You can check my profile, but that's all.

leonard1212 wrote:

REBALLING does it work and for how long??

Please talk about your experiences!!!

I had my MBP REFLOWED last saturday by D3us here in Belgium (he's near Antwerp).

Reballing means you need to first heat up the motherboard+components until the solder melts, take off the (old) GPU, take a new GPU or reball the old one, heat up the motherboard+components AGAIN up to the temperature where the solder will melt.

D3us has strong suspicions that the production process at Apple is done at a temperature which is just a fraction too low, due to safety standards related to the max temp limits of all components on the board. This seems to have caused some of the balls to just soften and not melt, resulting in a pressure joint, rather then a soldering joint, which causes all this erratic behaviour of the Macs.

All very sad, but logical that it behaves like that then.

The GPUs are good, the balls under them also, just they weren't all molten completely.

Doing a reflow actually just finishes the job that Apple didn't...

This machine is now working like a charm again. And i'm sure it'll last as long as I expected it to in the first place!

Hello Csound1. I was wondering when one of my responses would end up with you pointing your guns at me. Was kind of hoping to avoid it altogether, tbh.

I believe I wrote:

"Yosemite makes more demands of the CPU and GPU than Lion does - I've seen it eat a few machines in my office, hence I stuck with Lion - so that could well be a factor, but the majority of cases highly suggests this is an issue affecting the discrete graphics card. For the record, the last straw for my GPU was trying to watch a video through an external display."

"Could" being the operative word, referring to the possibility of software being to blame.

Let me be as clear as I can: I have absolutely no desire to get into a petty flame war with you; there are bigger fish here for you to play with. Like most of the users following this discussion, I'm here for support and solidarity, since very little seems to be coming from the manufacturer themselves.

But to answer your question: I am not an Apple tech, nor am I privy to their manufacturing/software development processes, so I can't point to a specific component and say "here it is!", but it didn't take Sherlock Holmes-level detection skills to sit a group of 2011, 2012 and 2013 MBPs together, run the same tasks and compare the system monitors and GPU/CPU/fan status of each machine (fan speed being the first clue - and only warning - that the 2011 was not having a good time). This resulted in me spending the night trying to get the 2011 running again, btw - I managed to kill it by creating a podcast and importing it into iTunes! And the 2012 struggled with Mavericks and suffered under Yosemite. Not a sufficiently exhaustive test in your opinion? Well, I worked with what I had to hand… And I can demonstratively prove that gfxCardStatus is the only thing keeping my 2011 MBP alive.

Should I have written "Yosemite appears to make more demands" instead? My apologies.

Not to be rude, but please don't bother trying to make me look small in front of everyone else - we're all of us here already seemingly small in the eyes of the vendor - I just want a permanent solution to the problem most of us in this forum are struggling with. I don't know you, you don't know me and I don't care how many points you have or how respected you are in the community; I'm just a guy that spent a large amount of money on a MBP that can't stand up to its 2007 predecessor. If the discussion is helpful and polite, great. However, if you plan to take potshots at me, I plan to ignore them. I could have it backwards, and you might be being perfectly polite - in which case I apologise profusely - but wading through pages of topic-diluting arguments between yourself and other users tells me that's something best avoided.

If you don't like what I said, I'm happy to agree to disagree.

No guns, curiosity.

If Yosemite requires components to operate outside of their safe operating area I would like to know why, what is it asking the graphics system to do that other versions of OSX are not and why are all machines not affected if they run Yosemite?

Fair dues. As I stated, my apologies.

From personal experience with previous computers, and from what I can see with the machines in the office, there is an increase of heat when running a newer version of OSX than the machine was designed for - certain features require more power (I've noticed the older machines also run slower as their processors take the strain). Desktops usually take it in their stride, so long as the processors can meet the requirements, but space is an issue in a notebook, maybe this is a factor in cases of overheating. My MBP has become hot enough to be painful to the touch on more than one occasion - usually followed by a kernel panic...

For the record, I'm facing this issue for the second time with my personal 2011 MBP, which is still running Lion.

Hello Dancnz, did you have solved your problem ?

I'm in the same state with you !!! :-(

Thanks for your reply !

I don't doubt that heat is a factor, and that software can cause conditions that may increase the heat generated inside a laptop, but a normally operating Yosemite installation is no hotter than the same machine with Mavericks, so there must be additional factor(s). The info provided here does not (unfortunately) give a clear enough picture to draw conclusions from.

All the more reason for the vendor to at least acknowledge that there is an issue and be seen to be looking into it.

One thing I can tell you with certainty: if I run an application that requires the discrete graphics card, I can kiss my MacBook Pro goodbye for a few hours.

I'm not going to disagree with that.