Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

You should find out which act applies before doing anything (probably the sale of goods act so Apple wouldn't be involved unless you bought it from them)

Beyond six months of use of the acquired product, it's up to you to prove that the problem was there when you received the goods even if it has taken until now to come to light.

So, you may need to prove that the fault was not down to ordinary wear and tear or damage you caused, and that the product (or a component) should have lasted longer than it did.

To do this you may need an expert's report.

see more at:

http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/sale-of-goods-act

I did purchase my mbp from apple. They have offered to take it in and perform diagnostic tests, which hopefully will prove the known discrete card/solder issues. Would the combination of apple's report (assuming they don't mislead me), the existence of this forum and the ridiculous amount of other people experiencing this problem be enough to launch a successful claim? Has anyone in the uk had success with this? Or has anyone had an apple employee send it off for free internal repairs without legal action?

Cheers

Can't answer that,

And a 'ridiculous' amount is meaningless, at some point actual figures rather than guesses will be needed.

Got my MBP2011 back today, after reflow process. I have now been testing for couple of hours, and everything seems to work ok. There is some small issues however.

• When switching from Integrated Graphics Card to Discrete Graphic card, i can see a small difference in color profiles. Discrete card shows a bit lighter, graphics than Integrated.
• After starting for first time after reflow, there was some very small areas, with dissertion. These have now disappered.

That´s it. Before reflow, my Mac did not even start further than the grey screen with any methods. After reflow, it started immediatly. The only small "problem" now is the light change in color profile, but thats fine with me for now. I can continue my work and dont have to pay for a new logic board.

My reflow process was made with heat gun, by a professional. This certainly confirms, that the problem is in the graphic card "surface", which is poorly connected to logic board. Reflow might just be a temporary fix, because the poor materials are still there (some people recommends reballing techinique instead), but at least my machine is back in business again. I´ll let you know if I get more problems or this crashes again. But if you dont have anything to lose, try the reflow before buying a new logic board.

Wow! Good to hear that you successfully resurrected your machine!

I've been waiting for this report mate.

In my part, since I failed my DIY reflow, I manage to scout one repair shop last night and hoping to have time to visit their shop the coming days, I am quite pre occupied right now finishing task in my windows machine.

My macbook pro is still half dead, loaded with movie download right now and use to play music in background since I managed to boot  forcing to use the integrate GPU.

mirkofromturku wrote:

 

My reflow process was made with heat gun, by a professional. This certainly confirms, that the problem is in the graphic card "surface", which is poorly connected to logic board. Reflow might just be a temporary fix, because the poor materials are still there (some people recommends reballing techinique instead), but at least my machine is back in business again. I´ll let you know if I get more problems or this crashes again. But if you dont have anything to lose, try the reflow before buying a new logic board.

Lol... "My reflow process was made with heat gun, by a professional"

Professional? A heat gun? Seriously....

Hope he didn't pack the mobo in aluminium foil leaving only the bga blank?

Then pulled a paint stripper?

Holding it in his hand going over it to heat it up?

If it was like that and it fails again. be smart and go to someone doing it like it should be done.

A controlled process.

If he really used a paint stripper, wouldn't let him reball it...

I have just sent this email

<Edited by Host>

You don't really need your own Mac to backup your files. If you get a €10 SATA>USB adapter, then take out your hdd or ssd, connect your drive via the adapter to any Mac (and maybe also any Linux machine) you can copy your files to any other drive. If you'd want to make a full clone, you could even use a Windows machine with Acronis on it (=linux). Probably needles to say, but if you connect your drive with the adapter to any other Mac, you can even not from your drive and you'll just be working on your own system while using your neighbors machine. So all you need is someone else with any kind of computer and you can secure your days in some way. On the other hand; you could bring it to Service with a new empty drive in it. You could say you formatted the drive and then it got stuck. Our that you placed a new drive because you want to secure your data. I think you have the right to that..? Or they can simply clone your drive for you. There are many better ways then to wait/pray for your own machine to get fixed by itself magically ;-) Have it reflowed by someone and your problem is gone in about 1 hour.. See my post on page 701.. Best of luck! Just don't give Apple any more money..

Hi!

I have had exactly the same problem with the graphic card. But when I have managed to upgrade from OS X 10.9.4 to 10.9.5 everything became stable.

AMD Radeon magically became work as it should.

Graphic problems appeared a few days after Yosemite upgrade. When, back to 10.9.4 problem remains. Upgrade to 10.9.5, stable work for several days, already.

Early 2011 MacBook pro, 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB memory, AMD Radeon HD 6750M and built-in Intel HD Graphics 3000.

What started out as a few lines and occasional artifacts ended in me being unable to boot. it's definitely the discrete GPU. I tried using GfxStats which worked for some time, then I had to trick the macbook into booting without discrete GPU, that worked for some time. now not even that is working any more. no help from apple of course. that's such a sh*tty product, obviously a design flaw....

We're all in the same boat and suffering from Apple's lack of acknowledgement of a widespread issue.

I want to confirm that I too am having the same issues as many other people.  I am experiencing random screen distortions and system lockups.  The only thing that I can do is hard reset my computer by holding down the power button.  This has happened to me three times, and so far, the computer has successful rebooted each time.  I have yet to replace the logic board for $310 through Apple as I am trying to put it off as long as possible.  I have a late-2011 15" Macbook Pro with AMD Radeon HD 6750M and Intel HD Graphics 3000.

It should be pointed out that Apple apparently had the same (or very nearly the same) problem with their iMac line from 2010-2011. These iMacs used the same AMD GPU that Apple used in the early 2011 MacBook Pros 15" and 17." Apple chose to issue a recall with little hesitation. Everyone whose iMacs experienced the GPU-related failure got their machines fixed at no charge. Why? Because the GPUs on these iMacs' were mounted on an easily removable daughterboard. Just because the problem with the MacBook Pros is not as easy to fix as were the iMacs does not absolve Apple of its duty to its customers to acknowledge their engineering flaw (2 hot-running chips in close proximity that were affixed to the motherboard with heat-sensitive, brittle lead-free solder) and to do right by it's customers...and do it NOW rather than later, before they lose all credibility.
PS: I am about to go for my THIRD refurbished logic board switcheroo because the previous two failed within a month of installation after starting to show all the same video glitches. Now this one iOS starting to do the same. At least these logic boards all failed/are failing within the cheapo 90-day warranties that come with the defective ReFuRbIsHeD boards Apple uses to "fix" our machines.

I've done with replace amd graphics chips for $200. Now my macbook pro early 2011 15" working again, with new graphic chips (AMD 216-0809000 Chip).

This is not reball, or reflow, but replace with new chip, and i hope this is permanent solution. Sorry for not following the replacement programs. I can't work without my macbook pro. And i could not wait even if for only 2 weeks. And no Apple Service Provider at my country.

I wish there were a solution to all. Sorry about my bad English.

Thanks.

Wow this thread is becoming a whole new world wide web    but, seriously, I wish the apple discussions forum had better "controls" for navigating through big threads like this one...  guess what, I cannot read it from the beginning till the end, because I lack the lifetime! (if you know how please tell me how to do it..)

On a "side note":  Add me to the growing masses of "proud" owners of a broken MacBookPro 2011. Mine, (early 2011 15'' (8,2); 2,2Ghz i7, 4GB RAM (temporarily 16GB, turned out to be faulty, so changed back the original 4GB, but this has got nothing to do with the graphics issue...); ATI HD 6750M)

Well, what to say, yesterday, on Saturday December 13th, 2014, the day had come. The day I had so long awaited with a mixture of wonder that nothing had happened yet and a growing fear that it might happen soon, after having read the pages of this forum and the complaints of the people of the internet..:
My MacBookPro had died the graphic(s) death.

So, underpaid worker of the House of the Fruit, if you are skimming through these pages to see what the enemy (aka customer) is doing (faint hope that you might) report back to your dark lords, that    I HAVE TO FINISH MY DOCTOR'S THESIS!    ON THE SAME MACHINE, NOT A NEW ONE, AND NOT IN 2026 (till we win the f..riendly law suit)!!   and  IT IS NOT MY FAULT THAT IT'S BROKEN and IT IS NOT BY MERE CHANCE!!!

Ah, sorry, I got a little carried away   ok,fellow members of the legion of the damned MacBookPro 2011 users, we have to compile all the solutions existent to (temporarily) solve this problem in one place, for us and all the others who cannot read the whole discussions here ..  (if this already exists, please tell me where!) Including the feedback of users who have tried them and tell how long it worked..

For example mine is working now on integrated after I followed a tip I read a few hundred pages ago (started MBP, didnt work, ran hot turned off by itself, startet right again with pram reset alt+cmd+r+p, worked, directly gfxCardstatussed to integrated only, backupped (puhh, relief!), but dont dare to turn it off now, eternal sleep mode wake cycle, is it safe to turn off??)

Problem is I don't know how and where... Can you put stickies of discussions at the beginning? oder could we contact that website about the MBP2011 failure (I have not seen all the solutions on this webpage)?   Who want's to help me?

We need an easy to understand description of the pathogenesis,  the details and factors of how and why the problem occurs..

Then the

solution "tree" (till you improve it)

1. Avoid crash before it happens: 
   - do some thermal paste thing, repasting  {needs details and links to videos, how much $? how long?, homemade vs repair guy}
   - or do everything under point 4 preemptively ('cept Apple stuff!)
2. After crash get it running again (emergency): 
   - try till it works (don't know if it really helps),
   - variant with letting an unsuccessful attempt shut itself down (prolly due to overheating) and restart directly after that (don't know if it really helps),
   - reset PRAM and so on (alt+cmd+r+p) before booting (if it has to be after "overheat shutdown" - see above- don't know), 
   - start in single user (cmd+s) and/or verbose mode (cmd+v) followed by some command line action to move/disable the graphics "drivers" of the discrete chip so it does not work  {details & links to videos, descripions, BE CAREFUL -> brain surgery}
   followed directly by
3. Keep it running:
   - Get gfxCardStatus (if you dont have it already), set to Integrated only, never shut down again (don't know this one, can you shut down and it stays on integrated only???),
   - probably not necessary after command line stuff in single user mode
4. Fix hardware (final solution?): 
   - Apple Solution exchange logic board till end of time?? ($$), {details missing, how much? how long?}
   - reflow existing chip (homemade vs repair guy), {details & links to videos, how much? how long?}
   - reball existing chip (homemade??? repair guy), {details & links to videos, how much? how long?}
   - exchange existing discrete graphics chip (repair guy, conclusive solution!?) {details & links to videos, how much? how long?}

Sorry for bad layout, don't know how to format it and also don't have the time. There is much to improve! Maybe you want to help me?

That's it, that's all.. for now  for further questions I'll annoy you with other posts to not inflate this one too far...

Greets,

Mic