Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

I fully agree. A company Like Apple needs to stand up to the thousands Customers complaints for this issue. Apple needs to stand up to it's reputation and provide a resolution to all the Customers who put faith into their Product & hard earned $$$.

Apple, you need to recall or offer compensation for faulty manufacturing. Hoping for a response!

I have same issue with my 2011 Macbook Pro and recent Apple Case id: Case ID: 738833470

The G-man wrote:

I will report my case today at Apple Care Benelux. My MacBook Pro 15" (early 2011) has gone up in flames last week. Not literally that is! Apple ... take your responsibility and help out your customers!

Hi G-man, you may have to wait indefinitely for this to get solved by Apple the correct way. If you don't want to wait for them and just get your machine fixed in a way that Apple should have done during production, you have a solution relatively nearby near Antwerp! D3us fixed my Late 2011 MBP 15" and it's in it's 4th month now after the fix, steady as a rock, cooler then ever, while being used daily from approx 8:30-01:00 (have to make a living; self-employed and times are hard..)

Scaramanga85 wrote:

Thanks to this thread and some video tutorials on youtube i managed to deactivate the discreet graphics card in single user mode, and i now have a working computer, although i can't run any graphics intensive software.

I have called the Swedish Apple support to report my problem. Since i'm out of warranty and don't have apple care they referred me to an authorised repair centre which quoted me around 5000 SEK (around 570 USD). It's a lot of money for something that doesn't appear to be a permanent fix. :/

Hi Scaramanga! Sorry to welcome you to the club..

Please don't donate more money to Apple for a useless repair. If you don't really need your MBP for more intensive work, and if your mac is now truly stabilised, then you could just wait this out.

If you just want your machine fixed and operational (like i did), without going through an unknown amount of misery thanks to the Apple team, you could contact/visit Mr Gruenberger in Berlin. Fixing your MBP through a reflow or reballing is as good as it gets, if done good of course.

If you navigate to page 676 of this forum (change the url start value to "start=10125") and find his details in my second post on that page (search for "Danny Gruen Berger" to find that post instantly).

The last person I sent there reported that Mr Gruenberger didn't respond.

If that's the case, I can strongly recommend the person that did a very good job fixing my machine and who has a remarkable knowledge about soldering: Mr D3us. Navigate 1 page further from pg. 676 and you'll find a post of him. Hover his name when you're logged in, and you'll be able to send him a message. His firm is situated near Antwerp in Belgium and he recently fixed a board of someone in Italy who just sent the board via DHL and got it back the same way. It's not expensive and it's done in quite a short time.

While you're navigating through this forum, check out my long post (the 7th one) on page 701 (change start=10500) if you would like to read the theories that D3us has on the reason why all this is happening (he allowed me to witnessing the procedure and ask tons of questions, that's how I ended up writing that post).

Good luck with your machine!

Well after a couple of days of behaving my Macbook Pro is acting up again.  When I run the GPU test I am not seeing the system fail yet but I am seeing the fans run at about 6000 rpm and I don't think that's normal.  The wierd thing is that whenever I stop the GPU test and the system switches back to the Integrated Video Adapter, Istat reports that the GPU Die Temperate is 262 Degrees and it stays there regardless of how fast the fans are running.

ocnetgeek wrote:

 

Well after a couple of days of behaving my Macbook Pro is acting up again.  When I run the GPU test I am not seeing the system fail yet but I am seeing the fans run at about 6000 rpm and I don't think that's normal.  The wierd thing is that whenever I stop the GPU test and the system switches back to the Integrated Video Adapter, Istat reports that the GPU Die Temperate is 262 Degrees and it stays there regardless of how fast the fans are running.

6000rpm is the max those fans can run, which somewhat logical is a test causes maximum heating of the cpu.

But... 262ºF/128ºC is really extremely hot!! I take it your board was replaced..? I suggest you use your machine a lot. Watching flash content like youtube and playing HD videos should be enough to get it warm too. If you have a problem again, it should show soon enough if you alternate regularly between getting the GPU running intensively, and turning the machine off completely to let it cool down..

Good luck!

My board has not been replaced yet.  I just started having real issues last week.  I have had issues with the fans running more than usual for some time but last week was the first time that I have had it freeze and fail to boot for a full day.  I am stress testing now and going to bring it to Apple for them to stress test also since my Applecare runs out in less than 3 weeks.  I use the Macbook for typical work.  Web Browsing, E-Mail, Some Web Development, Office Apps.  I do use an external monitor most of the time so it is using the discrete GPU alot.

Well.. Then you can expect to get a new board, which will most likely fail on you again sooner or later. If you're lucky within the 90day warranty on the repair. If you're unlucky, maybe after 91 days, both outside your Apple care warranty and outside the repair warranty. And then they'll suggest you to fork over several hundreds of (insert your currency here). The last part is of course a bad idea.

If they suggest now to replace the board, you could point them to the existence of this thread and size of it and that it's already highly expected that the board will fail. Either within or outside the applicable warranty, and ask them "then what will you do..?". Being friendly seems to give the best results...

I have exactly the same usage (driving an external monitor), failure (gray screen and stripes sometime) and repair (paid US$310 + tax last month, for logic board change) scenario, for my 15" MBP early-2011. Really frustrated w/ Apple, but not surprised (as they don;t image sullied), but it will likely backfire.

Disruption in my work, this MBP failure has caused is enormous. As much as I expect logic board to fail again soon, I don't want it to ... as again it will be very disruptive for me. So now I'm using a laptop cooling pad/fan underneath. It looks ugly, but I'm being practical, till some practical resolution comes thru from Apple or class action. 

ocnetgeek wrote:

going to bring it to Apple for them to stress test also since my Applecare runs out in less than 3 weeks.

Don't think they really stress test it.

Their diagnostic program mostly doesn't even detect a faulty GPU.

Your best bet is to get it failing yourself asap...

I brought my late 2011 17" MBP and told them about this problem. They did a series of tests including a graphics test with 3 loops. My computer created a frozen screen and then would not start with the bars at log-in. You can recreate it with their tests but they should omit the ram tests and concentrate on graphics with at least 3 runs.....

I am trying to stress it and get it to fail like it did last week.  No luck so far.  If nothing else I want them to explain to me why istat tells me that the GPU temp is 262 when the Integrated Video is being used.  I ran the hardware tests on the system and did not get anything but when I rebooted the temp was normal.  As soon as I started testing again it went right back up.

Anyone have any input as to how long you need to let the GPU stress test run before you see something happen?  I would hear the fans kick in all the time when I was just on Facebook and it hit some flash but only had the one hard fail so far.

I think a recall will happen eventually. We are mostly long term loyal customers that have received defective machines.

Apple just made the largest quarterly profit of ANY COMPANY EVER. $18.04 billion in one quarter. Yes you read that right. That's $8.3 million profit every hour.

It's not as if they can't afford it in. They could probably wear the cost of the recall in two hours

Apple sold over 70 million iPhones last quarter, that means 1% of the worlds population bought an iPhone last quarter!

I don't think Steve would have let it go on this long.

Remember all that money could still be over seas.  Apple is borrowing money to do their new facility in Phoenix.

Can be dust blocking outlet, sometimes completely:

The Apple way to apply thermal paste: