Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

Well, I am absolutely delighted! I have been a Mac user, faithful, since 1987. I've seen a great deal of good products, and good service.

Suddenly, I felt the pain of a failing Mac.  My machine would get the big candy stripes on the screen, and I would have to restart - with a difference. I would restart, then wrap a blanked around the Mac until it heated up enough to trigger a shut down. This always fixed things for a week or two. Maybe the additional heat reset the solder or something. It was my temporary repair as I waited for Apple to respond.

Anyway, last Friday it wouldn't work. That was fine, because the repair program now in place runs until the end of this month.

I called a  nearby Apple store Monday morning, and arranged to drop off the Mac at 4:15pm. They told me 5-7 days. Imagine my astonishment when it was delivered to my home at 9:45am on Wednesday. A DAY AND A HALF! It's like a new computer.

Hugh

<Link Edited by Host>

Program repair extended until 31 December 2016!

https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/

Wow, that's great news. I got mine repaired the end of last year, so my time would be up next month, so this gives me extra time to work with it, since I don't use it to do anything extra hard with. This is good. Thanks for the heads up, Linux. And thank you APPLE.

Thanks for the information!  I had my MacBook (late 2011 17") repaired under the program at the end of this last summer in 2015 so I was dreading an occurrence of failure after this coverage ended.  Now I can set my apprehension aside until December!

Mine has been repaired in recent days. Tomorrow I'll pick it from apple store. Let's see how long the new logic board.

mine (an early macbook pro 2011 ) start having this issue 3 weeks ago.

2 weeks ago, i bring it to the genius bar, they repaired it in 3 days... the evening i bring it home, it fails again with same symptoms..

brought it back last saturday. the guys tells me the card failed. he also told me these boards cannot be new one and they are refurbished ones as they don't build these anymore..

today i pick up my macbook and it seems to work ok..

however the guy, another one, tell me the board is new, it make no sense to replace a faulty board model with another one!!

go figure..

anyway, glad the program is extended until the end of the year...

it's good program, unfortunately the program  not available in cambodia.

Mac is back at home. I opened the bottom case to take a look at "new logic board" and it can see that is a refurbished board. Some sign on various chip are fray. Now I'm stressing GPU to see if fails again. Of course temps of component run very hot with gpu near to 80 degrees celsius under work! I noticed that the slot of superdrive (replaced with hard disk) now is a SATA 3. I'll keep you up-to-date.

Guys with the "new" logic board I noticed that when I use intesive GPU tasks the magsafe stop to charge the battery. When I close all process restart to charge but slow. It's a logic board problem?

Having followed this 2011 logic board problem since it's beginning I'm wondering how big a percentage of the overall produced Macbook Pros in the affected years (say 2011) that's actually affected by the problem? I haven't been able to figure out whether:

Is it only the unlucky few? (compared to millions of computers produced)

Is it all, and therefore only a matter of time for all of the Radeon chipsets?

Or can we conclude that some affected models actually just work even years after?

I was taking a look at a late 2011 15" MBP with the 6750m chipset today that had never had a problem even though having been used extensively with photoshop and parallels and 3d gaming and even in clampshell mode etc. It was hot to touch but had been running perfectly since produciton. Is this a very rare case or what's you guys estimate?

Is it possible to actually own Macbook Pro's with the affected chipsets that are home free?

So I just got my mac back from the Apple store today. MBP early 2011 15". They replaced my logic board, my battery, and my hard drive. This is the third time I have replaced my Logic board since i bought it. And I am already having weird issues with tiny vertical green lines on the icons in the dock and on any web page i visit. (Has anyone else had this issue?) I have had all of the symptoms everyone else has mentioned before, distorted graphics, over heating, multiple beeps then shut down, etc... I am beyond frustrated with this computer not working since I bought it 5 years ago. Luckily (if you call it that) I bought the extended warranty so I haven't had to pay out of pocket for any repairs as of yet. This last go around I brought it in and the tech at the Apple store was nice enough to try multiple tests and got it to fail on the third or fourth try. They told me that they have started repairing these issues with brand new parts that do not have the same issues. I would be lying if I did not say I was more than a little excited. Unfortunately same issues on supposedly new board... I will call them again and see if I can just get a replacement at this point. I am so sick of losing all of my information due to my computer magically taking a crap on me. I back things up regularly but there are always things that get lost in the transfer. I use my mac for music and post production so its a big deal if I am unable to find certain files. I am just so frustrated with all of this...

Apple changed logic board in my mac 2 time in one week (ten days ago). The two logic boards are refurbished with a sticker on the old serial near ram slots. First replacement I had a board with SATA 3 also for superdrive. Second replacement has again SATA 2 and searching on the web with the old serial, that logic board was fabricated long before my first default board when I bought my mac in march 2011. On second replacement they also changed left fan with a different appearance respect right fan...No comment...

My 2011 17" MBP has had 3 LB's replace about 2-3 months apart starting the beginning of 2015. When i returned for my 4th LB replacement the end of last year the Apple Genius agents refused to do the  repair unless I removed my 2 8GB DDR3 DIMMS and replaced them with a pair of OEM DIMMs; remove my drive doubler and the 1tb HDD I had put in place of the superdrive with the drive doubler and reinstall the superdrive as well as remove my 512GB SSD and reinstall the factory OEM HDD that came with it. I didnt have the OEM memory or the OEM HDD that came with it. If I decided to have the LB replaced without removing and reinstalling the SSD/HDD, 8GB DIMMs/4GB DIMMs and the DD&750GB HDD/Superdrive Apple told me they were going to remove all my upgraded parts, through them out (would not return to me) and charge me for the OEM HDD, OEM 4GB DIMMs and the OEM superdrive, and the installations and no return and/or throw away all my upgraded parts that cost me well over $1000 at the time. So i would get back the exact same base model MBP I originally bought minus all the upgrades and with a defective board for only $600 + $1000 lost + another $650 to get it back to where it was for only $2,2250. They would not give me a penny towards a new MBP either i could have combined with the $2,250. I am going to take both 17" MBP's in there and see what they can do. O my 2008 17" MBP suffered from the fatal Nvidia GPU issue that did effectively the same thing to both MBP's.

It looks as though you need to escalate the problem way beyond the "geniuses". There can be no justification for them to insist on your replacing everything as you originally bought it. Would they be satisfied with your replacing just the parts you still have?

My 2011 MBP 17" is also confirmed to have the problem. My old 2008 MBP 15" has what I presume is a similar problem - the ATI Radeon BGA failure. Seems a lot like problematic laptop thermal management causes thermal stress on the more rigid lead-free solder joints of the GPU chip. (Lead free requires higher temps so should also survive better than old lead solder when exposed to heat.) Obviously it took the class action suit to get Apple to change its  mind on warranty repairs for "GPU failures".

My 2011 machine is currently playing dead until new logic board arrives (3-5 days for parts and 3-5 for repair, such a pain). So surviving using the old 2008 machine until I can figure a more functional stopgap.

Had a look at the teardown of the mid2015 15" rMBP. The logic board is tiny. Maybe it won't suffer the same fate?? Hanging out to see what Apple is doing with the 2016 rMBP.

According to the Apple Store manager I spoke to, Apple reserves the right to refuse to repair machines under warranty which have been done by "unauthorised repairers". So the problems described by cvhosh with having the machine in "original" condition are probably an extension of this "right" as imposed by Apple. Probably it would take a legal challenge for them to tone down this policy. I thought this sort of thing was well sorted in the auto industry. You don't have to unmodify your car back to "factory original" if the warranted part is unrelated to the modifications.