Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

These are the pics from all the squence and what all i got as a result from all the tricks i tried to boot the laptop blue one is from the recovery menu. I don't know how to go into diagnostic mode. If you know how to do that and if its safe tell me will try and post you the pics over here.

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/gl36se2spp605f5/GhJyFTW702

You said only:

"As soon as your Finder comes up (if you have lots of Apps open, close them all)  download gfxCardStatus, start it and select 'Integrated Only' "

as can be observed left a space between the two texts, to leave it understood ...

Yes, Taranbeer, I just copied the post and added more to it,

forgiveness for the misunderstanding

If Apple is not responsible and does not solve my case I have to stay with a MBP expensive does not work? No!!

What I am suggesting is it has worked in some cases, but if you believe it is not a good option, ok, we're all trying to find a solution to a mess of Apple.

@ apple_power

@ Taranbeer

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2768351?start=1965&tstart=0

For those of you who think that GPU overheating is unique to Macbook Pros, you might want to read the following thread which shows that gamers too have "sudden crashes" -- this particular discussion centers around driver issues (i.e. software) causing the overheating. I found it fascinating the parallels to what we are experiencing on our MBPs

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/315789-33-overheating-huge-temp-increase-crash es#.

Michael

The 70 degrees Celsius claimed by op in that thread is no where near  overheating. Additionally overheating is not a constant with the particular glitches we are seeing here as glitches can happen immediately on startup from a cool machine. After reading all 90 pages of this thread it seems that reballing and removal of excess thermal paste is the solution. Not firmware, drivers, software or overuse. Overheating could possibly be the catalyst but not the core problem.

Just is this...

I think the key thing is that the OP of the thread made a claim that is very similar to ours: that "suddenly" his machine started acting up. And that everyone is in agreement: 70° C is not the root cause but in his case the discussion explored the concept of drivers being the issue. Additionally mention was made of the video RAM which has been brought up repeated in our own thread.

I think dismissing something out of hand because you have come to your own conclusion is not helpful. A more open mind is what is needed right now as we explore every avenue.

YMMV

Michael

This is an Apple issue and time to have feedback from Apple?

https://discussions.apple.com/message/23784189#23784189

Had to buy a new MBP today. 15" still in repair ... after 2y5m.

What do u guy think of this post....i found it in a similar thread here -  https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2768351?start=2130&tstart=0

Dirk van den Berg Berlin, Germany

 

Re: MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

 

Oct 16, 2013 2:51 PM (in response to Rensoom)

 

Update on my situation: my MacBook Pro 17-inch, late 2011, had all the problems everybody else is describing in this thread. And now they seem to be resolved. This is how:

 

I was desparate because when the machine basically became useless while working in Saudi Arabia and on the clock with a project, since there is no Apple Support in the country. Luckily, in nearby Bahrain there is, and teh good people at iMachines Manama have taken it in for repair. First, they put in a first new logic board, but the problems came back within less than 24 hours. Then, they put in another one. This time, I insisted that I could not afford to loose any more time, and money - and because I brought them the MacBook Pro literally on the last day of Apple's warranty for the machine. So they kept it under observation for 4 days. And ran all possible analyses. Bottom line: the 16GB of RAM I had installed on the machine had created the problem. Now, I am back with 8GB of RAM with only one DIMM socket occupied.

Yes, to be honest Apple officially does not support 16GB of RAM, and yes, the 8GB DIMM really is faulty. Anyways, for the last 8 days I had no problems whatsoever.

I have another 80 days of warranty for that repair, so there is virtually no risk I am stuck with this problem and a huge sum to pay for repair. But it seems to me that this time, the "culprit" is not Apple. Will update you in about 80 days or so. In the meantime I recommend that you check your RAM, if you upgraded your machine and if this upgrade is officially supported or not. Cheers!

 

 

 

I think dismissing something out of hand because you have come to your own conclusion is not helpful. A more open mind is what is needed right now as we explore every avenue.

I don't think anyone here is dismissing valuable facts. But we're already at a point where it is very clear that this is a permanent hardware failure not a temporary problem so your post is not really helping anyone already having the problem.

This is a possibility for me as I do have 16GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 corsair ram. I will swap out and report back here but it will be a couple weeks before I am back home where the old ram is. For now the solution for me is still bypassing discrete with gfxCardStatus.

SpaceBacon wrote:

 

This is a possibility for me as I do have 16GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 corsair ram. I will swap out and report back here but it will be a couple weeks before I am back home where the old ram is. For now the solution for me is still bypassing discrete with gfxCardStatus.

FWIW I upgraded my ram first to 8GB then to 16GB, the original 4GB of ram was in my MBP for maybe 4 weeks. Once the issues started I too suspected RAM and I switched back to Apple's original 4GB.

Sadly the issue persisted.

I ran Apple's daigs on both my 16GB and 4GB, neither failed the tests.

If it was a RAM issue then you'd expect to experience the problems on both the Discrete and Integrated, even more so the Integrated video card as that leverages your system's RAM.

I havn't come to this conclusion on my own ... it's the others in this thread that had their GPU reballed and the excess thermal paste removed that claimed this fixed the specific issue of the OP.

I have not seen any proof in this thread that changing anything non hardware related has fixed any of the symptoms to date. That's all.

When I first encountered problems with my GPU, after my first logic board replacement I did discover that somehow my 8GB of OWC ram did go bad as well. So I switched it back to the original 4GB of Ram and that held up for awhile but a week later the issues came back