Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card
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Jan 23, 2014 7:12 AMby krislo,Well that was rapid.
I had my first signs of failure last week (roughly 35 months after purchasing the computer). Would lock up in the middle of a task and go to a gray or black screen. Once or twice I got the messed up graphics with striations.
It was with the mac repairman from thursday until yesterday (tuesday) -- I fired it up last night and used gfx status to force it onto the integrated chip... Computer worked surprisingly... the hottest the GPU ever got was about 52'c. I was only using it for safari and word and basic things -- trying to get a good backup. Last night - after I had lined up an Apple repair box to come to my house, the computer froze up permanently.
Now I get lines/distortion on the apple logo startup screen. And then just a hanging gray screen after that.
Computer is dead.
Good thing the repair box is coming. Apple's initial quote is +/- $350 all said. I'm hoping that'll get refunded.
I havne't regularly used it for intensive activities -- occassionally for photoshop, indesign, and a little video rendering. Very few gaming sessions.
At work and at home I've had fan pads where the computer has rested since day 1. Maybe that helped fend off this failure for a while? But SHOOT, as soon as the first signs appeared, it was a RAPID decline. I wondered if i could use it for a while limping along - nope.
Does anyone know if the repaired board installed by apple comes with any kind of warranty?
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by paul from south plainfield,Jan 23, 2014 8:29 AM
paul from south plainfield
Jan 23, 2014 8:29 AM
in response to paul from south plainfield
Level 1
(0 points)
HA! I found the links back on page 150! Following is the meat of that post:
Those tests [Apple Hardware Test (AHT)] are useless for gpu testing.
Need to stress test as you need to get the system under full load.
What i do when fixing gaming, video-editing or other heavy graphic task pcs is give both the cpu and gpu a high load.
Needs to run stable for at least 6 hours, better 12, best 24.
For CPU I use prime 95, making sure it uses all cores. Even start 4-8 sessions for quad or octa core.
Mac version:
ftp://mersenne.org/gimps/p95v277.MacOSX.zip
For gpu stress testing you could use this maybe:
http://unigine.com/products/heaven/
And yes, I run both, stressing out CPU AND GPU to the max together !!!
And use a program to read out temps when doing this.
The computers I build have no problem with this.
Can run them for 24, even 36 hours long, without any problem.
Laptops however, when getting smaller and smaller wil get more and more problems.
Buying a macbook, or other laptop, for video editing is not really a good choice.
But if they are sold as beeing suited for that job, it's manufacturer's/seller's responsability to make sure it can survive the task.
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Jan 23, 2014 8:29 AMby changt34x,paul from south plainfield wrote:
That would be ideal.
Somewhere in this thread another contributor linked to a couple of intense testing applications that really put a strain on the GPU - I'm having a hard time finding those links myself. I will repost them if I can locate them.
Give http://www.geeks3d.com/gputest/ this a go, FurMark gets the highest temps and power drain for me. What I believe would be ideal is cycling 100% CPU + 100% GPU and then idle until it cools down a lot of times because this heat cycling is what the real problem is.
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Jan 23, 2014 9:12 AMby D3us,That was me I think, here:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/24473343#24473343
Quote:
"For CPU I use prime 95, making sure it uses all cores. Even start 4-8 sessions for quad or octa core.
Mac version:
ftp://mersenne.org/gimps/p95v277.MacOSX.zip
For gpu stress testing you could use this maybe:
http://unigine.com/products/heaven/
And yes, I run both, stressing out CPU AND GPU to the max together !!!
And use a program to read out temps when doing this.
The computers I build have no problem with this.
Can run them for 24, even 36 hours long, without any problem.
Laptops however, when getting smaller and smaller wil get more and more problems.
Buying a macbook, or other laptop, for video editing is not really a good choice.
But if they are sold as beeing suited for that job, it's manufacturer's/seller's responsability to make sure it can survive the task.."
Another one is http://www.geeks3d.com/20130712/gputest-0-5-0-cross-platform-opengl-benchmark-li nux-mesa-gallium3d-glibc-windows-macosx/
Don't think furmark is ported to mac osx, as that is a great one to.
Use that on pc together with prime 95.
Don't forget to run prime on all cores.
Like on quad cores, I start 4 sessions of it assigning every session to anoher core to make sure the cpu is really stressed out to the max.
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Jan 23, 2014 9:38 AMby D3us,ciu5781 wrote:
The amount of thermal paste doesn't significantly affect the temp unless its too little.
Cius5781 It does matter.
Enough is enough. To much is bad, to little not good either.
Check this out:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1194054/does-too-much-thermal-paste-hurt
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1717526
http://hardocp.com/article/2009/04/07/thermal_paste_shootout_q209/3
Lots more to find about the subject.
It also depends on the used thermal compound.
Normally it spreads, squishing out what is applied to much.
However, some spread out easily, others are hard to apply and spread out.
If it's hard to spread out might result in a to thick layer between cpu and cooler which is definitely to avoid!
Some last forever, others dry out and/or are conductive.
I prefer a good silicon based over the onesArctic Silver as it is easier to apply and doesn't dry out.
This very interesting, shows how it spread out:
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Jan 23, 2014 9:56 AMby msufan,It appears that posting about my problem will be fruitless, but I guess everyone with the problem should state it so it is apparent how bad it is. I bought my Late 2011 MacBook Pro in February, 2012. It was my first Mac. I have owned PCs for years and we still have a couple in our house (my husband has one). I loved my iPads and iPod Touch, so it was a natural progression for me. I began having problems with it turning off for no reason about 6 months ago, and experience some wonky graphic screens on startup about half the time. So far it can be restarted, but I fear it is just a matter of time. I do back up several times a day with my Seagete external drive, but I am not sure if I can restore from this drive (that has been used with a Mac) to a PC to save all my information. I am at the point where I need to try that. I would love to stick with a Mac, but I can't afford the pricey repair or a new machine at Apple prices, so if failure happens, I may just need to but a cheap PC as a replacement. I have never had a PC failure in the many years that I have been using a computer. So there's my 2 cents
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Jan 23, 2014 10:45 AMby Lofqvist,Same issue here, started showing strange graphics bugs after upgrading to Mavericks but two days ago the screen started to split while working in Photoshop n osx got unresponsive. A reboot fixed it temporarily until I worked with Photoshop again. Yesterday the graphics went really bad n this morning the boot screen with apple logo is distorted and then a white/grey screen halts it. Was lucky to have it on warranty so we will see what the service center will do. Must say that this kind of problem is severe, had many laptops before but nothing like this and seeing all the posts in this thread is alarming!
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Jan 23, 2014 1:59 PMby seangee600,Well I'm not sure there is any point in posting but mine does it too.
It started intermittently and I realised it happened while switching processors and installing gfxCardStatus and forcing integrated seemed to keep it at bay and I was able to go for weeks without a crash. I didn't mind losing the discrete processor as the machine ran cooler and the apps that flipped processors ran fine on the built in monitor (mosty Parallels and the Adobe CS6 suite)
In the last week or so I have been getting a lot of crashes daily and the usual (it seems) problems re-booting. Thanks to the info in this thread I have now disabled switching via the energy preferences and disabled gfxCardStatus. I have also turned on smcFanControl. Time will tell whether this works or not. I did try a shutdown and restart and had the same startup problem. When I checked preferences this setting had reset to enable automatic switching.
Rather sadly I replaced my previous MBP with the early 2011 model because it developed a problem with the graphics processor shortly after 3 years. Recently I have been considering adding a Macbook air and possibly another MBP to my collection. I am now having second thoughts as in my experience they appear to have a far shorter lifespan than I experience with PCs. My natural choice is to use a Mac and OSX but there isn't really anything I couldn't accomplish on Linux or Windows. I already have my storage and software setup so that I can work on anything on any of my machines. My biggest regret would be amount I have invested in Mac software.
Hopefully this will allow me to extend the usable life of this particular MBP but it looks like I will be purchasing a laptop PC in case it doesn't as I can't afford not to be portable.
I haven't read every post in this thread but this does appear to be a case of hardware that is not quite fit for purpose and I do hope that Apple is able to provide a solution for their customers that does not involve shelling out money for repairs or replacement.
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Jan 23, 2014 4:37 PMby Timbo91,Same issue here as well... It happens when I switch to "fullscreen display mode" within Final Cut Pro. As you can all see, the screen freezes and splits the image, causing a system crash.
Seeing this many post and no response from Apple, it seems to me that this issue is falling on Apple's "billion dollar" deaf ears, I sincerely hope that I'm wrong and this major issue will be promptly rectified.
