Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

I'll just add here that I got the logic board and memory replaced recently due to this very sudden discrete graphics problem. I was quoted the $310 for the flat rate repair and received my computer in a timely fashion. I figured that price beat buying a new computer, I was happy with the speed of my MBP 2011 as I don't do anything more than surf the web and word processing nowadays. My computer was still usable in integrated, just not if it switched.

Got the laptop back today and within first bootup, I load up Chrome (which causes graphics switch) and in about 30 seconds, the computer crashes to an even worse state than it was before. It's like they switched the board out with a computer that had a progressively worse problem. I believe the problem still is related to the graphics.

I want a recall or some reimbursement. Even if I got $310 back for the flat rate repair, I'm left with a computer in worse shape than it originally was. I hate Apple so much right now, I'm switching back to PC...typing this from my 7 year old computer that still works today even though I crashed it multiple times from the heat of gaming and graphic design.

Man for real!?

The new board died that quickly?!

How is that even possible - how could they have possibly shipped it back without the most basic testingn and quality control? That's discouraging.

What have they said on follow up?

Thanks for your post, iniquus. This is the kind of info I need to help decide if I should bother with the repair. I told the Apple Advisor that I was very concerned that until they publicly recognize the issue my Mac would be returned "fixed" with the exact same hardware that is goofing it up now. He didn't seem concerned. He even went on to say that he has a 2011 Macbook Pro 13" and hasn't experienced the issue. I'm pretty sure that the 13" didn't even have an AMD card in it.

It just shows that Apple is focused more on talking themselves out of the situation and less on actually listening to the data and working on a solution. I would just be happy if I could hear someone at Apple acknowledge that a problem exists.

I worked at Best Buy while going to college and I sold hundreds of Macs because I believe in the company and I appreciate their values. Computers are just plastic and metal. They will break. What I was selling was the idea that Apple was a company that stood by their products.

I certainly feel left out in the cold at this moment. And I worry about all those people I sold these units to. None of us could ever have known that these AMD cards weren't top notch. I remember when they announced this tech we were all excited. People rushed out to buy these units because of this very fact.

Now for some additional data:

I looked through the logs to see what had been going on. During the moments where my machine would freeze I saw this.

Jan 23 21:40:27 WindowServer[94]: Received display connect changed for display 0x4273380

Jan 23 21:40:27 WindowServer[94]: Found 60 modes for display 0x04273380 [51, 9]

Jan 23 21:40:35 kernel[0]: GPU Hang State = 0x00000000

Jan 23 21:40:35 kernel[0]: AMDTurksGraphicsAccelerator: ** Device in slot: SLOT--1 **

Jan 23 21:40:35 kernel[0]: ** GPU ASIC Log Start **

Followed by a list of numbers in the format of 0x00000000. And then this series of lines repeated several times (until a manual power down).

Jan 23 21:41:42 kernel[0]: GPU hang:

Jan 23 21:41:42 kernel[0]: Trying restart GPU ...

Jan 23 21:41:43 kernel[0]: GPU Hang State = 0x00000000

Also, concerning the booting issue I would see something like this

^@^@^@^@^@^@^

repeated hundreds of times at the moment when the Apple logo would disapper and I was left staring at a grey screen or even the bright blue one with vertical lines.

I searched for some of these log messages and turned up some threads on the 2011 iMac Radeon 6970M issue. https://discussions.apple.com/message/20394072#20394072

The iMac problem was recalled. http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5167

It looks like our problems are very similar. We need Apple to make this right so that we can all get back to work.

krislo wrote:

 

Man for real!?

The new board died that quickly?!

How is that even possible - how could they have possibly shipped it back without the most basic testingn and quality control? That's discouraging.

What have they said on follow up?

My MBP's first replacement logic board was faulty pretty much as soon as it came home, too.  One of the major problems with the diagnostics for this issue is that hardware testing may come up as normal even when the GPU is clearly having issues.  So I assume that when they tested the replacement board and/or the finished repair, it came up fine.  It seems to take stress testing with GPU-intensive tasks to turn up issues that the hardware test (even the fancier one the Genius Bar uses) don't find. 

It is very discouraging.  The second was having trouble after a couple of weeks, and the third is now going strong since September... but I'm worried it'll eventually show the same issues.  Clearly, replacement logic boards may not resolve the issue. 

cmorgannorris wrote:

 

He even went on to say that he has a 2011 Macbook Pro 13" and hasn't experienced the issue. I'm pretty sure that the 13" didn't even have an AMD card in it.

They don't.  So if an AMD Radeon 6xxxM is what's causing our woes, the 13" models are immune.  Forum posts and survey responses would seem to back this up - I have yet to see a 13" owner report this problem. 

Ronald Higgins wrote:

 

The difference in price is based on where they do the repair:

 

Sending it out = $310

Doing it in the store = $500ish

 

So you are paying more to keep your computer on-site and save a little travel time.

I haven't posted this about flat-rate depot repairs in a while and it seemed worth reiterating:

$310 is the pricing for Tier 1 service, which is the lowest rate offered for 15" MacBook Pros in immaculate physical condition. As I understand it, there are four tiers, each one a few hundred bucks more expensive than the last one, and the repair depot will select a tier based on the condition of your computer. If it has some dents and dings (and Apple's official dent detection tool can diagnose dents that are less than a millimeter deep), you might go up to Tier 2, which was quoted to me as $610. Tier 3 would be for more serious damage, at around $910. I've only heard of Tier 4 being quoted (at $1200 or more!) when someone has a machine that has been damaged by tampering - unauthorized service, non-Apple parts, etc.

The Genius Bar that initially diagnoses your machine and sends it into the depot for you will quote you a cost based on the tier that they think is appropriate, but once it makes it to the depot, the folks there may re-quote at a different tier. I was told that if that happened, they'd call me to find out if I was willing to authorize a more costly tier of service. Fortunately, I stayed at the same tier and didn't get the dreaded phone call.

So I always caution people who latch onto the idea of $310 service - your machine may or may not qualify for that level depending on its condition. I was stuck with Tier 2 even though my laptop only had one very subtle dent, but that was enough to bump it up to the next level. The cost for higher tiers may not be as competitive with in-store repair service - for my MacBook Pro, Tier 2 service at $610 is more expensive than a logic board replacement at $525. That said, if they do an in-store logic board replacement, the 90-day warranty only covers the logic board. If you paid a bit more for the depot repair, they will repair/replace anything they think could use it and the 90-day warranty covers the whole laptop.  So there are some possible benefits to paying a little more for depot repair, even when it's at Tier 2. 

D3us wrote:

 

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.

D3us - Thanks for the great info!   I just got my repaired 15" 2011 Macbook back (GPU replacement) and I'm currently running the Heaven and Prime 95 stress tests on it right now, thanks to you!  Just having my Macbook boot and run without issue is happiness, but the stress tests will really let me know if the replacement was truly effective.   I have a 30 day warranty on the replacement, so I plan to put it through the ringer before then...   So far so good, but as we all know, only time will tell...

Hi, one more case over here. I just had to repair my early 2011 macbook pro 15" for same grafic card problem. Because of my job i didn't had the time to wait an issue from apple. It cost me 627€. Too much after 2/5 year. Hope apple will assume and refund! Does anyone know if some justice procedure is going on? thank you and keep posting!

My 2011 MacBook Pro crashed hard yesterday. The same glitches, banding, and freezing issues as everyone else. I called Apple and the guy said he hadn't heard of of this issue, which I find unlikely. Clearly our MacBook Pros are dropping like flies. I want Apple to do the right thing and recall this model. I was going to sell this computer and upgrade, but if I have to pay hundreds of dollars because of Apple'd mistake, that won't be happening any time soon.

It is absolutely amazing that everyone does not pay the same price for the same problem! I find it outrageous limit ...

I feel like I'm about to join this giant family, the one with 2011 MBPs and its legendary logic board, nice to meet you all !

Now to the facts, 2 days ago I got a freeze when trying to launch my web browser. Rarely experienced it but I didn't panic, just pressed power button to shut down, no other option.

But the restart process got scary, fans went crazy, black screen then a shut down with that sound, the same one you get when you force a shut down or remove an external drive without ejecting it, you know..

First thing in my mind, save everything. Target mode to my friend's iMac and full backup (I thought maybe my internal HD is the problem). When over and done, restarted my little friend and it did without any trouble.

But, same booting issue happened again when I tried to reboot on the recovery partition to use the Disk Utility.

Fans, black screen and shut down by itself. ****.

The I reboot on the system, ok, checked the disk, permissions, asked Onyx, cleaned everything, nothing shady.

Even used the utility DVD disk, did both checks, the short one and the long one, nothing.

Then my screen went messy while using Fireworks, split in two, a total mess. Managed to quit the app, got my screen back. Wow.

So I thought, let's do a clean mavericks install, see if it is a software related problem. Always happy to spend a day getting my stuffs back without importing from Time Machine (personal choice for a really clean install).

Anyway, since I run the new install, haven't experienced any freeze or reboot problem but I yesterday as I was using Firefox and just scrolled down a page, got a grey screen full of vertical black stripes, then black screen, turned to grey and got an error message on the center that I couldn't read since the computer shut down and restart. Got myself an error report this time after reboot.

So basically, I don't know if that is my logic board dying on me, I must say that I got my screen changed within the 1 year guarantee because there was a vertical stripe appearing randomly in the center with various colors and effects, brought it a genius at the bar, they changed it and gave it back to me in 24 hours (was impressed).

Brothers and sisters, what do you think ? Am I having the same illness by judging the symptoms ?

Oh, my MBP model is a early 2011, 2 and a half years old with no apple care, running mavericks since its release and no problem ever except for this screen malfunction.

Hey, another case here. I got a MBP 15-inch, Early 2011 that flickers and freezes immediately when the discrete graphics card is used.

Getting by for now using gfxCardStatus...

/ Jonas

Akamyself, the beginning of your situation sounds exactly like how mine started. I would say that you are in the same boat. After reading all the many threads relating to this error, I have noticed that some users are experiencing problems worse than others but I am convinced that they are all connected. Call Apple Care and tell them about your problem. We've got to get on their radar.

billyreidmusic, this is a legitimate problem with Apple and most customer service in general. There is a slight chance that the specific person you spoke with hasn't heard of the problem. However, that's not an excuse when their company probably has thousands of call representatives. I don't know if you spoke to a senior advisor or not but when I did he recommended asking for one immediately so you can bypass all the step by step support they try to put you through. The advisor I spoke with also suggested filing a report.

Tim Cook recently tweeted a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. that goes like this. "The time is always right to do what is right."

I think it's time to listen to those words and do what is right.

I'll be going back to the Genius Bar today. I'm going to do my best at explaining what we are all up against in the hopes that someone there will realize that something is fundamentally wrong with these units. I still don't know if it would help. Even if they repaired it for free I would still worry that the problem would present itself again. We are going to need a long term solution.