Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

My early 2011 15" MBP came down with this problem last week. Sent an email to Tim Cook and received a phone call today from a representative. They refuse to aknowledge the problem or to repair the laptop out of warranty. After a long chat I got absolutely nowhere. A logic board replacement is going to cost me $850. This is a darn shame. Thinking about cutting my losses and ditching Apple altogether.

Update: Brought my laptop to the local repair shop in Bloomington, Indiana last week. Tested out fine of course, but they found some corrupted files so insisted on trying another OSX reinstall.  On Monday, they finally agreed it was a logic board/GPU problem and sent it off to Apple Depot for logic board replacement.

I just got it back today ~48 hrs. later. They were even nice enough to replace the top case/keyboard and optical drive! Total price was $399 so I need it to last, but I'm optimistic so far.

My early 2011 MacBook Pro is starting to do the same thing. I plugged it into an external display yesterday and all of a sudden red streaks appeared across any black color on the screen. I'm brining it to Apple tomorrow.

Apple will not do anything more, we'll have to spend as alway ...

freeisin seems to me the only "premium"  about it is a "premium price".

Technically a macbook pro is just like a pc laptop motherboard.

Same components, maybe some extra like thunderbolt, but apart from that, not different from others.

Yes, it might have another form factor, smaller, but basically it's the same.

Manufactured in the same factories other electronics are made.

Profit is the most important thing for Apple.

Wonder why they saved money on?

For the record, in regular pc laptops the same rules apply.

Most laptops are larger, don't get as hot and usually have larger cooling elements resulting in better heat dissipation.

Just want to add another data point to the growing list. Same issue as everybody else: blue/black stripes, gray screen, gray and white stripes, pure blue...I've now had them all. Have gfx and that seems to stabilize a bit, but the screen and/or the system will still arbitrarily freeze at least once per day.

Early 2011 MBP, bought in the US but fairly customized now. Since the problem began, I've tried an OS reinstall, put new RAM in the machine...you name it. Nothing works for long. I've got my Genius bar appointment tomorrow and I'm bracing for a big repair estimate, as I'm out of warranty and live in Switzerland. Ah well...at least my late 8 year old MBP still works...

Did you talk to Bob? 

Ok just to update and  add my two pennies in...

My Macbook gave me a weird greenscreen and the blue screen of death a few weeks ago.

Took it into the genius bar who denied all knowledge of GPU issue, which is miraculous considering these guys are meant to be Mac geniuses and I, and many other Mac consumers are all too aware of this issue, as are an incrasing amount of journalists and online Magazines.

They said they would call me once they knew what the issue was, and a week later I got an email saying my Macbook was repaired and ready for delivery with an invoice for £416.00!!??? Errrr, no.

Arrived at the store for them to tell me they replaced the logic board and it's resolved the issue.

I asked then what the specific issue was and they couldnt tell me!!!! I asked this second "genius" if the discrete graphics card was tested and he said we wouldnt test or replace that because its integrated, we just replace the board.

So I'm supposed to pay over £400.00 for a repair, they can't tell me what th issue is and they have no knowledge of the GPU issue, which is in fact a built in flaw, and  there's no guarantee it won't reoccur with the new board that's likely built in exactly the same way. All with a very unreassuring 3 month warranty. Wow Apple, Premium product and service huh?

I told them I was unsatisfied and to reverse the repair and picked it up the following day.

When I got home read up on forums on my partners PC and tried the following trick;

Started up the machine in recovery mode / once you arrive at a blank screen or the blue screen of death and you hear the fans running close the machine and let the fans whir away for an hour or so./ Restart the machine, if you do this a few times you may get the chance to login in normally./ Before doing anything, go straight online and download gfx status/ you will then be able to manually choose the integrated graphics card and the computer will work in a semi normalish manner. switch to the dscrete graphics card, run some video or photoshop and see what happens. It's clearly the issue.

And I'm no genius.

The Macstore "geniuses" could care less about this. He told me a recall or extended warranty for a 2.5 yr old machine is highly unlikely so basically Apple for all intense and purposes are giving us the finger. I've had Macs for over 15 years, this is the most expensive Mac which has lasted the shortest amount of time, with the worst customer service.

I will not give Apple another £400.00+ of my hard earned money for them to offer me another fault embedded logic board that will fail again if I use the machine like a Pro wants to use it.

I'm going to run it like the until it dies, pay some money to get the GPU reballed/soldered and the thermal paste removed and when it finally dies, sell it for scrap and get a kick *** PC.

Unless there's a recall, I'm done.

The Post Jobs era has arrived people. It's a new day. I suggest we vote with our feet.

I am also in same boat. Blue screen or greens screen.seems like loose connection between gpu and logic board

Unfortunately, it seems like I am the newest member of this club. No point discussing my problem. It's one and the same. After going through all 205 pages, I just wanted to throw my Macbook off the balcony.

But it cost me US$2500.

My prayers and thoughts are with you all.

I signed this petition below, i suggest you guys to do so until apple issue a free repair sheme.

http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/timothy-d-cook-replace-or-fix-all-early-20 11-macbook-pro-with-graphics-failure

My issue is the same, only now along with the failure to boot my hard drive is "not accessable" so I have lost all my music I have been collecting and producing over the last 2 years as I spend a lot of my time DJ'ing and producing. Thousands of euros gone, unluckily for me I had just formatted my external drive to do a full backup of my machine when this issue was happening so I have no backup at all. ... Got a lovely appology from apple representative Martin but a big **** off as well.

Anyway this may already  have been said on this forum and may not apply to everyone here but I may as well pass on what I have learnt from my conversations with the "help" line.

If you bought you computer withing the EU (or any countries with similar consumer laws) you should get onto Apple, explain the issue as I did (pointing to this forum, explaining very sternly you wont be messed around with on this as you know the issue at hand blah blah), and they should tell you to take it to a store to get a full diagnostics check (after running you through some simple processes to determine wether or not you can boot the computer) and even though the computer may be past its 2 year warranty there is (in the EU's case anyway) a 6 year consumer law warrenty if you can determine that the issue was there from purchase.

Not sure if I'm explaining myself very well but basically if I had bought my MBP in Ireland (or the EU) rather than Thailand then Apple said they would be covering all costs of repair to the logic board... All I can try now is to fly back to Bangkok, find the Apple store I purchased it at and try a claim through them... yeah right! ..Unlucky for me but hopefully some of you out there can claim like this.

I would post the free phone number and extension to the guy I spoke to at Apple as he is a senior guy there aparently but I would imagine he would delete the post....

Asked why there was no apple reply here, they said they have nothing to do with the forums,...

jaime1985, your boot failure is not related to the logic board problem, have you try to restart your computer in target mode (pressing t on start up) and plug it onto another computer to see if you can access its content ?

or take the HD out and put it in a HD case or dock, if you really can't access to anything in it you will stil be able to run a discovery software at some point, might not be all lost.

same problem. blue tint at first, then after some months it started the lock up thing. no way to restart, only the white light is on and still.

I have not tried this but it is currently in an Apple representatives store and they have been trying to back up my data sinces yesterday with what they said was an "expensive piece of software which usually works" .. they are still trying but its saying it has a few thousand hours to complete transfer stuff...

The lines down the screen were happening for a while until I disabled the switch to the AMD card but I needed to restart to backup my data as time machine wasnt working and will not switch on at all now..

Have been through all the steps with Apple rep's on the phone, took it for a full hardware checkup as they said and came back with the logic board failure

Thanks for you suggestions I am not sure what to do if they cannot backup the data in the Apple store though.. maybe a private company will do a better job I dont know.... very annoyed ::((