Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

Also facing this issue. 2011 Early AMD 6750M GPU. Hoping for the best solution soon.

guys , went to apple store and the genius advised needs a logic board and refused to admit the fault. Anyways came back home bought a hot air gun. Cleaned the logic board reballed it and its working perfectly.

I downloaded the gfCardStatus app, and realised  a battery app I had installed was forcing my computer into permanent discrete graphics and couldn't switch back to intergrated.

Perhaps this was causing my issue? I guess I can only wait and see.

The app I was using was Battery Time Remaining.

Oh man, some pics or video or instructions would be great. How to reball? Cleaned which parts? Anything????

use ifixit.com instruction to remove logic board

clean all the old residue off the heatsink

use heat gun over the GPU in circular motion for 4 minutes

make sure u dont apply excessive heat.

let it cool down

apply new thermal paste

reassemble the heatsink and logic board back to the macbook.

{ there is a risk that u might permenantly damage the logic board if u overheat it.}

be carefull and don't blame me if u screw up

Evedesert-eagle wrote:

 

guys , went to apple store and the genius advised needs a logic board and refused to admit the fault. Anyways came back home bought a hot air gun. Cleaned the logic board reballed it and its working perfectly.

 

{ there is a risk that u might permenantly damage the logic board if u overheat it.}

 

be carefull and don't blame me if u screw up

desert-eagle wrote:

 

use ifixit.com instruction to remove logic board

clean all the old residue off the heatsink

use heat gun over the GPU in circular motion for 4 minutes

make sure u dont apply excessive heat.

let it cool down

apply new thermal paste

reassemble the heatsink and logic board back to the macbook.

 

{ there is a risk that u might permenantly damage the logic board if u overheat it.}

 

be carefull and don't blame me if u screw up

That's not really a reball and you were lucky,

Let's hope for you it's permanent.

But hot air guns/paintstrippers are for stripping paint, not rework.

Marc Leftoff:

 

Oh man, some pics or video or instructions would be great. How to reball? Cleaned which parts? Anything????

That is a hit and miss repair. Mostly a miss, often destroying it completely.

There are some rules to follow which you can't do correctly that way.

If you're lucky it works. Mostly only temporary.

If you fail, it might be unrepairable.

Most rework shops won't even try to repair DIY fails anymore.

Or maybe only with a non-refundable patly payment in advance without any warranty for success.

Problem is often the pcb itself is damaged what you will only seen after taking off the chip.

Even putting on a new chip won't fix it anymore.

Most repair shops ask a reasonable fair price.

But f you want to take the risk...

I agree with D3us, what desert-eagle did doesn't look like a reball, more like a good clean up.

Just watched a video from a site/shop called uken (just woogle reball macbook pro) and honestly, if that the right way to do it, I won't even take the risk.

It's already a tedious and dangerous task to just remove the logic board without screwing anything up.

Personaly, I am now waiting for my apointment at the genius bar in two days, will bring as much documentation as possible to avoid the "never heard of this issue, you must be one in a million" or whatever speech.

Already did the online chat, the phone call, the petition, the facebook page and the email to Cook.

Will see how Apple handle this in France and will report it here.

Why not try anything if you are just going to get it replaced?

Hi buzzart

I'm in NZ too and I'm suffering the same issue. Can you elaborate on how you managed to get this covered by the Consumer Guarantees Act? Was their any push-back? Did you have to jump through hoops?

My initial letter to email to apple was reasonably stern and I quoted the CGA and my intention to use it if necessary. As I mentioned, I was somewhat surprised that I didn't have to then argue my case further, which has always been the case when trying to get redress under the CGA in the past (with two Sony PS3s, for example).

It took a few days for Apple to be convinced that it was a problem with the graphics/logic board but Cyclone were great, sending in video and system logs of the problem. They even quoted the CGA to Apple for me.

The only fly in the ointment, as I mentioned, was the almost immediate failure of replacement logic board. Apple have again agreed to replace all parts as needed.

As an aside: this problem is not limited to this generation of laptops either: I had an original 15" titanium Macbook Pro (with the first generation of Intel chips used in Apple laptops) and the graphics card failed on that as well. We managed to resurrect this laptop by taking it apart and using a heat gun to reflow the solder on the graphics card. It failed again just the other week after maybe 18 months of good service (my son had been using it for all that time). We tried the same trick with a Yellow Light of Death (YLOD) PS3 and got about 3 months more life out of it. This is why I believe it is a problem with either the lead-free solder or the manufacturing technique used to attach the daughter boards to the main logic (mother) board.

In the future I will only buy laptops with integrated graphics as they seem to experience fewer problems.

So, I'm a new member of this club. I started getting the "super 3d effect" and the "image shift" problems, as well as some freeze, two days ago. After several hours spent with the hardware tests and other stuff, with no problems reported, one hour ago I figured out that the graphic card switch could be the cause and found this thread.

I can confirm the problem with gfxCardStatus: every time I switch to the Radeon the problem occurs. MacBook Pro Late 2011 bought new one year and one month ago.

For now I've locked the Intel card and I hope I'll be able to work in the very next days. In the meantime I'll contact Apple to have a quote of the repair, and then decide.

Add me to the disappointed crowd.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am with you. Core i7 2.0 GHz MacBook Pro bought in June 2011 for my wife, now is just a time-killer, as I am fruitlessly trying to resurrect it or, at least, find a solution. It is my second SUCH an experience with AMD/ATI chips gradually failing in Apple hardware in 20 years of using Macs. First one was iMac Core2Duo, Sept. 2006, with Radeon X1600, and I am writing from it at the moment, it works somehow, just with all ATI* KEXTs deleted from the system. MacBook Pro's symptoms were a bit different (it is simply unable to complete the system startup with a login window), but I am sure that the reason is the same. Overheating chips and degrading over the time soldering. Technological process is not good enough to produce something really portable that would serve for more than mere 2-3 years, forcing us to buy new and new hardware.

Does anyone know if a clean install of Mavericks might help? Again, I'm running Mountain Lion which was upgraded to from Lion, which was upgrapded to from Snow Loepard. So I have update on update on update OS.

I'm just wondering if a clean install might help?

Marc: I can tell you that I cleaned installed mavericks on a brand new SSD in December, and experienced this issue for the first time in mid-January. So, no, I don't think a clean install avoids the problem.

So, this happened to me, and I have to share it because it seems to have SOLVED THIS PROBLEM and I don't really understand why. I'm going to share everything that happened today so that maybe someone can shed some light, and maybe it'll help someone else.

TLDR: I was booting to blue screen, but running a Verify Disk and a Repair Disk twice (in that order) using either target mode or an external enclosure fixed my graphics card problem. Has this phenomenon been reported before, or can anyone else try it out and report back? Just what the heck is going on?

I have 15" early 2011 macbook. I upgraded the ram myself, and this past december I installed a new SSD and put a clean version of Mavericks on it. In mid-January I experienced this graphics cards issue. It started with a screen shift. Two days later I got the 3d/interlaced effect. I did a hard shutdown and rebooted to a blue screen. I took it to an authorized repair center, they replaced the motherboard a week later, and my computer had been good until this very morning.

This morning, the screen shift happened again. I was able to shutdown safely. Rebooted, launched chrome and the screen shifted again almost immediately. Repeated safe reboot again, this time backed up some files first, launched Chrome again: Shift. So I'm noticing a pattern here. I removed all strain on the graphics card (disconnected external monitor), booted, and this time launched Safari. No problem. Did a little more research and learned about GFX CardStatus, so I downloaded that and launched it. My plan at this point was to see if launching Chrome would cause another shift, but before I did that I tried changing GFX CardStatus from Dynamic Switching to indiscreet. I instantly got 3d/interlaced effect, was forced to hard shutdown, and got a blue screen upon boot.

Fast forward to this evening. I was planning to take my Macbook back to the repair center tomorrow, but wanted to put the original ssd back in so I could use the new ssd on a nearby Mac Pro and continue working (external boot). I put the old drive in the macbook, tried a boot. I fully expected it to go to blue screen. Instead, it got stuck on a grey screen with no apple logo. Tried a NVRAM reset, no change. So I'm figuring that right now it looks like the old drive needs a disk verification and repair. I booted in target mode and used the mac pro and the following in disk utility, and IN THIS ORDER (this seems important somehow): Repair Disk, Verify Disk, Verify Disk again (was an accident but I decided to wait it out). Ejected target drive, rebooted macbook, walked away for a moment.

When I came back I again expect a blue screen, but I instead found the desktop waiting for me. What?? Okay weird, what the ****. I took advantage of the moment to go ahead and download GFX CardStatus for this particular drive. Switched from dynamic to indiscreet with no problems, I bounced between indiscreet and discreet several times with no issues. So I put GFX SS back on dynamic, and launched Chrome. Then I spammed facebook tabs, about 20 or so, and then started closing them quickly. I actually saw GFX SS switch to discreet, and the screen immediately shifted. Now, if you're thinking that 20 facebook tabs shouldn't force into discreet mode, I'd agree with you and you'll see that this situation changes shortly.

Now I quit out of chrome, and the screen UNSHIFTED as it switched back to indiscreet. This was new to me and I hadn't read about it elsewhere.  At this point I did something that forced another 3d/interlaced effect and a blue screen on reboot, though I don't remember exactly what... so I figured okay, let's try another disk repair.

Target mode again, this time I did a Verify Disk and Repair Disk, one time each, in that order. rebooted, and I got the blue screen. So I went back to target mode, and did the exact same thing I did before. Repair Disk, Verify Disk twice. Reboot, BACK TO DESKTOP.

Now I am really intrigued. I bounce the GFX SS mode several more times with no problems. Launched chrome and spammed and ridiculous amount of tabs: now no problems. Huh?  I made sure to launch some 1080p videos, still no problems. So then I downloaded some graphic stress tests (http://unigine.com/products/heaven/ the quickest thing I found with a fast google) and ran the successfully. I did everything in discreet mode, indiscreet mode, and with dynamic mode. I could not get the graphics problems to return. I tried really hard because I can't take the macbook back to the repair center if there is nothing visibly wrong.

At this point, I decided to put the new SSD back in, but I followed the Repair-Verify-Verifiy process using an external drive enclosure first. Put the SSD back into the macbook, booted, had to do a NVRAM reset, and boom desktop. I did all of the same testing: found it **** near impossible to force an automatic switch to discreet mode in Chrome, but found switching worked fine with the graphics stress test, and I just could not get the card to fail again.

So now I am back home, writing this with the macbook with a total "graphics card failure" just this morning, using the external monitor. I can't test any more because the problem hasn't returned -- and I'm not saying it's not going to.

TLDR: I was booting to blue screen, but running a Verify Disk and a Repair Disk twice (in that order) using either target mode or an external enclosure fixed my graphics card problem. Has this phenomenon been reported before, or can anyone else try it out and report back? Just what the heck is going on?  Am I just crazy? I don't know, but maybe this will help some people.

Very interesting! Well, I don't have a SSD drive to test, but I do have a 500GB 7200 Seagate installed that I can test the similar methods on. I'll try tomorrow and see what develops.

Hey who know, maybe it will work. I'd be psyched if it did.

Try using iPhoto or Aperture in full screen mode. Do some advanced image editing like cloning or retouching. Also, if you have Photoshop, try that too, Or even playing a full screen QT video - maybe an H.264 MP4 file and try scrubbing the playhead fast. That'll tax it!

I like your feedback and optimism. I'll be in touch. I'll use an external volume to boot and give Disk Utility a try.

Thanks. I'll be in touch.

Fingers crossed....