Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

It's interesting you were clean for a few weeks. Had it been a daily problem before he clean install?

Hi Bunnykun,

My problems also miraculously dissapeared. First i did a clean install and that seemed to work for about a week. Than i had to reboot ones or twice a day into a grey screen let the fan speed up for a while turn it off and reboot and it worked fine, i worked like this for a couple of days untill the problem went worse to the point i had to reboot about 50 times so i thought this is the end, but later that day i turned my mbp on one more time and guess what it booted perfectly and since than the problems just stopped ...very strange right? I ran multiple programs that use the discrete card i ran a gpu stress test, but it works fine. I don't think our actions actualy fixed the problems, but no you're not crazy it happened to me too, but i  think in both cases it's just coincidence.

Marc: I had never experienced nor heard of this issue before it suddenly occured a month and a half after my clean install of Mavericks.

Prior to the clean install and new drive I had been using Mavericks for a few months, upgraded from Lion.

You're totally right, that's why I thought I should share with this community. Requires further testing.

A little addendum about my experience: The first time my macbook failed to boot in Mid-January, I did try to boot from the old SSD via an external enclosure, and it booted straight to Bluescreen. Also the apple repair center tried using a known good boot drive and got the same result. Again, that clearly indicates a hardware fault. And it makes absolutely no sense to me that disk utility would resolve it.

Yes very odd. Part of me suspects the hardware, but as these OS versions mature and develop, so do compatibilities and incompatibilities. This seems like it coul be related to software growth and newer versions of specific app and OS that might utilize the GPU differently. Or, is it just a coincidence that right now, all of use are starting to see this problem as a result of time and used equipment.

Might this also be related to a hot computer being more prone to crash than a machine that has just been booted after sitting all night?

Maybe keeping the machine cold helps?

I wonder if we had a brand new, never used identical machine as ours - just out of the box.... run all updates, install Maericks... would it crash?

I just booted this morning after being shut down all night. First thing I did was used gFx to switch machine to "d" mode. Discreet Only. It switched just fine and so far, it's working.  Maybe it's just the action of switcing from integated to discreet graohcs that is causing the crash. Maybe this... maybe that.... this is annoying.

So I'm gong to lauch Aperture right now and try crunching down on some 24.1 megapixel RAW shots from my DSLR while I'm in discreet mode. Maybe..... I'll check back in a few and report what happenned....

My machine is backed up twice now and I'm ready to nuke it with a clean Mavericks install if I must. Then, if the problem persists, I'll drop it with our good frineds over at the Apple Store.

My early 2011 MBP 15" with this logic board issue is finally at the point of it being almost unusable. My MBP is very prone to freezing at this point. I finally took it in to Apple to be diagnosed. The boot to diagnostics screen showed no issues, but when I showed the Apple employee how it has all the lines on the screen when it boots, he acknowledged there was a bigger issue they would have to look in to. He said they had never heard of the issue, and it would probably cost me around $600 for a new logic board. He told me the logic board would be new and nt refurbished.

The key thing he told me was once the diagnosis comes back from their tests, to call Apple and speak to someone in customer relations. I was told to provide them with the model number and the issue so they could look it up in the system. If everyone here who took their 2011 MBP in for repairs called and spoke to Apple customer relations, there is a chance Apple will finally recognize issue. If anyone pays for a new logic board and Apple does decide to cover it in the future, they will refund you the repair costs. Simply even calling in and speaking to an Apple customer relations rep. could mean you might get the cost waved, so if anything it’s worth it for that.

I'm currently still waiting to hear back from Apple about the test results with my MBP, which I took in last friday.

akamyself wrote:

 

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.

Updating my status as a man from Apple's executive relations just called me from Ireland following my e-mail to Tim Cook.

Was told that Apple is aware of the problem and are looking into it while can not promise anything will happen in a near future.

Personal translation, Apple knows many (not all) 15" & 17" 2011 MBP have a logic board failure, they try to find a solution for not happening again but can't find it yet. Until they do, they're inviting all customers to let them do what they can only do for the moment which is to their logic board changed for free with apple care or paying for it without any assurance.

The guy was polite as he should be  but no solution was found or proposed to me but to follow the procedure.

Was offered a discount to buy a new product, though. Funny.

Can't have any discount for a repair but welcomed to have one if I buy a new computer.

Anyway, I think we have been heard but let's keep the pressure on them so they find a real solution faster and so we could go back to our regular life and jobs...

Count me in as another who will also be contacting customer relations to report this issue.

Few weeks a go i took my macbook to technicians who did a discrete graphics card (AMD Radeon HD 6750M) GPU chip replacement.

It was working smooth for one or two weeks,then i got a hard freeze again, this time just with black screen. This freeze repeated in the same way few times again... while i was working with photoshop or even when i wasnt doing anything,just listening music. No graphical artifacts or something.

So, guys from that repairment shop and i started to believe that maybe its overheating or cooler/ heatsink (or whatever its called) problem?

Is it looking normal for you in my sreenshot? Its while i was saving big file in photoshop...this is when it should freeze usually.

And what do you think about all this situation i have after GPU replacement? I though this will be the end of my problems...but... Should i ask them to replace same chip again? But maybe problem exists not in the GPU ? Im lost, please kind people,help me with suggestions.

in the short words...

Im just lost... i replaced GPU because i though this will be the end for my problems and after one week i had similar issue...freeze,black blank screen and nothing to do... just power off,and on, and then its again working... and i had this situation few times in a week...mostly while working on photoshop and sometimes even doing nothing,just listening music.

Like you, I went the "replace GPU" route.  I, too, am hoping that this is the permanent fix. 

In the almost 4 weeks since I've had it back I have not been holding back and have been putting it through it's paces.  I have had one kernel panic in that time...  It happened while I was opening Picasa and the console reported that it was GPU related.  I am hoping that this particular problem is software related and an isolated incident.  I am using Carbon Copy Cloner to back-up to an external drive daily (in addition to my TM back-ups), because I want my data accessible by another operating system.   I will NOT spend any more time or money fussing with this laptop or this brand. 

I have spent a lot of time in the past month researching for a replacement windows/linux machine when this apple finally drops...  My confidence in this product is gone.

paul from south plainfield- have you come up with any ideas for a replacement laptop? I am just starting to look myself as  my MBP is completely dead.

paul from south plainfield- have you come up with any ideas for a replacement laptop? I am just starting to look myself as  my MBP is completely dead.

I'm not Paul, but this -> http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=product_info&model_name=NP9390-S - is what I'm looking at.

Clinton

clinton, that looks straight out of the 80s

But so über-fast! Definitey not something you'd want to carry around campus, but with the dual GPUs, a 17" matte screen, the speedy CPUs, room for four SSDs, etc., ya gotta love it!

And the base price is much cheaper than a Retina MacBook Pro!

Clinton

@ clintonfrombirmingham

Maybe not the Windows answer you are looking for, but I jumped from my MBP to a Mac Mini.  I'm still planning on long-term Windows alternative myself, but needed to immediately get my software and many virtual machines up and running again.   So I removed the 750Gb Momentus hybrid drive from the MBP and put it into the new Mini.  It started right up and, except for the re-registration of a few software packages (due to the new MAC address), all works well.

HTH