Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

It's all stuff to think about, but balanced against my current MBP related loss of earnings situ, I'd probably chance them not spotting a reball when the inevitable recall does happen.

But as someone pointed out above, I might not even need the recall after having my GPU reballed. £170 is neither here nor there, I just need my MBP back in proper working order and I need to wait until my Genius appontment on Monday before I can do anything at all.

I emailed the best reviewed reballer I've found in the UK, they got back to me five minutes later and cleared a few things up.

I'll post my questions and their replies:

• Do you replace the GPU with a brand new one?  Yes we fit a brand new GPU
• Does this include reapplying heat transfer paste, better than Apple apparently did and using Arctic Silver or similar? Yes we use Artic Silver Ceramique.
• Is there any need to do this to the CPU too? We apply new thermal paste to the CPU.
• If you do a reball and Apple subsequently do a recall because of this issue, is the reball likely to be detectable if I encounter further problems beyond your 6 month guarantee? They may but when this issue happened with the NVidia 2007/8 Models customers were reimbursed for 3rd party repairs and had no effect when boards were changed.
• Might as well ask, is it possible to upgrade my GPU at the same time or would I have to stick to the 6770M? The limitations of the board only allows the 6770M (Highest spec option)

Sounds good. Now I just need to wait and see what this Genius enlightens me with on Monday.

Its worth letting you know, I first had this graphical problem in March 2013, when my Early 2011 MacBook pro was already a year out of warranty. Despite insisting this was an inherent problem with this model, I was forced to pay £400 for a new logic board. The problem reoccured after 6 months and Apple agreed to again change the logic board, this time for free. 5 months later and the same problem occurred. Graphical issues, striping, and eventually no booting.

Yesterday Apple swapped my 3 year old base model macbook pro for a brand new top model retina macbook pro. The price difference was £800 but i didnt have to pay a penny.

Escalate the matter to Apple Executive relations. The more people who do this the quicker Apple will recognise it is a big issue and instigate some sort of repair or replacement program.

I had a good resoultion, but had to work for it.

<Edited by Host>

Guys,

I have a question:

After a logic board replacement, has anyone done a rigorous 24/7 test of the new board using the Discrete Graphics Card and seen how long it has lasted? Has it lasted beyond the 90 day warranty?

madog65,

I have the same question as well.  From what I have seen on this thread, you have folks who have not seen issues after the logic board replacement, and those who have had to get it replaced multiple times.  I suspect it is tightly correlatead to how often the laptop is in use, how often the discrete GPU in in use, as well as what percentage of the use is for intensive processing for the CPU and GPU.

First time it happened. Started with vlc playing 1080p video. Second time it was photoshop that killed it. Third time iPhoto.

I'll try to make this short. Last week my MBP seemed to be dead. Couldn't boot unless I overheated the thing, and then PRAM reset. Chatted with Apple on their site, and was setup for diagnostics at the store. So I switched out my upgraded RAM, and went to my Genius appointment; they were really busy. I didn't get to talk to a Genius, but the associate ran some tests, couldn't replicate the problem, but I left it at the store to run the diagnostic. I talked about the GPU issues showing up, but the associate said it could be a lot of different things. He said he's seen grpahical issues, but it could be a number of things.

After 2 nights, I think they forgot about my case because I doin't think it takes that long to run Diagnostics. Well anyways they said there were several Kernel Panics that might be cause by software. So they did a clean install. I've had it for less than a day, and I don't seem to be running into any problems. Their diagnostic said no issues were found. They did offer the $310 flat rate fix, if there was a problem. They reccomended I don't restore from Time Machine because it could've been some type of software causing it. So I've been reinstalling stuff manually. I haven't replaced the RAM yet.

I've ran some GPU/CPU stress tests using Unigine's Heaven. I didn't run it that long, but I also ran VLC, a Youtube video, and Photoshop, with external monitor, while it was running. Extreme slowdown, but I haven't run into any glitches. I'll keep using it as normal now, hopefully I won't see any crashes.

I'll update later if I run into any problems. The week prior I had my system crash multiple times, and unreliable startup, but now it all seems pretty stable. I'm hoping for the best.  If anyone is trying to test alternatives, try the following.

- Replace 3rd party RAM with OEM, or new RAM

- Wipe drive clean and reinstall Mavericks. Don't use Time Machine backup.

I dont' know if these will help, or if my GPU was the actual problem in the first place (I had all the similar symptoms, split screen, vertical lines, gray screen of death), so try this if you've exhausted all the other alternatives. Hope this helps.

I can tell you for sure that it's not about the software - I got screen splits and glitches while installing Mavericks to a formatted hard drive.

Definitely NOT Software - I even took out the HDD and had serious glitching on the apple logo and also when network booting / diagnosis at Apple.

Well.... here's another one.  My wife's early 2011 MBP with the 6750M appears to be on it's way out the door.  Sometimes a reboot brings it back to life temporarily.  Sometimes not.  It's odd especially since AHT reports no errors.  But I'm not really sure if AHT tests much other than the fact that the power's on.

Off to the Genuis Bar I guess.  Probably only to be told "it's not our problem".  Yeah.  Right.

Tom

Just another one chiming in to confirm that switching to integrated graphics, rather than the 6490M discete, has solved my problem so far. Been fine for over a week now. Used to crash, or at least get pixelated screen, every day at least. No longer using external display, I wonder if that might be the bigger problem. Do lots of folks have the discrete graphics problem using the built-in display? It seems so, but I'm not sure.

Well, my early 2011 15" 2.0 GHz mbp has joined this club

My computer started by doing weird screen shifts on boot and static like display when booting.  It got progressively worse, so I set gfxCardStatus to integrated only and bumped the fan speeds up.

I noticed that I was getting crashes in programs that ususaly are quite stable, like XCode crashing on the mouse moved event.  I also noticed that some processes were corrupting data, so I did an extended hardware test which showed no errors. 

I put back the original memory and hard drive into my mbp and reinstalled Lion, then Mavericks, but still weirdness.

Then a few days ago, my machine just gave up the ghost while I was using it.  First it got very hot, much hotter than normal and shut down.  It would not reboot, no way no how.  When I tried, the screen looked like many of the images I have seen in this thread.

The nice folks at the Genius Bar were sympathetic, told me the graphics chip was failing and offered to replace the logic board but it would cost me.

The last few day, my mbp did one of two things.  If I booted normal, I would get the Apple logo followed by a whitish screen with no cursor and that would be all.  If I booted into recovery or safe mode, I got the logo followed by a screen full of blue and black vertical bars.  In hardware test mode, the blue/black bars appeared for a second then cleared and I was able to use the hardware test, which still showed no errors.

My mbp was like this for a few days.  I tried again this morning and the same problems appeared.  I reset the SMC and PRAM but no luck.  I reseated the memory but no luck.

Finally I got my machine working by unplugging the magsafe and unplugging the battery for about 10 seconds.  When I put everything back and pressed power, nothing happened.  The machine did not boot, but about 3 minutes later, without my touching anything, the machine booted and it has been running fine since.    It's been 6 hours.  I've run the extended hardware test, rebooted, and stressed the machine quite a lot.

So I'd be very curious if unplugging the battery for a bit works for anyone else, or if my machine just happened to come back.

Edit:  I should mention that I keep my computer clean of dust and in a well ventilated cool area.

Message was edited by: jbades

I think that removing the battery just forces a switch to the integrated graphics that still work fine. I had a similar effect when the system crashed and I let it run until the battery was completly empty. Pluggin power in again then got the system booting fine using the integrated graphics. But as soon as the high perf GPU gets activated the system crashed again.

Well, you might be right, but I'm happy to at least be able to boot.

Another 2011 MBP owner here. I got the screen with the apple logo and lines after putting mine on sleep mode for a few hours..turned it back on and its never recovered. Went to the 'genius bar' and they were nice enough to tell me that it is probably the GPU but then they told me how much it was going to cost to fix- 600nzd!. I asked them if they could get my data out for me - they told me another ridicoulous fee for diagnosis to see if the harddrive was recoverable.

I took it home and connected via thunderbolt to my imac - pressed T while powering on and retrieved my data myself. The people at Apple repair will not tell you its this simple to save your data they could have atleast tried that and IF that didn't work then yes I would have paid for a diagnostic but why should I when its a GPU problem.

So now my overrated overpriced macbook pro is now just an expensive piece of aluminium .. I guess we all just paid extra for the beautifully designed packaging. Time to sign a petition.