Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

One tip - don't pay to have the logic board replaced.

Find a good reputable repair center that can reball your GPU - cost is anywhere from $140-200USD and warranty ranges from 6-12 months. A logic board replacement is no real 'fix' while reballing is.

There are some good shops in the UK and US... just ask (depending on which country you're in).

Clinton

Hey Clinton,

Thanks for your tip I live in The Netherlands so I will look for a repair centre who can do this repair.

We've has a few folks from the Netherlands here able to find good reball repair centers - maybe someone will pop up with a location?

Clinton

Hello, Clinton Thanks !

Any users from The Netherlands who brought their Macbook Pro 15 inch Late 2011 to a good reball repair center ?

Thanks,

Andy Gee

My macbook pro (8,2 15" late 2011) had the ATI GPU problem after about 7800 hours of activity, obviously after 2 years and 1 month, so no warranty. I treated it maniacally, I used a cooling pad to refrigerate it. It begins overheating more than usual on the bottom the last months and one day it gave me the blu lines on the screen, without booting. I managed to get it working using the overheating method (like somebody suggested earlier, similar to the xbox360 method) and forcing it to operate with the intel gpu with gfxcardstatus. If I do not use the mbp for a day the problem returns and I must do the overheating method again. Also windows would not boot without the overheating method, so it is clearly an hw problem, caused by the bad design of the cooling system. The strange is that now it seems to work also with the ATI discrete gpu, but it gets incredibly hot and sometimes the right side of the keyboard stops working...

It is not amenable to the normal probability of an electronic failure so I think the recall should be the only acceptable solution from Apple, like they did in the past and like Microsoft did with the design flaws of the first version of the xbox360. Hope to hear something official from Apple soon, I am really disappointed.

Update: took the data doubler out and put the old optical drive in. Started up like a champ. I logged in with the account I had created for Apple to find the graphing calculator running some visuals, I assume for stress testing. I let it continue for 10 minutes before I watched the computer power down.

I restarted hoping to get some logs off the machine but it no longer chimes when I power on. No safe mode. No P-RAM, safe mode, etc.

I was at the local Apple Store here in Italy (Milan area) last Saturday, for my iPhone 5 is a *lucky* member of the "Sleep/Wake button Replacement Program" and I brought my crap-MBP-early-2011, which is unusable since last October. After my first visit there last September and after having written to tcook (twice), after having had one of the first articles describing this issue published on line, after a couple of feedbacks on the Apple Website and most of all, after a few hundreds pages on this discussion, I wanted to check if something had changed.

Indeed the "genius" this time was definitely aware of the problem; he was convinced that Apple will do something sooner or later (next Winter was his forecast); he said they are well aware of the problem and they keep attention to discussions like this and to the feedback that comes from users and *mostly* from the Apple Stores around the world. At last, he greeted me with a mere "good luck".

My next laptop won't be a mac if Apple keep ignoring their customers.

rikk74, where did you go?
At the apple store of Carugate (Carosello) or Rozzano (Fiordaliso)?

same problem here. macbbok freezes when the system switches to the discrete card.

please apple do something!

Today I brought my Macbook Pro 15 inch late 2011 to a Apple repair centre in NL

They informed me that the systemboard is defect and had to be replace for € 659.14

I bought my macbook in 28/06/2012

They do not want to know that al lot of customers have the same problem with the systemboard logicboard.

But they are aware about this problem.

Today I brought my Macbook Pro 15 inch late 2011 to a Apple repair centre in NL

They informed me that the systemboard is defect and had to be replace for € 659.14

I bought my macbook in 28/06/2012

They do not want to know that al lot of customers have the same problem with the systemboard logicboard.

But they are aware about this problem.

Hey luxsar, I went to Carosello.

Add me to the long list of victims of this failure. I have an early 2011 15" MBP with 256G SSD and 1TB magnetic drive in the optical bay. Glitches started several months ago and have progressed. Most happened when using photoshop, which I do often. Problem is mitigated but not eliminated by using SMC fan control to keep the temps below 120F... but this will cause early wear on fans, and excessive ust buildup... and as of now is no longer reliable. A clean install of 10.9.2 on my magnetic HD seems slightly more stable, but HD video on an external (1900x1200) display reliably crashes it.

Interestingly I can sometimes bring it out of glitch mode by "jazzing" the GFX processor by either taking VLC out of full screen mode, closing the clamshell, or disconnecting/reconnecting the external display.

Apple used to have a reputation for standing behind thier products, which is one of the reasons thier high prices are justified. The slow response on this issue is causing a lot of lost productivity, and ill will. Hope they get it together and do right for thier loyal users before we sour on them completely.

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I have MBP 15" early 2011 and i got the same issue with you guys. Glitches started about 4 months ago. Apparently now sometime i can't boot my mac its got stuck at Apple Logo Scene.