Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

Apple Premium Service Provider acknowledged the GPU problem....

BTW also the matte-screen early edition 15" i7, 2.0, 6490M Radeon...

the strange thing is that once the mac is hot enough it will keep on going.....probably because the solder expands and makes better contact...until it gets too hot...(then the ventilator spins usually very loud)

So...a cold MBP crahses from the start....i let it then on for about 20 minutes (while the screen is getting totally distorted), reboot it and only then I can carry on for a while, until it crashes again........obviously cracked solder.....

Kirth_Gersen,

So what were the next steps once Apple Premium Service Provider acknowledged the GPU issue?  What exactly did they say about it?

They are only allowed to replace the  logic board ( no use, i told them that)...apple doesn't allow them to do anything else....however, it was for me essential to get an official statement that it was the GPU...after that i will let a company reball it (has to be a non-apple affiliated company)

paigoomein wrote:

 

Kirth_Gersen,

 

So what were the next steps once Apple Premium Service Provider acknowledged the GPU issue?  What exactly did they say about it?

Hello everyone !2 months ago my macbook pro late 2011 15 had died due to gpu failure...the mbp worked fine no symptoms before of gpu fail at all until suddenly it would not turn on the screen !everything worked well sound ,the mac was booting but no image on the screen!first i thought it was the screens backlight faulty but it was the gpu .So after that I have sent it to a local service where they did a gpu reball + gpu replacement and now it works fine but How much it will last?i don't know..

The reason why they made this procedure is that this combination of cpu (intel i7) + GPU (ATI 6490 or 6770) produces a lot of heat!The gpu's contacts are tiny metal balls that connects the gpu to the logic board and when high temperatures occurs this ball contacts brokes or something like that resulting the GPU Failure.After that tehnicians take apart the gpu from the LB and they are re doing the contacts (Reballing) after they have cleaned the old ones (For those who don't know what reballing is).

I hope that apple will do something since there are a lot of people with this problem.. :)

Add another 2011 mac book pro to the deceased list. I'm not a gamer and I don't use the graphics card anymore than the next typical mac user. I bought my MBP in June 2011. The macbook would get the blue screen every so often over the past 1-2 year, but started becoming increasingly symptomatic over the past 4-6 weeks. It appears as though the MBP was overheating and I carefully monitored the heat with SMC fan control. I got the typical symptoms people have been complaining of. The fuzzy screen, force restart, ect. My MBP had its critical failure yesterday when i was running a web based program called prezi, which is similar to powerpoint in interface. So, I was doing nothing overly demanding on the graphics card. The screen went black and I had to force restart. I could not load a web page at all without having to force restart, and this is when i decided to rip my hard drive documents onto an external hard drive and reinstall the OS. This obviously did not work.

I'm in a situation right now where I can't not have a laptop, so i had to go finance a new one yesterday at best buy. Its really disheartening to me that i spent close to $2,000 on this laptop in 2011 only for it to fail 3 years later. MBP's are not supposed to fail like this.

Emotions aside, I found this thread and it has been helpful in determining what my next step will be, seeing as how i did not purchase the apple care protection plan. Apparently, it would have done me no good because i am outside the 2 year window.

I hope my new mac book air lasts me longer. If anyone has any advice as to who to contact at apple to put this on record, please advise. This thread is HUGE, and trying to read through the entire thing is obviously not possible. Thanks for reading

/rant

Hello, look like it happened to me too. My 17" macbook pro (MD311LL/A) suddently hung, the screen became white. I made a reboot but all I see is light gray screen. When I boot with command R I see blue screen with no options to recover. I replaced memory, hard drive with no effect and got the same issue. My mac doesn`t want to boot and in a minute funs start to work. I didn`t have any problems before, I use 27" external monitor and my book was always open with turned off internal screen. 

Happy to join the club. Sent mine off to ps3Specialist.com after hearing the company line at the Apple Store. And finding out the logic board replacement is only warrantied for 90 days made the decision to go the reballing route easy.

After two recovery disk restarts in 3 days (trapped by blue and gray screens of doom), add me to the list.  Doing everything I can to stem my wife's reaction that "maybe you should just get a new computer" for $3K by the time I get it spec'd to the level of comfort I have with my 2011 MBP 15.  Unbelievable.  Really don't want to have to visit Bob's Reballing Solder Emporium in rural north Florida with what should still be a premium device...

And here is yet another 2011 15" MBP failure! Bought in June 2012 and this past weekend while watching a movie connected to my HDTV the screen started flickering and displaying stripes and then it just crashed and started displaying a blue screen with vertical lines upon booting. So frustrating, especially after seeing that its such a widespread issue! I am without a laptop for 3 days now and many of my work files are on it. Right now its a $2000 brick. Apple should be ashamed that it hasn't started a recall program already!

Oops, I meant bought in June 2011.

And yes, I did sign the petition. I urge others to do so as well!

i suggest you try this: http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/timothy-d-cook-replace-or-fix-all-early-20 11-macbook-pro-with-graphics-failure?recruiter=45766001

FWIW, I attempted the reflow (baking the logic board) today and everything seems to be working so far. I went from not being able to boot past the first apple screen to being able to jump to the discrete GPU w/o crashing (verified through gfxStatus). Not sure how long this will last and I shouldn't have had to do it in the first place, but it's nice to be able to use the machine again and not be limping around on the integrated GPU while doing it.

Seems like a good thing that apple is removing the posts about the petition. They are watching this thread and aware of the situation. Or is a just a bot removing keywords??

BROTHER FROM ANOTHER MOTHERBOARD!

3k Macbook Early 2011

-aka - Fans McGillicutty -aka- Hot Chip -aka- Major Latitude

I have the same issue 15-inch MBP late 2011, ran the Apple Hardware Test with out any problems detected. Previously I could work for a couple of hours, but next day I tryed to backup and it is completelly unresponsive. This is a real pain