Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

paigoomein, you said, "if Apple considers a "castrated but stable MBP" a fix for this issue, then we've got a much larger issue to deal with."

Cheer up, it's actually much worse than that.

Apple has already given clear indication that they don't care about any real fix for any part of this problem.  IOW, Apple ain't considering nothing on this issue.  It's almost as though Apple doesn't exist.  And the few measly attempts by Apple so far appear to be nothing more than an even greater waste of our time and money and further grief.

If Apple really cared about any of this, we wouldn't be engaging in this meaningful dialogue.

Go figure.

no solution yet? it is an bad component failure not corcerning the common usage

Just an honest advise for everybody and its up to everyone to take it or leave it , when you take your computer to Apple and accept to replace the logic board you will be actually giving away a really good logic board you know its history and you know that it hasn't been missed around with before that just needs the graphics chip reballed and it will be perfect again to another logic board that you have no idea what its history is or what it has been through and from what I have been seeing everyday people are regretting doing that and most of them wish they did not give away their logic boards, believe me replacing your logic board by another one from Apple is a big mistake regardless of the cost. Try to find someone to fix yours and don't replace it, Replacing the logic board is the only solution you will get from Apple and unfortunately unless the replacement logic board is really a brand new one accepting that solution is a  big mistake. Don't loose your original logic board.

My Late 2011 Macbook Pro 15" failed a few days ago.  I sent an email to Apple (tcook) and didn't really expect a response.  However, it was forwarded to their support and I received a call to discuss the issue.

After they had me do some testing, they concluded it was a hardware problem.  However, they said it was not a known issue on this Late 2011 model but it was on the previous model.  Well, that's not going to help me.  Of course, tech support was very sorry and the best they could do was offering a $100 discount on a new laptop.  Yeah, after my $2,500 laptop failed after 2 years, I am going to buy another $2,500 Macbook hoping it will last a little bit longer this time.  Not! 

It's like a buying a new $40K car where the engine fails after 2 years (same problem as 1000s of other customers).   And the manufacturer tells you that it needs a new $10K engine because it is not a known issue.  For the price you pay for Apple products, you expect a certain quality.  An if it fails because of a manufacturing issue, the manufacturer should correct the problem.

So my laptop is dead as it doesn't even get past the grey screen.  Hopefully, I can find a good place to have it reballed.  Any recommendations of the services you find on eBay?

Apple Failure #6, Apple lying thru their teeth to their customer base pretending to have little or no knowledge of this egregious matter.

If anybody has a bricked or seriously crippled mbp due to this defect and they live near the Portland, OR area, I'd be happy to see what I can do to get your mbp to a castrated but stable state.  And I'll do it for a song.  Literally, just bring a musical CD (no rap or hip hob) and we'll call it square.

At this juncture, Apple has made it CRYSTAL clear that their lifecycle replace now is less than 1 year on some of their products and that they have no obligations to stand behind their products. 

Therefore, I must now plan the slow and expensive process to migrate away from Apple forever.

So they told you it was a known issue with the early 2011 MBP? Or do you think they meant the 2010 MBP?

I too, would like to hear more about that.

Count another early-2011 MBP among the crowd here.

I've just started getting issues with certain applications and websites triggering crashes that appear GPU-based. The computer crashes and displays a series of horizontal grey bars... or just goes blank. I restarted in Internet Recovery mode the other day to check the disks and during the whole internet download process the screen was flickering wildly like an old-school television with wonky signal. Obviously disk repair didn't help.

I hard-switch it off... and then restart a few minutes later and it works fine. If I restart too quickly though I just get a grey screen.

I'm pretty bummed. I've done quite a few upgrades to this rig... SSD, OWC expander tray so my HDD is in the old Optical Slot, 8GB RAM, etc.

From reading this thread, and checking logic board prices on Ebay, looks like I'll be replacing soon.

I won't slam Apple. I'm a long time user and things like this are bound to happen. It does make you wonder what their internal decision points are for making recalls... this seems like a pretty widespread issue.

Time for repair #3, but I may get a refund - this is to much to backup and reinstall every couple months.

Just had mine die 3 months out of apple care. When it was under warranty I had the logic board replaced for some random problem (I can't remember what happened but I remember they replaced the logic board), then the harddrive went, then a key on the keyboard got stuck. So that was three repairs under warranty and now 3 months out warranty the things gives up the ghost. This thing was a lemon. So annoyed at apple over this, going to the store tomorrow to vent. Not holding out much hope.

Just had mine die 3 months out of apple care. When it was under warranty I had the logic board replaced for some random problem (I can't remember what happened but I remember they replaced the logic board), then the harddrive went, then a key on the keyboard got stuck. So that was three repairs under warranty and now 3 months out warranty the things gives up the ghost. This thing was a lemon. So annoyed at apple over this, going to the store tomorrow to vent. Not holding out much hope.

Such a shame that I didn't know all about this. My early 2011 15" macbook pro failed about a week ago, I was watching a youtube video, and it froze, so I had to force the computer to shut down, but it never came back alive again, stuck in the grey screen, sometimes appears the blue screen with some thin stripes. I had no choice but took it to the Apple store, the person who was trying to repair it for me said it turned out the logic board needs to be replaced, no further explanation. I was desperate to have my computer back so that I could continue working, so I agreed to replace the logic board and paid £416.40. After the replacement of the logic board, my macbook has been significantly slower than before. When I was in the Apple store turning it on, it took forever to open, everything was slow, the staff who brought out my macbook said cuz my mac is only 2GH, and cuz the logic board is newly replaced, it'd be slow at the first couple of times, no further explanation neither. My mac is still very slow... I wonder if that's normal... I'm not very happy with what they respond to my issue, and now I have found out that I'm not alone, I'm so disappointed at Apple how they treat their customers.

Too much thermal paste might be throttling your CPU causing it to be slow.

Seems like the replacement logic board has a kernel panic caused by CPU failure , review the system logs and it will show you that, you should take it back to them.

Thank you for your reply, but could I ask how can I review the system logs....?