Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

You're by no means alone in your suffering - as you can see by the number of posts here!

Apple's not going to do a thing. They will take your money and replace your logic board, however. This is not a real 'fix.' The only real fix seems to be a BGA reball of the GPU onto the logic board. Cost is usually $200 or so and good reballers offer a one year warranty.

You'll need to find a rebiller in your area - where are you located?

Clinton

MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2011), OS Mavericks 10.9.4, 16GB Crucial RAM, Crucial M500 960GB SSD, 27” Apple Thunderbolt Display

Hi ikkejick,

I totally agree on your post! I'm in the same boat, MBP early 2011 spent $2600.00 for a superfast machine, that is now Pretty piece of aluminum. This was the last time that I've spent money on an Apple product!  ( take note on this one too APPLE!)

Sent from Tlynyrd's iPhone!

I keep receiving notifications for new replies to this thread, but I am unable to access many of them. Trying to click on the discussion links in the notification e-mails, I frequently get the error:

Access to this place or content is restricted. If you think this is a mistake, please contact your administrator or the person who directed you here.

Is this because the posts are being deleted by Apple moderators? What is going on here???

I am getting the same message at times. I am hoping to get to Glasgow in a couple of weeks, back to my point of sale to see about a repair under consumer law.

I have the same problems with the GPU too...My MacBook Pro is an early 2011 Mac too, it doesn't work stable at all, when I try to connect a second LCD monitor I see only stripes and it freeze quite often. I'm very upset because it wasn't cheap at all. Please excuse my english, I'm from Germany. Would be great if Apple will react to this problems and change the GPU on the early 2011 Macs.

Joining the club too. I have the early-2011 MacBook Pro. Spent $2500 on it so that I can do bioinformatics and photo editing work. Issue started like a month back. At least my system does not crash when it switches to AMD GPU. The whole screen just becomes distorted for a few seconds and returns to normal.

I had multiple issues earlier with the 2006 1st gen Intel MacBook 13-inch... if you remember the Moo-ing and discoloration issues (which Apple fixed). I also had another problem where the system would lock up every few seconds. I took it to the Genius Bar several times and they blamed it on the software I installed and never tried to fix it (even after a clean install). I complained to them several times that there was something wrong with the system but nothing was done. I did not use my Mac for almost an year and then the hard drive died and I switched over to a new hard drive and everything started working fine. And I guess almost 5 years later Apple released a statement saying that the Hitachi hard drives that were used in the 2006 model were bad and offered to replace them or reimburse users who payed out of pocket for a new hard drive. Sigh!!!

Not exactly encouraging, but the more people voice their concern the likelier Apple might do something!

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I Agree. The richest (most valuable brand) company in the world should APOLOGIZE for providing to the customers such a piece of junk for a high-end price.  With the "i'm sorry, my bad" there should a free exchange program for users that bought the machine with hidden construction problem for a new MB Pro, according to the model You bought the first time.

Otherwise, they are showing us (the customers), they they are only interested in MONEY, and their love for MONEY is enourmous. This is truly AMAZING.....

So disappointed with thier approach to the matter - the computer can crash, and have problems, but their attitide toward the customer shows that all the pumped up presentations are only shows. No integrity at all Apple. SHAME ON YOU.

Danmcq,

I guess that is true as one of my posts was deleted because the content I posted  "...contained information about beta software available only to Registered Apple Developers." That's what the email from the Apple Mods said.

Hello all! I'm in this thread few weeks ago, but today when a try to login in, i just can see an error message! :/ It sounds like Apple is worrying with this battle!

Last week i wrote a honest letter to tim cook. The day after that, i receive a phone call from apple. "Blablabla, we are sorry, blablabla, we  understand, blablabla, engineers have the last word... but i dont know nothing".

Sounds like they're already starting to become aware of the problem.

Javi, Spain (early 2011 MBP 15" fried)

mrsayer wrote:

 

Not exactly encouraging, but the more people voice their concern the likelier Apple might do something!

Mildly ironic that this webpage makes my machine switch to the AMD GPU.

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spoke to senior apple care day before yesterday said they had to call me back a day later, did so to tell me that they were not going to address, cover repair or recall any part of this! I really hope there is a class action suit... this is unacceptable and my business  (i work in graphics so this problem is very serious to me...) is seriously impacted by this issue that they are failing to address despite the growing numbers of complaints.

My macbook pro went exactly the same way a few days ago. However mine is a late 2011 model, not early 2011 - a 15" i7 model with a Radeon HD 6770M graphics card with 1GB of GDDR5. Switching via gfxcardstatus confirms that this is the cause of my issues. Has anyone in the Uk had any luck getting a free repair with one of these based in EU consumer law?

Gfxcardstatus was working for me as the temporary fix, but every now and then the machine will still randomly struggle to boot up, i get the red lines across the screen etc. - eventually with a p-ram reset or two and simply leaving it for a few hours it will seem to come back to life, temporarily!