Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

Just had a call from Apple.

They arranged a genius bar for tomorrow for me. Free replacement of my logic board. I think I'll be a happy 17' user for a long time. (at least for 90 days)

My late 2011 Macbook Pro screen is now malfunctioning with the streaks of color.  I am going to take it to apple store to file a report.

Where do you live Buddy? I'll Flyer to the Same Store

London mate, i'm covered by the sales of goods act here

My 17" Macbook Pro is now experiencing graphical glitches, I will try and keep it going as long as I can. It's a shame Apple has not done anything about this issue. A statement should have been made even if its not the news I want to hear. Limbo is not a nice place to be.

All I can do as a consumer is refuse to buy any more apple products.

Early 2011 MBP 17" . My GPU is all messed up .Any graphics intensive task and my Mac freezes.

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Does replacing the logic board help ?

Same problem here. 15 inch early 2011 MacBook Pro. Bought in New Zealand, now residing in Brazil. No Genius Bar here....

Christopher, I had the same thought, particularly based on all the logic boards being replaced that aren't 'helping'. No one ever really wants to do a clean install!

I only consider this, because I deleted my AMD drivers and haven't had a problem since - even thought my card is still running in discrete mode for Illustrator and photoshop. Perhaps there are other software 'conditions' that exacerbate the hardware failure/weakness?

This feeling of 'being fixed' may yet evaporate with a crash, so I'm watching and waiting.

carl wolf wrote:

 

At least I can solve my problems without whining.

But not anyone else's.

My issue is similar, it frequently exhibits as alternating blue lines starting from boot.

I found that Option+D booting to Apple Hardware Test, then rebooting, would allow it to boot normally.

I should specify, mine is a Late-2011 15" MacBook Pro with the Radeon 6470M and Intel HD 3000.

Just to update: There are MBP users experiencing the same problems, even after a clean install.

Early 2011 MacBook Pro monitor issues.

How are the people running purely on the integrated GPU holding up currently? Mine's running completely fine, apart from a few minor graphical glitches that make sense due to not using the discrete GPU. Curious how long others are using only their integrated before the dreaded white/grey screen prevents them from booting.

BTW I'm on my 3rd logic board now and out of the 3 year warranty my dutch authorized reseller offers. They offered me yet another repair (however paid due to out of warranty) and told me they would look after the issue specifically… which I declined since that should have been done the two times before.

My graphics card just failed this morning but managed to boot up for long enough to find out about gfxCardStatus and installed and set to integrated card only and all seems to be working for now.

Just another example thought of what Apple has become with their stance on this!!!!!!!

bennyvdhoogen wrote:

 

How are the people running purely on the integrated GPU holding up currently?

Seems pretty stable.  I can use Photoshop for the little editing that I do.  I have been running Pro Tools (work overflow) and that's been fine, even with video.  As a test I switched to dynamic but the AMD GPU wasn't invoked until I opened a project containing video.  I couldn't switch back to Integrated Only after closing the project, but after closing and relaunching the program I could open a project NOT containing video without it switching to the AMD.  But as working to vision is the bulk of my work, the fact that it seems to run pretty happily in Integrated Only is a good thing.  Under normal circumstances I can see how the QuickTime architecture - which is the basis of the Pro Tools video management - would want to use the better GPU.

So, fingers crossed. I'm nearly two weeks out of my 90-day post-logic-board-replacement warranty.

I'm I correct that I read somewhere that rather than using gfxCardStatus there's an alternative way of disabling the AMD GPU by using some Unix commands to move/delete some drivers (I think I remember you need to boot into safe mode to do it)?  I can't seem to find the links now but if this is possible can you do this if you get the white/grey screen - that is, will it boot into safe mode before it goes to the white/grey screen?  And if you make these changes will this mean that next time you boot you won't get the white/grey screen?  I'm hopping that this more complicated fix means that the computer won't even try to boot using the AMD GPU (which I assume is the cause of the white/grey screen.