Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

ella70,

If you are in the US, I'd recommend a flat-rate repair for ~$360 with tax+shipping. They will mail you a box to ship them your MBP in, and they will mail it back in a few days fixed. You can request this option by going through the Apple customer service, requesting an "exception" to have to pay to speak to someone.

If you are in the EU there are laws protecting you (consumer protection act or something like that). Lots of posts about that in the past 500 pages of this thread

My wife bought her 2011 17" Macbook Pro less than 3 years ago and she is now experiencing this graphics issue. This should not be the case. Apple must address this with a recall.

I find this hard to believe. 556 pages of people with the same problem and Apple is taking no action. I would've moved away from Apple if I wasn't too invested in their ecosystem.  Most of my software is only designed to run on Apple, changing is not an option.

I too have the same problem.  In my case, when the display starts acting up, I let it overheat.  The machine eventually shuts down in 5-10 mins and when I reboot, it loads the basic gfx card. It works every time.  gfxcardstatus is useless, it's basically an indicator to let you know which card is running, besides that does nothing but crash software and eventually leads to shutdown.  I cannot use any of the temporary terminal fixes, because the apps that do require the discrete card will either crash or cause a system freeze.  I realize that overheating might make things worse eventually, but I have no choice.  The back of the laptop does get quite hot.

My late 2011 15 inch Macbook Pro's display just went black this morning whilst I was using Quick Look to view a few PDF files. The GPU has failed. My Macbook Pro was not even slightly warm, so heat buildup cannot be blamed.

I KNOW FOR A FACT the GPU has failed because this is the FOURTH LOGIC BOARD THAT HAS FAILED IN THREE MONTHS!!!!!!!

I paid loads to get the original logic board replaced by Apple back in June this year, and I have had repeated failures. I am still covered by the three month warranty period so doubtless they will replace it again.

But that's not the point. I cannot use a Macbook that can suddenly fail at any moment.

WARNING TO ALL: The first time the logic board failed I tried to access my TM backups (taken under OS X Mavericks) using an old trusty Macbook Black running Snow Leopard only to discover TM backups cannot be restored to a previous generation of OS X!! So now I keep my data files synchronised to an external HD, and really key files are on Dropbox.

MESSAGE TO Apple: This is RUBBISH, a premium product less than three years old should not suffer constant GPU failures under normal/light usage. And your total lack of comment to a widespread problem only serves to cast doubt on the quality of your products.

cyrus, i couldn't have put it better myself!

i had "only" 3 logicboard failures so far, but i KNOW that this one will also fail

i don't know if i even hope that it will fail sooner than later, but do i want another replacement

it is really stress to not know if it will fail when i am at an important job with a deadline....

it is such a bad feeling to work with a macbook that is destined to fail

to apple: for me it is a scandal that apple does repeatedly this kind of "repair", because ist is not a repair it is a "joke" (if i use the appropriate word here they will delete my post...)

unkindly regards

The same to you

Adding my name to the list. Early 2011 MBP just crapped out on me with the same issues reported here.

Same problem from me.  Force to purchase a new mac due to urgent of my works. very unhappy with apple.

APPLE, do sthing!  you known you are losing credit from APPLE fans

Having the same issue.  Why has Apple not responded with a fix???

same issue.  Where is Apple with a response?

Sadly, might as well add my name to this post.

Well, I made it to my Genius appointment this evening.  Again - early 2011 bought May 2011 with apple care.  First time this happened (over a year ago) it was repaired under warranty.  Well, tonight I show up for the appointment (stepping over the 100+ people camped out for tomorrow's iPhone) and they ran a diagnostic.  My "genius" then tells me to hold on while he went to his manager for an "exception".  Since I was 4 months out of my apple care warranty, they gave me an exception - no charge for this repair.  Hopefully there will be a real solution before this logic board fails.  For any of you in Souther CA, it was the UTC store.

Good luck everyone...

Unfortunately I got a warranty plan through best buy. 

Its been said but I'll say it again, if Apple doesn't act on this egregious error, they've lost my business forever.  I'd love for my next computer to be another mac, but I just can't see spending an outrageous amount of money on a machine that is now behind the curve, and apparently cheap and dysfunctional.  Reliability was why I loved Macs and now my faith in them has been shaken to its core.

Oh well, I'm kinda excited to build my own super editing machine.  Thanks Apple for screwing me over.

I have same problem. Apple should do something.

It just happened to me... of all people!

It is hard to tell if it is totally heat related because my problem occurred all at once. The heat problems may make it worse once the problem shows up. I had no warning beforehand with any kind of visual artifacts. I was saving a 3G file in Photoshop and the next minute I got a black screen with the backlight still on. Hard restart presented me with the pixelated apple logo to a grey blank screen with bluish tint.  The next day, I was finally able to boot from the internal HD. iStat Pro gave a reading of the GPU diode at -199 fahrenheit. Opening any large files would show visual artifacts. If the fan started blowing, ghosting would progressively get worse.

I was 83 days outside of the 3-year AppleCare Warranty so I had to cough up the $310 for the depot repair to replace the logic board.