Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

Perhaps indeed.

Consider it done - will try to find time to finish the rest of the mail to send to my fellow bald Londoner.  Work is getting in the way, it's quite a long technical email full of detail and your behaviour will just be a footnote on it.

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+1 :-(

Now my early 2011 MacBook Pro have the same problem in the Discrete Graphics Card described by thousands of other unhappy Macbook Pro owners! I'm seriously considering abandon Apple. Here in Brazil they are charging me US$1000,00 for the new logical board! This is insane! I'm looking now for other options. What's happening with Apple these days? We're lost! This is clearly a case of a recall, don't you think?

I am another person with this same issue.

My macbook was functioning other than when using anything GPU heavy. Spoke on the phone with apple support, they told me to reset pram. Now the macbook now loads into a grey screen and thats it.

Booked a genius bar appointment and went in today. They offered to replace the logic board for £405 + VAT. When I explained that thousands of people are having this issue, and explained about the 6 year consumer law, they said they wouldn't fix it for free until Apple HQ put out an official recall.

If you are in the UK and have this issue my advice is this:

Unless you are willing to pay the £405 + VAT, I would suggest you don't waste your time by going to a genius bar and instead post here that you have the issue and wait for aple to do something about it.

Hopefully once the iPhone 6 launch has died down a bit, they'll focus on this. If it was in more in the news and media, something might be done, but at the moment looks like no one is picking it up.

I totally disagree.  If you have the problem, take it to the genius bar and make noise.  How else do you expect Apple to become aware of the magnitude of the issue so they do something about it?

my advice if you're in the UK is to go on eBay, find BGA-repairs item for reballing our 2011 and ship it to them instead.  Will cost half of that depot 'repair' which   it's 310 dollars in the USA is another gripe I have.

Once you've got it back running nice and cool from Gloucester for half the price I suggest hypothetically you could possibly utilise that invoice in connection with something to do with 'small claims' and the sale of goods act. Unfortunately I can't comment any more about specifics on this thread but I hope you catch my drift somewhat!

DrPhyzx wrote:

 

I totally disagree.  If you have the problem, take it to the genius bar and make noise.  How else do you expect Apple to become aware of the magnitude of the issue so they do something about it?

+ 1

I have the same issue with my early 2011 MacBook pro, when i went to the apple store (in Watford Uk) the genius stated that he was well aware of this issue and then explained that I would be covered under the consumer law, (you can also check out the Sale of Goods Act 1979 and your 'Consumer rights to return faulty goods' in the UK... these may be linked with the consumer law though... i'm not 100% sure) Either way I was eligible for a free repair of my MacBook pro if it was bought inside of the EU, which unfortunately it was not as I bought it in America. They also quoted me around £420 for a logic board replacement which included VAT

So i would advise anyone in the UK to check up on these laws before going to a genius as you should be eligible for a free repair, hope this helps

I really would like to agree with you but the following I know do know of this problem.

Self employed independent Mac consultant (me)

5 UK Apple Store techs in back office - off the record

3 different AASP (Apple Authorised Service Partners) I deal with - off the record

At least half a dozen other Apple engineers, probably more.

Apple service partners who posted on macrumors last year saying they know there is a large spike in failures (confirmed by the AASP) and looking for feedback.

And hundreds of very annoyed loyal Mac customers with broken gpu's having to pay a huge bill for an inadequate repair job that barely lasts past the 90 days on this humongous thread.

Hi,

Looks like same problem like mine.  Please see the video on this link.. I started having this problem when I upgraded to OS X Yosemite.  But it still continues even after I formatted my HDD and reinstalled OS X Mavericks.  Note sure if this is an hardware issue or OS X issue. 

Mine is 17" Mac Book  pro early 2011 model ; Processor  2.2 GHz Intel Core i7; Memory  8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3; Graphics  AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1024 MB. 

http://youtu.be/WjEXBKjoW40

Each new OS Apple releases is more graphic hungry so the more power it needs, the more it stresses the gpu and there you go.

Once you reach this point of failure, downgrading to previous OS won't really help, maybe less graphic distortion but not even sure, still will have the booting problem as Mac OS is switching from both integrated to discret back & forth, nothing we can do about it.

Following up on my post from above.

Update

• Still currently running "discrete" only via gfxCardStatus
• Monitoring temp using smcFanControl set to default speeds for now, temp usually about ~140 F while web browsing
• Using a "standing desk" rack shelving configuration... I stand while working (health benefits) and it gives it more airflow (see pic below)

So far, I've only experienced one subsequent graphics card crash.

Rebooted and has been working for weeks OK.

It might be only a matter of time until it crashes again, but sharing above in case helps others temporarily.

I am joining the way too long list of Mac Book Pro 2011 series owners that see their graphic card fail. In my case, it is a 17" bought in April 2012, over the last days of the logic board life i saw the grey, black and blue screen, initially a S boot worked, but no longer. Visited the Basel Apple Store and was told: 700 CHF to replace, and as the machine was not bought directly from Apple, no mercy, you have to pony up. Also advised to keep my receipt just in case that Apple would officially recognize this issue. Well folks at Apple: you know better than all: that time is now.

You know Gav the more attention you give him, the more turned on he gets. this is his passion, this is what gets him through his cold nights. no point in being part of that. your best bet is to ignore. focus on discussing this with fellow peers. not with whatever that is.

LovedJames wrote:

 

You know Gav the more attention you give him, the more turned on he gets. this is his passion, this is what gets him through his cold nights. no point in being part of that. your best bet is to ignore. focus on discussing this with fellow peers. not with whatever that is.

I have no doubt its attention - I have been on the web since 94 and seen it all.  But to score all those points in such a fast rate as I think it was only 25k points a while back it must surely only be achieved by hovering on the refresh button to answer the fresh groundhog day simple questions that have already been done to death and the user who awards the points can't find them by searching with keywords.

Myself I prefer the more difficult, challenging, harder questions such as:

Why Apple are still leaving their 2011 users hanging in the wind saying and admitting nothing when everybody I know connected to Apple are telling me they know.

Why Apple can't make some simple changes to the engineering guidelines to improve the thermal dissipation of the cooling system, with less thermal paste and rubbing the heatsink plates down on a lapping stone to make them nice and smooth because the surfaces are awful, pitted even under a magnifier never mind a microscope and need remedial work on this hottest pair of chips in this chassis to drastically improve the failure rate.

Finally why the moderators let a simple question points gatherer who is obviously friends with them wind up aggrieved users of a MacBook Pro he doesn't even own to the detriment of the company as a whole.