Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card
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Oct 10, 2014 10:35 AMby ps3specialist,
There is no computer running without a graphics processor, this graphics processor is either a stand alone graphics card or built in on the logic board which is applied to the 13" just like the 15" and the 17" MacBook, when it is built in it either provided through a separate GPU chip or provided by the processor which in this case has to have a graphics capabilities and that applies to core i5 and i7 processors and if the logic board fails graphics and it doesn't have a GPU chip then the CPU has to be reballed to fix it. -
Oct 10, 2014 11:21 AMby eddieddu,Mine has this issue only once so far. White screen after editing in IMovie. No way to boot again after this. After cooling down until next morning, it works perfectly again now for three days. No way to reproduce the behavior. Is this good or bad? Who knows. I have 5 month Apple Care left. If I can reproduce the crash, they maybe change the mother board with another one with the same issue in it. So no final solution at all possible. I had the similar problem with the 2008 model. Thanks Apple Care, they fixed my 2008 model with a 2011 model having a similar issue waiting to be uncovered 2 years later....
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Oct 10, 2014 12:30 PMby GavMackem,It's more than likely if you x-rayed its a very similar chip to the 15/17. But 2 instead of 4 cores and 4mb shared cache instead of 6Mb and is a 35w part compared to our 45 watt. The other two cores are disabled or had failed testing, same likely for the cache thats how Intel make their different models of CPU. They all share the same HD 3000 integrated GPU and is still a hot chip - the Ivy bridge models in the 2012 models both dropped 10 watts each to 25 and 35 watts respectively.
Anandtech and Chipworks have detailed reviews of the mobile Sandy bridge and Ivy Bridge CPU's if you're curious..
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Oct 10, 2014 2:19 PMby junkBookPro,I can't say for MBP 13inch... but on macbook air if something gets hot that is CPU - only. In furmark test MBA2013 gets CPU A proximity to 90°C (CPU A diode max 105°C) while everything else on the logic board does not pass 60°C.
The same furmark test on (now repaired) MBP2011 takes CPU A proximity up to max 70°C, temperature diode to 90°C (and cpu cores up to 96°C) while the discrete GPU gets hot up to 99°C and the GPU diode (strangely to me) shows 79°C. (I did not made repasting, because it is under short time warranty)
here are max values I got
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Oct 10, 2014 3:21 PMby GavMackem,Firstly your MBA is a wildly different chip to the 2011 - its a dual core low voltage low power Intel Haswell design with integrated graphics far superior to the 2011. The die size (the square metal plate on top of the chip) is far, far smaller than our Sandy Bridge quad core which compared to models before and after is absolutely huge in terms of area in square mm. What they have all in common (leaving the AMD out of it for a moment) is all the GPU and CPU sensors are all in silicon underneath the die etched on a single piece of silicon and use the same heatsink to draw the heat away.
The Sandy Bridge is easily the largest die in terms of mm squared to ever to go in this MBP chassis and it produces enormous amounts of heat, particularly when the CPU, cache and iGPU are being pushed hard. The standard paste and unpolished die struggles to get that heat out, and I have seen with my own eyes in bootcamp on unpasted models which has the AMD always on if you run a CPU stress test for long enough the temperatures of the GPU rise considerably. Why - because the heatsink cannot cope drawing all the heat out efficiently enough so instead of moving that heat up the heatpipe to the grilles where the fans are it warms up the GPU instead.
If you switch that scenario to OSX with graphics switching it doesn't take a genius to work out when the integrated cannot cope with the performance it activates the AMD, an old design of GPU which is hot running by design and architecture that is already having heat transferred to it from the CPU in the first place. With all that thermal paste slopped on which covers probably twice the area of the GPU die I wonder where that heat will go. Some no doubt will leak its heat onto green pcb part of the chip package itself, with those solder balls underneath, where it shouldn't go as only the copper die itself is designed to move heat efficiently.
If you let your machine cool, and run a standard temp monitor like smcfancontrol or macsfancontrol, what are the idle temperatures of your CPU and GPU? You may have to leave an app like Photoshop etc or a flash video in chrome paused to keep the GPU alive - else the GPU diode sensor will give a zero reading. Then close all apps, wait a few mins and let me know your idle temps for the CPU sensors too with no GPU running.
