Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

No cover here, and in fact my 15" unibody solely sits on a raised/angled mesh-bottom thing I got specifically to promote airflow under it.  I have noticed, however, that the metal is exceptionally hot if I just sit it on my legs.  I don't doubt for a minute that any manner of additional covers would only increase the heat internally.

So just over a week ago I went down to the local AASP, paid my deposit and ordered a repair of the logic board.

The board arrived today and...... It's DOA.

Is there absolutely no quality control at Apple these days?

Should have a replacement board in a week... Hopefully it's in a better state.

Now that is hardcore!!! My experience has told me that they even give you the same logic board that you took to repair, something that makes me wonder whether they just disable the discrete graphics card in order to make it work and then pretend they have actually replaced it (considering that I have paid over $700 for a replacement, I am pretty pi..ed).

edevera wrote:

 

Now that is hardcore!!! My experience has told me that they even give you the same logic board that you took to repair, something that makes me wonder whether they just disable the discrete graphics card in order to make it work and then pretend they have actually replaced it (considering that I have paid over $700 for a replacement, I am pretty pi..ed).

Same board? Pretty sure that's worse than my DOA. I guess i'll be keeping track of MAC addresses on my ethernet card. I don't know if they could disable the discrete graphics without people noticing - ie it's needed to run dual monitors.

Since i've been running single monitor and force Integrated i've had 0 issues - even survives reboots and cold starts with out a hitch.

What's more - when I was running dual monitors my laptop would get ridicously hot - i'd be running fans at full using SMCFanControl whenever I had a virtual lab running in VMWare Fusion.

I suspected the cpu was copping a workout (never checked).

Ever since swapping to a single screen and forcing integrated i've had no heat issues, I keep the fans running at 3500rpm. These days my lab consists of six Microsoft 2012 server instances and a windows 8 client.

If i hadn't paid the deposint (150 euro) I think i'd be buying a usb video card instead. We'll see what happens in a week.

The local dealer here (no apple store in this region) wants 60€ just to have a look at the problem. No quote yet for the "fix", a logicboard replacement would be around 700€ (plus more). To top that of, I'd have to wait at leat 2 weeks for them to just inspect it.

Hearing how the problem is not fixed with a "new" motherboard for a lot of people here I will not throw good money at a now bad product.

Just talked with several local Lenovo dealers and I'll be dropping less than half of my 2011 MBPs costs into a thinkpad with default 3 years warranty.

Apple, if you don't respect me as a customer - My bank account will no longer respect you. Neither will my tech advice to others. ByeBye.

I just returned from the Applestore (in France). I explained the malfunction.

They told me that for the moment Apple has no information about this problem. they advised me to call AppleCare or wait for Apple to do something without having any idea if they will do something or not.

very very strange.

so I build four bootable partitions on an external drive:

1. copy of the current Mountain Lion
2. Mountain Lion only (virigin install)
3. Upgrade of ML Copy to Mavericks
4. Mavericks only (virgin install)

after building those, I tried for many hours (in some cases, days) to "reproduce" the behavior and it wouldn't screw up with any combination. Somewhat frustrated, I rebooted from my original SSD (Mountain Lion with all my apps) and it too won't misbehave -- even after throwing all sorts of graphics-heavy apps AND external monitor.

So while I too am convinced that my 2011 MBP is destined to freak-out again, at the moment it is happy and I'm getting work done. While we are in this interlude, I might as well upgrade to Mavericks as I saw no difference in behavior between OS versions. One thing I *REALLY* like about Mavericks is the dual monitor support is much better than ML. Additionally, I saw battery usage was definitely improved. And I (unscientifically) "beleive" the temps were cooler too.YMMV.

M

Mine fixed itself too - lasted a week then it was worse than before.

It didn't fix itself - that is just part of the torture, letting you belive it works until sometime it suddenly strikes again! Mine did that 3-4 times until now, with varying lengths working perfectly alright. Now it ain't.

So I got my mac back from the Apple Store. They have even replaced the screen without an extra cost claiming that maybe the display was actually causing the trouble. However, the issue is happening once again. The moment I have updated the firmware version I start to experience the same problem with the graphics card. If I start the computer without an external monitor (so with the intel graphics card) then it works properly. The moment I plug it to my external monitor, it makes the graphics glitch. Another issue I have observed is that the computer has shutdown itself twice until now.

Tomorrow I will be heading to the Apple Store to ask for my money back as I see that this can't be considered fixed and it is the third time already that I get a broken computer and empty promises about it being fixed.

oh, this is the third "spell" of good behavior for me (been on and off since August). I *KNOW* it is going to start acting badly sometime soon. What has me curious is that I cannot get it to be bad when I want it! (i.e. it is not reproducible except when it gets into one of its tizzy fits). As a software architect, I generally find that it is never just one thing that causes poor performance -- it is always multple things. What we need is better data points, not just a bunch of griping. This is why I built a bootable drive with multiple partitions on it -- when it next goes bad, I'm simply going to install either virgin Mountain Lion or Mavericks on my SSD and take it back to Apple to get it repaired.

Still, there MUST be some set of things that sets this behavior off. Keep the ideas flowing people.

M

I'm another macUser that has been let down by his MacBookPro 15 (early 2011) w/ AMD 6750.

The first sign was the 4,R,F,V keyboard column that went off randomly then totally unusable. I'm not sure it's linked to the GPU problem since I didn't read anything about it but I think it's worth mentionning since it's located in the same area as the heat spot (when I asked big renderrings to my computer) and, I believe, it's just over the GPU. Then general freezes occured while using editing software (finalcut / adobe AE, PS), I could boot without problem for a week but could not use the Discrete GPU for more than 1h and then 30 min en then 2 min before thescreen goes black and the fans goes crazy. Last week, I kept an eye on gfxCardStatus and stop every app that changed the little "i" to the big bad "D". It worked for one or two days. Now I can't even boot. My +2500€ laptop is just a very expensive and uncomfortable mousepad. I do not have warranty (>2years, no AC) and I don't own +700€ for a motherboard "switch" that will do nothing but get me a free-everyday-ride to my local apple store. At least I'm in Paris (2 stores).

Is there any other french / parisian user with the same problem here that would like to regroup inside a Store and ask for real answers as one man ?

Same problem here, I was using early 2011 MacBook Pro and cannot boot up last week. Apple store quoted me 4000 hk dollars to replace the logic board. He just said I am no luck at all and also I haven't bought apple care. Problem on me? Who care?

Just for ANYONES information:

The problems with the 2011 MBP design is not so old and by far not an old discovery. Issues is, no body cared back then, riding the Apple fanboy wave. People were just too much in love with the company and the product. But IFixit was pointing out desing flaws very early down the road:

"IFixit also spotted an unusual amount of thermal paste applied to both the central processor and the graphics processor. "Holy thermal paste! Time will tell if the gobs of thermal paste applied to the CPU and GPU will cause overheating issues down the road," iFixit said."

So Apple knew about all of this way ahead...iFixit is definitely a very much trusted and competent source of information and they generally know their business. Apple just doesn't care that much anymore. They sell anyways, their brand is more important then their product. Far more important. Now everyone is looking on IPads, IPhones etc. MBP's are already "old school" for them...the new generation of customers, won't ask for a clunky laptop.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9211839/Apple_s_new_MacBook_Pros_raise_qu ality_concerns

Just adding my name to the list.

Model:

15-inch, Early 2011

Processor  2 GHz Intel Core i7

Graphics  AMD Radeon HD 6490M 256 MB

Three days ago (Nov 2) screen suddenly turned white and system froze. Rebooting resulted in freezing on a white screen after the apple logo. Booting in safe mode, verbose mode, from disc, usb, external drive, recovery partition etc. resulted in a blue screen freeze. Single user mode worked, fsck reports no problems. I tried resetting PRAM, NVRAM, SMC etc. without any luck. Brought the computer to a local Apple retailer, they ran some kind of hardware check from another computer and everything seemed to be OK. They couldn't find a solution to the problem and told me I'd have to leave it to their repair team, which I can't afford at the moment.

Decided to mess around in single user mode, and like a lot of people I managed to start in safe mode after moving the ATI extensions to another folder. After updating the system and rebooting I was back to square one. At the moment I've moved the ATI files again and installed the gfxCardStatus and smcFanControl. I'm about to reboot and see if it changes anything.