Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

antifRa wrote:

 

How a company can become big enough to ignore thousands of customers is beyond me.

Arrogance comes with size...

I now have a paper weight too. So so disappointed in Apple. I am so scared to buy another laptop now incase of the same issue. I work off mine everyday. In South Africa we only have resellers and they wont lift a finger unless you pay. I am out of warranty too.

Why pay when one knows its an apple problem? And then there are still no guarantees that it will last? I want to know how do I make my money back on this product now. It suck so much that Apple just dont care.

I'm from brazil but I bought my macbook pro 15 when I was living in CA.

My problem begins last month and now my macbook is bunch of crap. Freezing screen, reboot a lot of time until load OSX and the best part, the price to replace the board.

I'll not trot out the dreary litany of woe again. You all know it by heart: MacBook pro 2011 (early) ... the usual.

I post here just to help ensure the numbers reflect the true scale of the problem.

I'm damned if I'll replace the defective motherboard with another equally defective component -- as has been the experience of very many on this thread -- at the cost of much time and expense. This little b****** has cost me enough grief already.

Are we now expected to accept that a near £2000 machine is good for 3 years? (Nice fit with Applecare). I admit I don't feel quite the same about my shiny new iMac: it seems an individual needs two or three Macs to guarantee an uninterrupted workflow these days. The cost-benefit numbers look a trifle shaky from here.

I expect better from Apple as a "premium" (in all senses) product.

Same issue here. It's been intermittent but quite frequent recently.

Sometimes the screen just starts jumping around and glitching then the laptop turns off. When I restart it, it usually goes to grey screen and the fans start going crazy before it shuts down again. Sometimes it goes to a blue screen. Eventually it starts working again. I can't figure out if I'm doing anything to facilitate that, it's happened under so many different circumstances that I'm inclined to think my first aid attempts are doing nothing whatsoever.

I took it into the store the other day and I was pretty shocked that the guy didn't think this was a systemic problem with this model of the machine in any way. After reading this mega-thread, other threads dotted around, petitions, and law firms getting involved I figured he'd groan and go "oh, not this again".

Instead he flat-out refused that there was a systemic hardware problem with the 2011 GPUs, saying online threads were untrustworthy. I'd be inclined to agree if the problem wasn't so prolific and obvious.

In spite of this, he then offered the repair for free even though I'm out of warranty and not on Apple Care. I found this pretty odd considering he didn't agree there was any systemic problem with the model. Instead the free repair was framed in terms of Apple's generosity to me as a valued customer, not something that I am clearly entitled to because they sold me a machine with a design flaw.

Now I'm in 2 minds. On the one hand it's a weight off my mind that the machine will be repaired free of charge, having expected to have to fork out for the excess on my insurance. On the other, I don't want to have my machine repaired if it's inherently faulty. As far as I can tell they'll just replace it with the same parts that have already failed. I paid for a machine which would be reliable for a few years and so for all their niceties, I can't help but feel mugged off by the way they've dealt with this situation.

I've seen numerous users reporting the same failure on machine that have been repaired multiple times. This is inexcusable. I want the machine I paid for.

i had the same problem and what can i do now.

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So... here I am. I have seen the signs 2 months ago but I just ignored it and kept my Macbookpro Early 2011 17 inches ON or Sleep mode by closing the lid. I have worked a lot of graphics stuff and recently completed a 7 minutes video presentation using After Effects and Premiere Pro.

I turned off my Macbookpro yesterday just so to release and give a rest, and today, I am about to work on video editing again and fired up Premiere Pro, unfortunately, screen split up into two, then sudden increase of GPU fan speed and temperature of the body goes up. Then bam! Restarted on its own, then stuck in a grey/white screen.

Tried to boot on safemode, bam again! Blue screen which is so irritating to the eye.

Restart again and move all the AMD and ATI extensions to backup folder. Now I am using my Macbookpro with the integrated graphic card which is not good at all.

I am currently based in Oman, and I am hoping to find a shop who can replace my logic board.

Does anyone tried updating their machine to Yosemite?

Hello,

Considering Apple actively monitors this community and quikly removes posts that they deem against the rules, how can an Apple Store Genius honestly say that this thread should not be believed and therefore moot. By not removing a post Apple is in essence qualifying or at least accepting the authors' view. So all the posts found here, helpful or not, are pertinent too some point and obviously important enough too Apple for them to continue too run these forums. I assume if they deemed the Community diminished the brand or was misleading to us, the registered users searching for Help and Support, it would be shut down. Best     

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sghncnGkFAo

I bought my Macbook pro via the net in 2011, I have an early 2011 15 inch version. Last week it died on me. Sent it to service (not apple) and they told me the story...Feels so very irritating that Apple don't listen to us the customers. They will loose so much respect and loyalty when not addressing this.

Wow, I will have to read all 614 pages i guess to see all the solutions to this problem.  My macbookpro 2011 just died as well.  Mine was working fine but just cut out during video playback and now will boot to either gray or blue and black vertical lines (if i try to do a safemode boot).  I know its not my ram or hard drive because I swapped them into my sisters older macbook and it all worked fine.  I will go to apple store soon to see what they tell me but the few pages of this thread I have read have already told me just about everything I need to know. 

Well here I am and a bit shocked at everyone's problems with very little solutions beyond paying $611.00 for repairs with only 3 months guarantee! I've been with Apple since the early 90's and have always had the utmost respect why else would I have bought this Mac Book Pro? Maybe right place at the wrong time feeling. On my way to pick up the repaired body we had to pass a generic computer store and for $500.00 and incredible ASUS laptop, guess what my feeling was at that moment.

Maybe Apple thinks we'll "eventually" stop complaining and go away?

Having this same exact issue!!

Late 2011 MacBook Pro 8,2

My early 2011 15" MBP has been repaired now with the new board, I am now running OS 10.10 as well as gfxCard as well as smcFancontrol.

Before I installed 10.10, it was running around 60C with the fans forced to run at 6000rpm, with 10.10, it is running around 27 to 35 depending on the load, with Star Trek online for mac running it is around 60C.

I am wondering what temperatures would be fatal for this new board? so far I have not gone over 40C with most of the things I normally do (I do not plan on running Star Trek online on this much anyways). And the fans i am not scared of stressing, the noise does not bother me, and i am willing to change them should they fail.

I am hoping this repair will hold, but I do have 90 days and counting as a protection of sorts, will forcing the fans to run, and keeping a chill mat under it influence its longevity? I guess time will tell and I will report the results one way or another (and I have not given up on the idea of having strategic vents milled into the bottom of the case, but if the temps i am running seem fine i may not need to do this, some said in the past milling would defeat the cooling, but a machine that was faulty by design may require aid..i think back to our two stroke engine days and tricks we used to defeat excess heat build up)

I want to pitch in my experience, Early MBP 15" 2011 2.2 i7 out of warranty.

In my case the basic problem was the solder used on the video card chip (think XBox 360 red ring of death). So I found a decent service shop with heat bench station and the stencils for my mac in FL that only charged me $95 plus S/H to reball the video chip( replaced solder with leaded solder). Machine is back to 100% no video distortions or overheating, and its an alternatinve than having a entire logicboard replaced, gives 90day warranty. Shop is very professional, well equiped and experienced and you can ship from anywhere in USA. PM if you want info.

PS. I believe this should be addressed by apple as it seems a quality control issue from factory, but I don't have $2500 lying around and I need to get back to business so I caved in, if a $100 can give me my machine back, heck even if it only lasts me 6 months, is better than a brick!

-JF