Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

Same problem, well-known by Apple. Early 2011 MBP 15".

I am now on my 4th logic board - the first one failed after nearly 3 years.

The second one after a week.

The third one gave intermittent signs after a couple of weeks and definitive failure after nearly 3 months.

The fourth one has just failed, after nearly a week.

The Apple Authorised Repairer is about 45 km from where I live, is friendly, quick, efficient and apparently competent, but I cannot afford this sort of repetitive failure, I have this machine for a purpose - intensive use, frequently mobile.

Having left MS Windows after lots of negative experiences (but in the end XP became stable and useable, so Microsoft pulled the plug on it - I have not been convinced by the successors either) I am not keen to go back to them, but how can I ever trust Apple again, despite their basically excellent software (glitches, sometimes severe, at least get solved eventually and are quickly known about).

I have Mac book Pro it was ok for the first 10 months , then all of the sudden the display gone, i took to apple store, the replace the screen for 300 $ exactly after 3 months its stop working at all and I call apple they said sorry no warranty , I just throw that stupid Macbook pro to the floor, never buy any more Macs in my family, and will discourage all my friends do not buy mac, its too expensive.

Not only a problem with MBP. I have a MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2013), didnt do any damage to it, have weird white lines, that sometimes across the screen, seems like a lot of people have this issue with MBA.

interesting...I noticed last week that some of the discussion email notifications started to be "edited by host", and now as of 10/25 I have not received a single email notification.  I checked and nothing has changed in my preferences.

Had the same issue too!

Apple mentioned it was overheating of the graphics card and hence the motherboard had fried too.

Failed 3 times in the space of 1 year and luckily it was covered by AppleCare.

In Malaysia, this cost RM2000 (circa 700 USD) and Apple takes a whole 10 days to fix it. Madness!!

Planning to sell it now cos don't want it failing on me again and I don't want to pay that kind of money to fix it.

My 2011 MacBook Pro with AMD Radeon HD 6770M discreet graphics had a video card failure (Standard video distortion that most others are having) two weeks ago.  I sent it in to Apple, paid the fee, Apple replaced the Logic Board and sent it back to me.  Four days later the computer started having more video related issues and I had to send it back to Apple again.  They replaced the Logic board again.  I have had it back for 4 days now and I'm holding my breath but it seems to be working normally again.

I seem to be having the second GPU breakdown of my 2011 macbook pro.

The first time was last December and I lost a lot of Christmas gigs!! (I am a professional dj)

And now I seem to be losing Halloween gigs!!

Almost the same symptom as the first time.

The system and the display were both hard freezed while the sound was keep playing.

I have to bring it to Genius bar tomorrow morning to get diagnosed.

I have lots of gigs this week!!

Will I have to pay the logic board replacement fee again!!!!???

I am facing not similar but in the same make of MacBook Pro. Mine is a late 2011 edition and have the headphone jack issue. Pulling the headphones out takes the noise of Mac away and the sound button is inaccessible; you can't do anything with the sound then. I have got it fixed once at the service centre but again facing issues in about 3 months time.

Ok, I've just had a call from Currys/PC World repair centre, and they said that my laptop repair has been delayed, as they haven't been able to get hold of the parts from Apple yet. - This is one of the disadvantages of buying a MacBook Pro through an authorised reseller, rather than directly from Apple (who probably would have 'fixed' it by now). Anyway, I probed a little deeper, and asked what would happen if they can't get the required parts from Apple. The lady on the phone said that they'd probably replace it. Here's hoping that Apple have run out of their supply of defective logic boards to give to their resellers, so Currys/PC World will replace my machine with a non-defective model. It may end up to be a blessing in disguise that I did not opt to buy my MacBook Pro directly from Apple.

Thanks for the update. I've been to my local Apple store and had the fault confirmed, so will be contacting Currys/PC World soon.

Good stuff. Make sure you submit your Genius Bar fault report, so they waive the £50 diagnostic fee.

Well, ****.  I spent about 500 bucks this year having my **** logic board replaced on my 2011 MBP 17" after it started displaying 1/2 inch colored bands and wouldn't boot.

I also had another thought... Maybe Apple are waiting until they've used up every last MacBook Pro 2011 logic board in their inventory, before they issue a proper fix for this. - Surely they can't just keep recycling defective logic boards around the system, and then cover up their tracks by flashing the serial numbers, so no one knows where the board has been, or where it came from. Can they?

I don't think so, I guess they are just refurbishing the boards they retire and putting them back in the next batch of defective machines. That also explains why replacement boards tend to last much less than original ones. The only solution would be to come out with a new revision of the logic board. Anyone who gets the LB replaced should take notice of every detail in System Profiler.

I think I have a similar issue - early 2011 15 MBP. Would boot up but screen would just go out after some use. Computer would still be on. Finally, it go to the point this week that it would boot up and I could faintly see apple logo on startup screen but not go any further. Apple store said they couldn't look at it for almost a week so I bought a new computer so I could work.