Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

I have been following this thread for quite awhile.  I have an early 2011 Macbook Pro 15" that started giving me similar issues 4 months after purchase.  I've learned to "tolerate" the graphics malfunctions, but my patience has worn dry. 

Yet another unsatisfied Macbook Pro customer

I did the same thing replacing the logic board, when it returned i no longer had the grey/blue boot screen and distorted flickers but it now runs extra hot and basically good for nothing other than web browsing without becoming unresponsive for 2-3 minutes at a time. 

Cobi1322

If you started having issues 4 months after your purchase (assuming you bought it new), why didn't you take it in for repairs under the 1 year warranty coverage?

So in the off chance that Apple ends up replacing them...I'm guessing everybody who had a reball repair done is out of luck?

***IMPORTANT REMINDER***

I strongly recommend avoiding PS3Specialist’s reball services at all costs. PS3Specialist’s repair lasted a mere two weeks on my MBP and the warranty replacement failed. In my opinion, the company has terrible customer service and warranty. Read my full story on page 586.

I'm running Yosemite.

The problems start pretty much after I start running a bunch of programs.  The fans are nearly silent, which is odd when I'm running so many things at once.

Once the problems start, the first signs are speckles... followed by bigger patterns, including a total shift in the display, as if it's split, some of the left side is on the right and vice versa. The second monitor is useless at that point.

Next, it turns into what can only be described as oddball colored corduroy stripes, eventually total lockup.

Subsequent boots are grey fuzzy overlays over the boot process, until I shut it long enough to cool off.

On casual days, where I'm in and out of the office, it may not happen at atl, but when I'm in the middle of a full day of work, I have to be extra careful not to work too long on any one task.

Right now, I've been on for about 30 minutes... the fans are whisper quiet, and there is definitely a lot of heat building up.  This morning I opened the case, checked the fans, they were perfectly clean, and I turned it on while the case was open to see if the fans were silent because they weren't moving, or because they were moving slow... they were moving. 

So, I closed the case, and put the back on a piece of cork to give some extra air flow.

Just want to state that I had an incredibly similar experience with PS3Specialist and would advise you to avoid him at all costs.

Were you able to get any money back from PS3Specialist? I lost a PayPal dispute because it is a service/intangible good. What a complete waste of money

Again, everyone, I strongly advise avoiding PS3Specialist. Sorry for being repetitive but I cannot stress this enough. My full story on page 586.

thanks for detailing a bit, always useful to know more the 'how' and 'what' than just the results we all pretty much experienced.

well first of all I would check the fans, using a software to activate them and monitoring the temperature because if you're running many applications at the same time and you feel the heat, there might be a problem somewhere.

was it different before upgrading?

if your computer is overheating it is supposed to shut off by itself as a protection but just in case it's not working properly, I wouldn't risk it to be more damaged than it already is.

you shouldn't keep on using an external monitor, basically anything that requires the use of the discret gpu is to be avoided, glitches, split screen or frozen screen are all signs that your computer can't handle it anymore, I know I stopped using adobe products for that reason, same thing for chrome store inside the browser.

it's obviously not why we bought a 'pro' computer but you should either try finding what causes problems and then avoiding triggering it or try to reball your cpu-gpu so you can still use your computer like you need it.

unfortunately, if will only get worse, especially if you keep trying to use it like you want/need to.

Wait you guys I think we're getting off track. Are we trying to troubleshoot a problem that should be in Apple Corp hands? For instance people talk about problems when they use a second monitor well I've never ever used a second monitor with my Mac book Pro and nevertheless I've spent $611.00 last week, Please read these posts which our dear friends at Apple Corp refuse to acknowledge that Thousands of us have had and payed and possibly maybe will still have after repairs as dozens of others have reported.

Let's stop trying to "well try this and maybe that" I'm sorry but it's useless. If it's going to crap out there is no software in this world that's going to save your butt for a Hardware Problem and since I'm at it why can't I have 4 or 5 programs running at the same time! The maddest of us are those who have dished out serious money again for a problem that Apple Corp should have taken care off awhile ago.

Sorry if this reply sounds a bit hard but so is the money I had to borrow  to get a maybe fix for my MacBookPro early 2011 which is the reason all of us in this discussion are ****** off.

Yes exactly. My second board is failing - as in, in the process of - it's like I have a run-flat tire on my car and trying to get as many miles as I can out of it before it collapses on itself.

the problem is absolutely clear. it can't be undone or avoided. Step up to the plate Apple.

so is this the longest thread in the apple support community and apple hasn't take any steps towards it?

my mbp 2011 just broke and the screen is distorted. now the poor mbp cant even pass the white apple screen (with addition of small green stripes all over the screen).

no wonder that they are losing loyal costumer ( a lot).

and they lose another one just at this second.

omitting and commit to the fault wont hurt apple brand. It just lift them. bring back the trust before we raise the pitchforks !

My MacBook Pro is now officially a brick.

I turns on... Gives me the colored bars overlaying the Apple logo, and goes to the white screen.

If I try to boot from recovery, or another drive... Dead end, eventually a solid blu screen.   Trying to go to diag actually loads, except its almost unreadable with all the screen issues, but I can clearly see it passes the test.  They exhaustive test looks like it went into pass 2 then froze about 14 minutes in.

Now I'm posting from my iPad.  I need to be operational tomorrow, so my options are slim.  Either they offer a free fix or it's going to be tough justifying the repairs if the new logic board is likely to fail. 

<Edited by Host>

I've had the same problem occur last year to my Early 2011 15" MBP (2 GHz Intel Core i7, 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 memory) running with an AMD Radeon HD 6490M and an Intel HD Graphics 3000.

This was prior to the problem getting some attention and had thought the problem to be unique to my device. I was not under Apple Care and brought it to the store and had it replaced for around $500. After some weeks, I had the device back and it worked well as expected. I was able to run heavier functions with the device such as video editing, games, and whatnot.

The problem has resurfaced after some months getting it back from repair. Same exact problem. This is personally very frustrating as I already had spent quite some sum on this device. The problem seems to lie when using the discrete AMD Radeon graphics card, as the crashes occur in operations that require heavier processing.

I hope some sort of solution is made to remedy this problem, as it has already cost me quite a sum.

I have macbook pro of late 2011 and it is behaving like a windows machine after 3 years

the base over heats

graphich crashes

there seem to be big issue with entire line up of late 2011 MBPs