Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

I take it that neither of these backups are full, or bootable.

Your option now appears to be limited to one involving another Mac, and a bootable copy (clone) of your Mac to boot from. Making a bootable bckup is the easy part, can you get another Mac to use?

Hello CSound1,

I did have a timemachine backup on one of my external harddrives....and i tried to boot/restore directly from this...but ended up with a blue screen...much like the BSOD but without any message!...As i understand...the timemachine backup is a full backup...and i tried to hook this up to my macbook pro after trying to get the macbook pro to recognize the external at system launch. While it recognized the external...and the time machine sector...it did not successfully restore from the timemachine backup..

Not sure if i made any sense there....!

Backup your Mac now, make a clone (CCC or SuoerDuper). Do this before anything else.

UPDATE to my original post.:

Took my early 2011 17" Macbook Pro (AMD 6750M GPU) (3.5 years old, excellent condition, 6 mo expired Apple Care) to a small independent shop that does component work. The guy re-soldered (re-balled) the GPU. He's confident the issue will be resolved. Just got it home. So far so good. Will update later after a few weeks. We'll see..

But if this works, it is a VERY good solution, and I'd recommend it, in lieu of Apple taking care of business as they should.

For those of you in SoCal, the place is called Laptop Repair Center, and it's in Glendale. The guy's name is Sam. Seemed like a very nice and honest guy. Answered all my questions, and I had many. Charged me $160 complete, with a 90 day warranty, and had it done within 24 hours. That definitely beats even the "discounted" "under 5 year old computer" "we're acknowledging the problem with out officially acknowledging the problem" $310 rate Apple offered me to send it off to their depot for a week. ESPECIALLY since they're only going to swap out the logic board with another flawed GPU balling, and you'll likely just have the problem again sooner or later. This way the problem might actually be solved for good, or at least potentially for several more years.

So don't scrap your $3000 machines quite yet!

For anyone not in SoCal, I recommend finding a similar good component level repair shop in your area. This guys was highly rated on Yelp by a bunch of people who've had the same problem.

ALSO -- SOME IMPORTANT INFO I LEARNED FROM HIM!:

1) The solder that they use in the original manufacture is not particularly high quality. But he said this is not uniquely an Apple problem. All the various brands of el cheapo $400 laptops have the problem too. The difference is, ours is a $3000 laptop, and corners should not be cut to save manufacturing cost, as it is in those others.

2) He used a higher quality solder with a higher heat capacity than the original.

3) He also installed SMC Fan Control, and recommended keeping the fans higher in general, and MUCH higher when doing processor intense work (video editing, etc.)

4) He said the fans on MacBooks actually DON'T in fact usually wear out that easily, even when they're cranked up a lot. And even if they do wear out, they're very cheap and easy to replace. SO USE THOSE FANS!

And 5) AND MOST IMPORTANTLY -- he said if you want you Macbook to last a long time without trouble, try to not let the CPU or GPU temps go over about 70-80 degrees Celsius. SO use a temp monitor (SMC has one built in that you can leave on your menu bar so you can see you temp at all times), AND set this fans higher in general, and definitely whenever you get up over 50-60 degrees Celsius to cool it down.

I HOPE ALL THIS HELPS. PASS IT ON!

If this solution works for me, $160 is not an unbearable investment to get another 2-3 years out of my 3 year old Macbook Pro. And I feel like many of you might agree.

Apple does of course need to step up and do the right thing. And when they do, I'll be expecting a $160 credit towards my next Macbook.

Cheers.

I think adream8 solution is a good one for him but is not feasible for most of us because this sort of soldering work is very specialised and can be far more expensive to get it done if a suitable technician can even be found.

Furthermore, there is another problem we all have with temporary or permanent type fixes because I saw in another post that in Yosemite Apple has disabled or limited the 2011 MBP's to not use the AMD 675 so it defaults to the basic Intel Graphics. If this is the case under Yosemite then our 2011 MBP's will be limping along unable to do the heavy lifting using the GPU which we payed for.  Could someone with Yosemite installed please confirm if this is the case.

dathan42 wrote:

 

Furthermore, there is another problem we all have with temporary or permanent type fixes because I saw in another post that in Yosemite Apple has disabled or limited the 2011 MBP's to not use the AMD 675 so it defaults to the basic Intel Graphics.

Post a link to where you saw that please.

JJust received my early 2011 back from depot replaced the motherboard, booted it up and it hung on grey screen then limped to desktop and hard froze repeatably with Darwin code running across top of screen. Called the 800 # and was instructed to REINSTALL os, did it and.....same hard freeze after fresh install. 

So from what my reball supplier is telling me these problems have to do with non-lead based solder used in the arrays to fasten the chips to the boards. If this is the case then when Apple replaces these logic boards they'd be using the same defective BGA boards as in the original runs. This was a problem with the iBooks back when and makes this seem like deja vu all over again.

This is also reminiscent of the "capacitor plague" that affect all computers starting in the 90s and actually continues to this day. I recently replaced motherboards in 51 Dell USFF GX620s at the school I worked at. The motherboards were all refurbished and probably came out of England. Even so I still found a few with capacitors that were still bulging and on the point of leaking.

So hopefully this pending class action suit will achieve the desired result. If it does all of you should keep diligent notes and records on what was done to your computers because at that hopeful future point those expenses will be reimbursable.

hope apple can look into this as soon as possible or else we gonna lose faith on its products.

spudnuty wrote:

 

So hopefully this pending class action suit will achieve the desired result. If it does all of you should keep diligent notes and records on what was done to your computers because at that hopeful future point those expenses will be reimbursable.

What is the desired outcome.?

Csound1 wrote:

 

spudnuty wrote:

 

So hopefully this pending class action suit will achieve the desired result. If it does all of you should keep diligent notes and records on what was done to your computers because at that hopeful future point those expenses will be reimbursable.

What is the desired outcome.?

why do you care?

akamyself wrote:

 

Csound1 wrote:

 

spudnuty wrote:

 

So hopefully this pending class action suit will achieve the desired result. If it does all of you should keep diligent notes and records on what was done to your computers because at that hopeful future point those expenses will be reimbursable.

What is the desired outcome.?

why do you care?

I wasn't asking you, quit butting in and let people speak for themselves. Who do you think you are?

Csound1 wrote:

 

akamyself wrote:

 

Csound1 wrote:

 

spudnuty wrote:

 

So hopefully this pending class action suit will achieve the desired result. If it does all of you should keep diligent notes and records on what was done to your computers because at that hopeful future point those expenses will be reimbursable.

What is the desired outcome.?

why do you care?

I wasn't asking you, quit butting in and let people speak for themselves. Who do you think you are?

If you want to ask something to a specific member of the community, send a personal message. You cannot just post questions here and tell others to refrain from joining the conversation. So far, your sole contribution to this thread has been to tell others there is no problem, because it is not your problem, to shut up people by reporting them to the moderators, and to spread misinformation. I don't even want to know who you think you are...

Csound1 wrote:

 

akamyself wrote:

 

Csound1 wrote:

 

spudnuty wrote:

 

So hopefully this pending class action suit will achieve the desired result. If it does all of you should keep diligent notes and records on what was done to your computers because at that hopeful future point those expenses will be reimbursable.

What is the desired outcome.?

why do you care?

I wasn't asking you, quit butting in and let people speak for themselves. Who do you think you are?

what a weird question.

I am simply asking you, why don't you simply answer the question?

spudnuty will answer you if he feels like it, why pretending I don't let people speak for themselves, that's silly.

Please welcome me in the broken GPU comunity :-(

Its a shame that an high end computer has this kind of problem and Apple is doing NOTHING to ease our pain. Changing the mainboard for the cost of a new standard-laptop can not be the solution and is not acceptable.

I recently reballed my gpu at my local hardware magician but it just worked for a couple of days. For my macbook pro 15" early 2011 i'm absolutely positive that the GPU chip itself is broken and needs to be replaced. Yosemite hangs during the boot process at aprox 30% of the progress bar when the ATM* kext are enabled. Working with disabled ATM*.kext workes for most of the application fine unless you want to play nice games or do some video editing.

If i manage to replace my GPU i give you an update.