Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

WOW .. now Apple are even removing mention of Goolgling something (you all know what I am talking about )  not just those with the link in ... POOR show Apple and not really an action in line with the "its not an issue known about" statement

Add me to the list:

i7 2.0GHz MBP Early 2011. Crapped out in the middle of the night...Apple Support tells me there is currently no fix.

Probably the last Apple product i will have ever bought, and i'll be very vocal about it - UNLESS they come clean and fix this.

With the new OS X versions going downhill as well, it might well be time to switch.

dear Apple Support Forum moderators: if your company is not aknowledging the issue and we are not allowed to talk about the actions being taken for you to aknowledge it, then what good is this forum for? I posted about said actions and you guys deleted part of my post!

Another one bites the dust. Working on my laptop today and the screen suddenly goes white and I have to forcefully power cycle it. Since then, corrupt display and unable to boot at all.

I'm in the UK so in theory EU consumer law is on my side, so the laptop is currently with an Apple authorised partner to diagnose and raise an EU law claim with Apple.

I am joining the legion of disillusioned and frustrated Apple users... my 15" early 2011 Mac Book Pro is experiencing screen distortions, blue screen of death and white/grey screen of death.  The mac is fine until an application requires more extensive graphics capability, the mac then freezes and the screen display splits in 2 with the right half of the screen displayed on the left and vice versa with horizontal narrow distorted lines.  At this point the system is dead and a reboot is required.  Unfortunately after the initial apple logo and startup bar the screen flickers briefly and either results in what can only be described as Apple's distinctive Grey Screen of Death (completely white or light grey with no mouse pointer)... the cooling fans noticeably start up, getting faster and faster, the top left corner of the metal case above the keyboard gets hotter and after a few seconds the mac powers off.  This cycle is repeated on further reboot attempts, no matter whether it is a straight boot, boot from recovery, boot from external recovery, boot safe mode, boot single user mode... you name it I've tried it.  The only notable variation to this is the appearance on occasion of Apples version of a Blue Screen of Death, a bright blue screen with narrow vertical stripes of a slightly darker blue (usually triggered by a safe mode startup).  The mac at this point is dead until you leave it several hours and allow it to completely cool down.  It will then reboot, but will only work for a short time.  I have had similar responses to other users from Techs about it being the disk... which in my opinion is an ill-informed and lazy answer from techs that don't seen to care; the problem reoccurs even if i swap out the internal disk completely out and/or boot from a separate external recovery disk... so i can't see how the problem is related in any way to the disk.  I doubt that i would buy another Mac, its simply not worth the hassle, why pay a premium price for inferior quality of product (and service).  I have already started to switch away from Apple and have replaced my iPhone and soon my iPad and when i get the chance, will abandon the Macbook Pro.  Looking at the 2+ million readers of this thread, I can only imagine the number of disillusioned loyal users who are now moving away from Apple and who will never return... thats a lot of customers to lose for life.

my macbook pro is in the premium reseller in Greece and i'm waiting for a diagnose.

as my apple care has expired, what can i do with the EU consumer law? can you give me more infos?

thanks!

I'm stopped buying any Apple product until they solve this issue, totally lost my faith on Apple.

FYI, I posted this another thread that is a similar issue. "yosemite graphics problem on mamboed"

I'm getting very similar results on an early 2011 MacBook Pro 17". Seems to be ok with graphics switching disabled. Resetting PRAM seems to help but I've gone through so many gyrations getting it back up I'm not sure what gets it back. Resetting PRAM turns on graphics switching so the first step after getting it running is to disable graphics switching. Command R doesn't work, the backup startup partition isn't there (hidden for some reason). I built a USB startup drive that I've used to run Diskutil which seems to clear it up, again I don't have a clear set of steps to recover.

There's a long thread about graphics issues on the early 2011 machines (prior to Yosemite) that required logic board replacement. No idea if it's a hardware issue at this point. When it's running properly it passes all diagnostics. My computer worked absolutely perfectly until Yosemite, I'm convinced it's bugs in Yosemite. Either way (hardware or software) Apple needs to stand tall and FIX THE ISSUE!

We paid a premium for these machines and they better last more than a few years!

I really really don't want to go back to a Windows machine but if Apple doesn't get this fixed, or at least offer an economical repair option, I may be forced into it. I'm not going to pay a huge repair bill for a board replacement when it's clearly an Apple defect affecting thousands of customers. They may be virus prone and need constant updates but Windows 7 works pretty good and my old IBM machine keeps on working.

Anyone at Apple listening to us customers?

Its looking like Apple's strategy here will be to try to ride this one through, all of our machines with this issue are now 3 years old and maybe they are thinking that they can just keep deleting posts that refer to outside actions.

The 2011 macbook pro GPU failure is well established and recognized by apple, just not officially.

I've had an apple genius here in admit there is an issue and say that apple will cover replacement motherboards for those who paid out of pocket for their own repairs, as I have. They did cover the second motherboard replacement, 1 year after the first, out of their pocket.

This is an unofficial policy that has yet to be confirmed.

Been on this thread and suffering through three logic board changes on my 17" Late 2011 MBP. I've posted a lot, but gave up about 5 months ago on being an active poster...too much side bickering.

So far, the third logic board seems to be holding up, but I have a new suspicion...

My entire machine seems sluggish since getting it back from Apple Depot.  Is there a place to check if it has been under-clocked in order to keep the heat down?  This might be a good plan for keeping the time bomb from exploding, but Apple may also have returned the machine to me in a "lesser state" than when I sent it in.

Techies, please let me know if there is a KEXT or other place for me to see if any settings were changed to slow down the CPU or GPU.

There is a guy in Germany replacing your GPU with a fresh one, using lead-containing solder (the lead-free one used by Apple may probably contribute to the problem).

furfurfur wrote:

 

Another one bites the dust. Working on my laptop today and the screen suddenly goes white and I have to forcefully power cycle it. Since then, corrupt display and unable to boot at all.

 

I'm in the UK so in theory EU consumer law is on my side, so the laptop is currently with an Apple authorised partner to diagnose and raise an EU law claim with Apple.

Your claim (under the UK's Sale of Goods Act) is not against Apple, it is against the retailer (which may also be Apple depending on where you bought it)

To be honest  I'm not sure I really believe Simon's statements reported above but none the less I  have sent him a polite email with all failure details and  my Apple case numbers for the multiple Logic board repairs / pictures of the Blue screens and the quote for the latest repair.

Lets see .....

djzantas -- emailed to Simon Keegan as you suggested:

This extensively documented fault has been affecting 2011 MacBook Pro owners since February 2013 — or perhaps earlier — and is causing a very great deal of ill-feeling and not a little financial distress among owners. It is also undermining the confidence of a considerable number of existing customers in the wisdom of future purchases, given Apple’s apparently cavalier attitude.

The consensus among the near 10,000 posters (2.3million hits) on > Apple Support Communities >

Re: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

and other sites is that the failure is caused by a confluence of insufficient cooling (in this particular context) with lead free-solder and hot-running AMD GPUs (possibly exacerbated by excessive application of thermal paste) leading to degradation over time of the GPU’s soldered connection.

At a certain point this degradation renders the computer inoperable. It seems that very large numbers of these computers (my own included) have failed at, or around the three year mark, which is a very poor outcome for what is touted as a premium product, at a premium price, you must agree.

Owners are of course disappointed, and often seriously inconvenienced, but what rankles more than anything is the complete silence from Apple over a protracted period. The replacement of logic boards with equally flawed reconditioned boards, often leading to another failure in short order, appears — in the absence of information from Apple — to be a further expensive fiasco for the benighted customer: insult piled upon injury.

Nobody in the ‘community’ of injured parties is under any illusion as to the size and power of Apple — this is a relatively small corner of a giant enterprise after all, but the potential word-of-mouth reputational damage from this could be considerable over time. Beware of hubris Apple: for the want of a nail… .

Sincerely

I'm not buying another Macbook Pro until this is resolved. My 2011 MBP is getting worse.