Upgrade Graphics card in MacBook Pro 15" 2.2GHz Early 2011

the graphics card is not upgradeable.

You cannot upgrade the CPU or GPU on laptops. They are soldered to the motherboard.

Regardless of your being new here, this topic has been discussed before. You might have searched before posting.

If you would have read the threads posted on the right under the heading More Like This, you would have discovered that it has already been posted here.

Allan

Technically an addition of another GPU is possible through Thunderbolt, with a device such as this one: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/lucid-gpu-graphics-thunderbolt-external,17520.h tml

However, I do not believe these are available yet, and whether they will be an upgrade or simply an addition with no computational benefit is yet to be determined.

Hi Aaron, Two kinds of people in the world, Tool users and tool builders. In this case, the prior responses to the question presume to know you, they are in a context that stereotype the entire reading audience as only able to consume a shrink wrapped utter non tech end user answer.

Responses fail to ask before they answer follow up questions. They fail to set any boundaries of what you or the audience would consider acceptable and worse pass off (with scorn for your asking it) your question as either foolish or as factually materially not technologically possible.

When in reality, it’s just is not your question which is in error, it appears to be the experience of or the presuming of the posters which have limited the material factual discussion of options.

No one asked you if your goal was to get it done with a technicians help or to purchase a completed finished end user installable bits and make it work yourself. No one asked if you had some, none, extensive or access to technicians who do soldering.

The three respondent’s are likely correct in guessing, most people (in general) can't go buy and solder if their lives depended on it. However what the posters did, almost appears intended to confuse or conflate the experience with soldering with it with not being possible, rational, reasonable or desirable.

I don’t know you or the other posters, but I value the question and you more than to dismiss it by answering conveniently based on my assumptions about you.

So out of the box thinking is required, to counter the dismissive one liners .."its soldered in, suck it up and buy new".

Please consider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_evolution

Soldering irons have been around for over 4,000 years. Up until the late 1800s they were all heated by open flame or burning coals.

1894
The American Electrical Heater Company of Detroit Michigan begins manufacturing electric soldering irons. Shortly after the American Beauty® line of soldering irons appears.

1921
Ernst Sachs (Germany) claims to have developed the first electric soldering iron for industry (see note below) and ERSA begins commercial production of a 200 watt electric soldering iron. [More Details]

Note: I have found an advertisement from 1898 in an issue of "The Electrical Engineer" Vol. XXIV showing a drawing and description of the American Electrical Heater Company's electric soldering iron which pre dates Ernst Sachs electric soldering iron by 23 years.

1926
In December of 1926 William Alferink files for a U.S. patent for a "Combined Holder and Automatic Circuit Breaker for Electric Soldering Irons" (first soldering station?). On July third, 1928 the patent is granted.

1946
Carl E. Weller is granted a patent for his instant heat soldering gun and starts production as the Weller Manufacturing Company in Easton Pennsylvania where he manufactures the first "Speedy Iron" instant heat soldering gun.

1949
The American Beauty "Temperature Regulating Stands" are sold to control the temperature of electric soldering irons.

1951
WEN Products is founded and manufacturers their own instant heat soldering iron.

1954
Weller sues WEN Products over soldering gun patent infringement.
Court finds in Weller's favor. [More Details]

1960
Weller is granted a patent for the "Magnastat" soldering iron which controls the iron's temperature through the use of a temperature sensitive magnetic tip.

1967
Weller begins manufacturing it's W-TCP soldering station with a "Magnastat" iron.

1970
Weller Manufacturing Company is sold to Cooper Industries.

Reference: http://www.stevenjohnson.com/soldering/history.htm

So the actual fundamental concern is not soldering, soldering has been around for a while, finding a technician is not the issue. Then the issue would seem to me to be, "will a card fit"?

If the card fits, it can be soldered in. That’s the bottom line. An expert might take an hour to solder it, An expert might charge $90 - $250 an hour. A person with more than a little experience will appear as an expert to you. Ask for and check references, BBB to reduce your learning curve. Establish a maximum price, Establish criteria with your expert that make it acceptable to agree in advance in writing to only pay a fixed max amount on successful completion.

Does anyone have a reference of it being done?

Does anyone know a contact company that would take the job?

Does anyone know specific parts (have a URL?) that should or are known to work?

Milestones

– Feasibility confirmation

– Locate engineering soldering expertise

– Return here and post your experience.

Notes:

If Apple had Nvidia reduce or reshape the display card specifically to fit the MacBook Pro you’re out of luck however if the MBP card was not customized by Apple then any modern mobile Nvidia board may work if you can find a tech to solder it in.

If Apple changed the already small mobile card form to custom fit the MBP then you’re going to have no luck.

Glad to clear that up for everyone with some material relevant facts for the adults

shldr2thewheel wrote:

the graphics card is not upgradeable.

Kappy wrote:

You cannot upgrade the CPU or GPU on laptops. They are soldered to the motherboard.

Regardless of your being new here, this topic has been discussed before. You might have searched before posting.

Allan Eckert wrote:

If you would have read the threads posted on the right under the heading More Like This, you would have discovered that it has already been posted here.

Allan

By the time you're finished learning how to properly desolder and then attach a new GPU, if the motherboard's logic structure will even accept it, and even if you are unwilling and wish to pay another person to do it, then you will quickly realize its worth neither the time, nor the risk, nor the expense that you would have to pay another for such services. By then you might as well simply purchase a new system.

Furthermore, if the end result even works, it would be unsupported, likely unstable, and overall greatly reduce the utility of your machine.

Everyone who posted replies here understands this, which is why a suggestion of manually replacing the GPU chip itself as you suggest is not even considered. Technically doable? Perhaps. Recommended? Not in the slightest degree, even for a highly knowledgable computer engineer (who would very likely agree with this assessment).

Lastly, just FYI, when it comes to soldering the components of modern boards, standard soldering irons are way too crude. You need to understand and have skills with proper reflow soldering techniques (among others?) to get this done.

Chuck,

I think it is you who have done a dis-service. Not only is the graphic chip not user serviceable it takes a great more than just soldering training and skill to upgrade the graphics chip. I have 20+ year experience with an Electrical Engineering degree.

The chip that is used for the graphics is (as corretly indicated in previous posts) soldered onto the board. It, however, was not soldered onto the mother board with an iron. It was placed by a highly sophisticated robot, and reflowed in a precision, temperature controlled, oven.

The chip is in a package called a ball-grid array and is not, in any way, hand solderable. Even removing the chip would require special equiment.

Let's say you could get the chip off... if there was a replacement... there is a very good chance the replacement would not just fit in the pads on the circui board and would require many chnages-- changes which, if not performed by a highly skilled techniciam, could damage other parts of the circuit board.

Some of the pads on the ball grid arrays these days are 0.4mm apart and can have as many as 1000 pins.

Here is a picture of a part:

The part requires DDR5 memory which you could only hope to get to work with careful simulation of the connections because the data rates are so high. Mkaing the connections without a circuit board is really impossible.

There are no notebooks (from Apple) that have shipped with an actual graphics card. The "Card" is included directly on the motherboard to save precious space. By doing this you save the connector space and other space (mounting holes, power supplies, etc). The cost is the ability to upgrade the card.

There is an option to get a Thunderbolt external enclose and connect a PCIe graphics card to it. There are so howtos on the internet. They still require some hacking and are much more doable.

Message was edited by: Wayne Contello

Aaron,

That'll teach you for asking a simple question!

lol!

Love this answer, love the time you took to help him out, wish there were more helpful people out there on forums like you!

I'm sick and tired of people like "Kappy" and "shldr2thewheel" just telling people

you can't just upgrade CPU or GPU cause they're soldered into the logic board, without explaining why. It almost seems,

without their full reasoning, THEY DON'T KNOW why the cpu and gpu can't be upgraded.

Let's get this fact straight. No matter what other people will tell you, everything inside a laptop "can" be replaced.

The question is, would you pay hundreds of dollars just to use the heater, flux, solder, ... all the equipment you need

to safely remove the CPU, and replace it with the new one that also costs significant price in its own?

What I suggest is that usually, for the price of upgrading a CPU and GPU, you can instead sell your old Macbook and

with the additional fund, get a new laptop. If you still are interested, then you can at least go check with repair

or technician for their price point. (Oh, and btw, not to mention if your model is too old, then there's a high chance that

a new CPU model won't work on your old model logic board )