Macbook Pro 2011 A1286, Intel HD 3000 graphics (+AMD Radeon HD 6750M combo) - image stretched / distorted. Windows 10.

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Level 1

8 points

Macbook Pro 2011 A1286, Intel HD 3000 graphics (+AMD Radeon HD 6750M combo) - image stretched / distorted. Windows 10.

Ladies and Gentleman,

I own a MacBook Pro 2011 A1286 which I got as a freebie from a friend who saved it from the corporate dumpster.

This machine as many of its generation was dumped because of a graphics fault. The discrete graphics in the laptop (AMD Radeon HD 6750M) is dead. Its a common fault in those machines and the users were offered a replacement - there was a special recall program which ended long before I got my hands on this laptop.

I am not a wealthy person and I love to tinker with the hardware. This laptop has a i7 cpu, 4 cores 8 threads, I've extended its memory to 8 GB and I keep trying to bring it back to life.

So far I've managed to use a EFI hack to disable the discrete AMD graphics. This is the script I have used while booted to Arch Linux live cd.

cd / &&

umount /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/ &&

mount -t efivarfs rw /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/ &&

cd /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/ &&

printf "\x07\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x00" > /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/gpu-power-prefs-fa4ce28d-b62f-4c99-9cc3-6815686e3

0f9 &&

chattr +i "/sys/firmware/efi/efivars/gpu-power-prefs-fa4ce28d-b62f-4c99-9cc3-6815686e30f9 " &&

cd / &&

umount /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/ &&

reboot

What does it do? It tells the laptop to turn off discrete AMD graphics and to use Intel card. Thanks to this hack I was able to install MacOS Sierra, prepare space for unsupported on this laptop Windows 10 Professional 64 bit and then shrink the windows partiton and install Arch Linux 64 bit with Plasma desktop. Fun fun fun..Script needs to be re-run if PRAM was cleared so I saved it as /boot/FixAMD.sh in my ArchLinux. Refind allows me to switch between the installations without any problem.

MacOS runs okish. Few graphics glitches, not great performance. Linux runs fantastic. Its really working awesome.

Problem starts with Windows 10. For some reason Intel decided to abandon HD 3000 graphics and does not provide the drivers for Windows 10. No biggie. Found out that the GPU supposedly works great from the drivers from Windows update... Unfortunately this is not my experience.

I am installing Windows 10 Pro 64 bits using EFI boot, everything works great. Laptop finishes installation, I am allowed to log in to windows and I can see two basic graphics interfaces in the device manager.

I tried the Win7 64 bit driver, Win 8.1 64 bit driver, windows update driver. I tried installing the drivers before and after installing bootcamp for Windows 7. I tried installing AMD drivers first, Intel first, I tried disabling AMD graphics in the Device Manager, I tried setting up custom resolution... I tried many other things. I tried changing order of doing thins. Reinstalled fresh 20 - 30 times during the last 4 - 5 weekends.Tried installing stuff in different order, drivers first, Intel Drivers Update Utility + chipset firmware updated (inf) first, update fully first, different set of drivers as mentioned above. No matter what I do after installation of Intel HD 3000 graphics always ends up looking like this:

It is stretched, with maximum resolution 1280x800 (while the Intel HD 3000 card native res is 1860 x 1050), It looks like the screen is stretched beyond the LCD capabilities but I know its not true as I can get the native resolution working in MacOS and Linux.

I did a lot of research up to this point. Googled a lot, read a lot... I tried many solutions. Custom resolution, 3 different GPU drivers and so on... but this one - I cannot figure out. Can someone smarter than myself explain to me what am I doing wrong? Drivers for the Intel HD 3000 GPU always installed without any warning. No matter which of the mentioned above. Only during the GPU detection step the screen goes mad. I never forced any drivers. System accepted them as correct ones and then this happens...

- What is the proper procedure here... What I need is to install both cards AMD and Ati drivers and then disable AMD card so that Intel takes over. Correct?

- Is it possible that I need some special display driver? Maybe its the Macbook's LCD that is the culprit here and not GPU or its drivers?

- Have you ever faced such problem? What was the solution?

Thanks in advance for any help provided.

With regards.

AndrzejL

MacBook Pro, Windows 10

Posted on Aug 12, 2017 2:34 AM

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Answer 1

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Aug 12, 2017 8:51 AM in response to AndrzejLinux

Your 2011 Mac is a preUEFI Mac, so an EFI installation of Windows 10 using UEFI is not recommended, otherwise you will add to your current misery.

The 2011 Intel HD 3K on Macs is not stock HD3K. The macOS side has the correct drivers. You mention that you have tried W7/W8.1 drivers. Can you confirm that you have tried the official drivers from Install Windows 7 and earlier on your Mac using Boot Camp - Apple Support for the appropriate model?

Also, the AMD GPU issues may be correctable, if you are really adventurous. Re-flowing solder on the Logic Board using a household cooking oven and foil wrap is an option worth testing. Manually re-soldering the GPU on an SMT board has a lot of challenges, but it is an adventure by itself.

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Answer 2

Rudegar

Level 10

170,694 points

Aug 12, 2017 4:44 AM in response to AndrzejLinux

only driver one can be sure to work are the drivers in the bootcamp packet with win10 one has to generate in osx bootcamp utlil

or with older version one can download as a zip packet from apples site

and doing unofficial ways of disabling the amd and use the intel onboard is hit or miss and may never work outside of osx which could be handling the switch between the 2 in a different manner then windows and linux would

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Answer 3

AndrzejLinux Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 12, 2017 9:10 AM in response to Loner T

Hi guys,

Thank you both for your replies.

Rudegar: I cannot use the current machine to create a Windows 10 bootcamp drivers collection. Its being recognized as a non-compatible with Windows 10 and it refuses to create the installation media and download the bootcamp drivers.

Loner T: Yes I can confirm that I have read that article you linked to (twice or three times to be honest). I tried "the recommended method". At the moment I've lost my "experimental sata drive" which I use for testing of OS' and installation methods. I have a genuine Windows 7 64 bit SP1 dvd and a Windows 10 Creators Update dvd and keys. I will give Windows 7 installation another go but from what I remember it was not running great when I tried it in the past.

Heating up the card is not really a solution: Reballing flip chip GPUs is ******** - the truth about dead laptop GPUs & repairing them. - YouTube

I do appologize for the title of the video. Its not my video. I did not titled it this way. This guy seems like he knows what he is talking about and I believe that reballing / reflow can do more harm then good. I actually used the oven to reflow my Asus V1S nvidia 8600m gt card few times and yes - it worked - until it didn't. After 5 or 6 failures I have reflowed it one evening just to find out that graphics died completely. It will not load any GUI at all. No biggie - its being used now as a headless Linux server :).

I would rather just keep AMD graphics disabled and try to make Intel working under Windows then lose this awesome (and powerful) machine.

With regards.

AndrzejL

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Answer 4

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Aug 12, 2017 10:33 AM in response to AndrzejLinux

You may want to consider removing (de-soldering the AMD GPU) as another option. You have first-hand experience with the re-flowing, so you already know the advantages/disadvantages of doing it. Repeatedly re-flowing will degrade the board, and resurrecting it 5-6 times in your case is a good result. The logic board is not designed to be 'cooked' at 500-1000 Celsius.

You will also need to address the resulting firmware errors, if you do remove the GPU.

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