I have a Mac Pro cylinder, 3.7 Ghz quad core, purchased new in 2015. It has problems now, and I took it to an authorized mac service provider, who said it needs the graphics cards replaced. It has these cards:
Dual AMD FirePro D300 GPUs with 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM each
They are asking US$500 for the cards and $200 labor. Does this sound good. Might I come out better if I have this work done by an Apple Store?
Mac Pro, iOS 11.2.5, 3.7 Ghz quad core
Thanks to all who responded to my original question. Here's an interesting update. I decided to take the computer to the local Apple Store. They quoted me their price to replace the graphics cards, although they said they weren't at all sure they would need to do that. The price would be a little over half the price asked by the authorized third party service center for exactly the same parts and labor. After a number of days of working with the machine, however, they have only needed to re-install the operating system. The problem seems to be resolved. This cost me nothing. $0. Machine is working fine.
Thanks to all who responded to my original question. Here's an interesting update. I decided to take the computer to the local Apple Store. They quoted me their price to replace the graphics cards, although they said they weren't at all sure they would need to do that. The price would be a little over half the price asked by the authorized third party service center for exactly the same parts and labor. After a number of days of working with the machine, however, they have only needed to re-install the operating system. The problem seems to be resolved. This cost me nothing. $0. Machine is working fine.
An Apple Authorized Service Provider will have a different price than an Apple store, but not usually by too much. All AASPs have to have technicians licensed, just like at an Apple store. That sounds like as good of a deal as you're going to get honestly.
Repair quality should be the same. If you're lucky, Apple Store might cover it under warranty, especially if you had AppleCare on it and it just expired. They are a little more flexible on that than AASPs.
One of my MacBook Pro had a dead motherboard and the Apple Store could not do the job and get it back to me in the time that I needed it. They suggested I allow them to send to the local AASP. They were able to do the work and ship it to my house in four days. That was less then half what the store was tell me. Plus they did the replacement under warranty.
Why do you think an Apple Store would be better then the Authorized Mac Service Center?
cost to replace both graphics cards
