Could GPU be dying?

[slapple]

I have a late 2011 15" MBP with Windows 7 and Mac OS X Lion installed in Boot Camp. Earlier this week I had a lot of crashes with Windows 7 that seemed to be video related (I would notice the video go haywire right before it crashed). I even updated to the latest video driver but that didn't help. The problem got so bad that I couldn't even boot into Windows 7 anymore.

So then I managed to boot into Lion and the computer worked fine for a couple days, until tonight, when I tried to open a new Firefox window and suddenly the screen turned completely blue. Completely blue with no text and the computer was frozen. (I didn't know Mac OS X has its own version of the BSOD.) I had to restart and got the gray screen freeze described here - so I followed the steps on that page to try to get my MBP to boot up.

I restarted again and tried to hold Shift to do a Safe Boot. I ended up getting a blue screen with vertical black lines - I attached a photo of that. Then I restarted again and tried the NVRAM/PRAM reset and still got the gray screen. I restarted again and tried booting from my Lion install DVD and still got the gray screen.

After many restarts and gray screens, I'm not sure how I finally got Mac OS X booted up, but I'm logged in right now. Still, I am worried the crashes could continue. I originally thought something seriously wrong happened to my Windows 7 install, but now that I had a crash in Mac OS X, I'm wondering if there's something wrong with the MBP itself. Since the problem looks like its video related, could the GPU be dying?

 

[matthewadams]

Yeah. Thats exactly what happened. The blue screen with vertical black lines happens on all 2011 devices affected by that issue 🙁

 

[Treeman574]

Yep. Apple will never admit it, but the AMD GPU in the 2011 models fail often. I had the exact same issues with mine, along with all the replacement logic boards from apple.

 

[slapple]

Well that stinks. If this problem affects all 2011 MBPs then getting a replacement logic board won't help.

What about the 2012 MBPs that use the Nvidia GPU - I assume those don't have the problem?

 

[Treeman574]

Well that stinks. If this problem affects all 2011 MBPs then getting a replacement logic board won't help.

What about the 2012 MBPs that use the Nvidia GPU - I assume those don't have the problem?

I don't know, but that's the model Apple replaced mine with. Hopefully works forever since it's the last cmpb.

 

[TexasChemE]

Lovely. I just started to get this issue, my 2011 15'' MBP (with the AMD discrete graphics) has crashed three times today. Does anyone have any experiences with Apple helping out with this issue? (Unrelated, but will Apple service my computer if i'm running an optibay setup?)

 

[slapple]

I don't know, but that's the model Apple replaced mine with. Hopefully works forever since it's the last cmpb.

Oh really? That's the first I've heard of that. Everyone else I've seen says Apple just tries to replace the logic board with another 2011 logic board. Were you still under AppleCare?