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rex450se

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 9, 2011
261
77
Independence, MO
So I have started having some issues with my early-2011 Macbook Pro. I think it is the video issue that's been covered extensively but just want to make sure. I did withing the last month upgrade the machine to 16Gb of Ram and 500Gb SSD and for the first couple weeks never had a problem. I've had a couple kernal panics that have shut the computer off and I've had to restart it and occasionally when I have iTunes open for example, there will be lines in just the window open where the picture is distorted or black lines. It's weird that it happens only in open windows though and not on the whole screen. I took it in to the Genius Bar since it's still covered under the warranty for the graphic issue but it passed their tests. Is this a graphics card issue and if so what can I do to get it to fail that test? If it isn't the known issue that these have what else could it be? Thanks in advance.
 
So I have started having some issues with my early-2011 Macbook Pro. I think it is the video issue that's been covered extensively but just want to make sure. I did withing the last month upgrade the machine to 16Gb of Ram and 500Gb SSD and for the first couple weeks never had a problem. I've had a couple kernal panics that have shut the computer off and I've had to restart it and occasionally when I have iTunes open for example, there will be lines in just the window open where the picture is distorted or black lines. It's weird that it happens only in open windows though and not on the whole screen. I took it in to the Genius Bar since it's still covered under the warranty for the graphic issue but it passed their tests. Is this a graphics card issue and if so what can I do to get it to fail that test? If it isn't the known issue that these have what else could it be? Thanks in advance.

Yurp, graphics failure. As you've already mentioned, there's a repair program for it. Strange how they're not covering it.

May be worth going back and ask them to at least identify what's causing the issues. If they admit it's the GPU, they might go ahead with sorting it out.

If that doesn't work, you can stress your GPU for a few minutes to see if the issue becomes more obvious when the graphics are being hammered. If you get obvious problems with freezing/massive distortions, it's certainly the GPU: http://www.geeks3d.com/gputest/
 
The reason they wouldn't cover it, yet, was because it had to fail their test to be covered under the program. So it's only an intermittent problem now and not bad enough to fail their test. They offered me leaving it there for a few days to run more extensive test on it to try to get it to fail, but I couldn't afford to be without my laptop at the time. I'll try to do some more demanding work on it instead of getting on my desktop at work and see if it can make the problem worse. Thanks for the confirmation that it is the GPU and couldn't be anything else.
 
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