GPU Failed? - Help

[cppnerd]

Hi all
Couple questions here:

My MBP (SR 2,2GHz; NVIDIA 8600GT) has recently been giving garbled displays at random times, and 3D rendering suddenly dropping from 60-70fps and staying instead around 2-3fps sustained. Today, after waking from sleep. the screen, and secondary monitor are black. The computer works, as I can shut down, boot up, hear the hard drive, and I can blindly launch iTunes, etc and play files using the keyboard. Would I be right in saying this is the GPU?

I saw apple is offering to repair the faulty GPUs up to 3 years. I purchased mine 1-Oct-2007, so it would qualify. Which brings me to 2 other questions:

1. I don't live within 400 miles of an apple store. We have like a bestbuy and a few small computer shops. I know the bestbuy is authorized reseller. Do they carry parts to fix/warranty this?

2. If I do send it in to apple, i no longer have applecare as I just went with the 1 year warranty. After it was out of warranty I swapped hard drives for a bigger one. Will this cause a problem? Do I need to switch back to the old factory drive?

 

[electroshock]

AppleCare coverage status should not be an issue if they diagnose it as being the faulty GPU since Apple is covering all such claims free of charge regardless of their warranty status.

However, if you mail it back in to Apple (after phoning Apple to make arrangements for it), I would recommend putting the old factory drive in before doing so. That way, if they decide to replace it with a refurb MBP of similar specs or even replace with a new[er] one, you won't have any grief about lost data.

 

[cppnerd]

Good point, I hadn't thought about that. Is the only way to take care of it to call them and arrange it to be mailed if there's no actual apple store nearby?

 

[electroshock]

Good point, I hadn't thought about that. Is the only way to take care of it to call them and arrange it to be mailed if there's no actual apple store nearby?

Another avenue is to contact a (hopefully) nearby Apple authorised repair centre who should be able to send it in to Apple on your behalf if you don't mind the 'middleman'. In the very least, they would likely have diagnosis tools for this particular issue and could tell you if it's indeed this infamous problem or not.

 

[cppnerd]

Great I will look into that! Thanks a ton! It'd be nice to get a diagnostic before sending it in.

 

[cluthz]

if you have the original CDs from the computer, do run the extended hardware test.

If you have the error codes ready when calling apple it makes things ten times easier.

Apple Hardware Test:
  Last Run:	2/29/08 1:35 PM
  Version:	3A121
  Test Suite:	Extended Test
  Result:	Failed
  Failure code:	4VDC/1/40000003: VideoController

This is how it looked when my GPU started to fail

 

[cppnerd]

if you have the original CDs from the computer, do run the extended hardware test.

If you have the error codes ready when calling apple it makes things ten times easier.

Apple Hardware Test:
  Last Run:	2/29/08 1:35 PM
  Version:	3A121
  Test Suite:	Extended Test
  Result:	Failed
  Failure code:	4VDC/1/40000003: VideoController

This is how it looked when my GPU started to fail

There's no way to do that though right? I have a black screen on the LCD and nothing on my second monitor either.

 

[cluthz]

Ahh my fault.

Would be a bit hard if you get no video at all.