Late 2011 MBP video issue

[MacSince1985]

My daughter's MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.4GHz 15" (Late 2011) had its logic board replaced 2 years ago due to the soldering issues on the video card. At the time, it was fully paid by Apple under the extended warranty.

Two days ago, the laptop started exhibiting the same type of display artifacts. Several reboots did not fix it. The battery was close to 0%. After the battery was exhausted and fully recharged, it rebooted fine and has not shown any artifacts since. This bring a few questions:

• Can the battery charge level cause any display issue?
• Was the replacement logic board installed in 2015 supposed to be free of the defect that affected the original?

Of course, this happens exactly 1 month after Apple made this model "vintage".

 

[Audit13]

I'm not sure if the replacement logic boards were any better.

Maybe run an app to stress the video card too see if the problem reappears?

 

[ZapNZs]

No, Apple did not modify the boards in any meaningful way because the replacement logic boards drop like flies as well. It is most likely the same GPU issue as before.

A likely reason it is working right this moment is because it is running on the iGPU - however, each time you have to shut it down, there is a chance it will not start back up again (unless you use the modification to change the boot to stop using the dGPU and instead use the iGPU.) You can use a program like GFXcardStatus to set the GPU switching to 'integrated only' - although it does not work perfectly on more recent versions of OS X - and then simply never shut the system down or put it to sleep and you should be good to go.

Another reason it may be working now is because the issue can occur intermittently at first, and then become progressively worse until the system cannot boot at all. Additionally, the heat generated during unsuccessful boot attempts can, sometimes, cause enough expansion/contraction needed for the system to successfully complete the boot cycle (multiple Users, myself included, have had luck getting 2011 MBPs with failed dGPUs to boot successfully by intentionally overheating them.)