I'm seeing some wicked deals on Amazon for a new 2.4 or 2.5GHz 15" and personally, I don't think there is much of a benefit to buying the new notebooks over the previous gen. The only thing stopping me is all this talk about the Nvidia chips being bad. Is this a problem that has since been cleared up or can a I count on my Amazon MBP failing? If I bought the apple care, couldn't I just wait until video starts getting whacky and then apple would fix the problem anyway, right? Will they continue to offer tech support and parts for the previous gen three years from now?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
So what's the deal with the GPU failures in the previous MBP?
- Thread starter AdiosVista
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Only a small percentage of installed chips are affected. If yours fails, Apple will replace it free, up to 2 years from the date of purchase, even if it's not in warranty. You can find this and other info by searching the forums, as there are hundreds of existing posts about it. And yes, AppleCare covers any defects for 3 years.
Mm, I'm not sure if it's a small percentage. I heard/read that every single mbp that was manufactured after march/april was affected. The 8600gt is pretty much a flawed design from the start and they can't simply retrace back to the manufacturing process and rectify it, because that is an extremely costly process (hence the recent transition of many laptop manufacturers to other graphics solutions than 8600gt).
I also read somewhere on this forum that even if it IS repaired through applecare, it was being replaced with another faulty chip....
Well, just because you read it in a forum, doesn't make it real. There are lots of posts that have no basis in fact. What I stated is from Apple's own statement.
There have been a lot of posters screaming "the sky is falling!" over this issue and blowing it out of proportion. It is NOT every single MBP that's affected. If AppleCare replaces it and the replacement fails, they'd have to replace it again. Obviously, they're not going to intentionally create more work/expense for themselves by replacing with what they know is a faulty part.
When I read the news from the Apple site, I noticed they didn't include the 2.5GHz MBP listed as one of the notebooks with this problem. But I thought this model had the same GPU?
From what I've heard, every 8000 series chip, desktop and laptop, are affected. The problem just shows up more readily in laptops because they go through many more heating/cooling cycles.
Not all, and not definitely.
The 2.5GHz MBP is included, since it was only released in early 2008 and Apple states:
I sympathise with all your concerns, I'm wondering all the same stuff at the moment as well. About to need to replace my current notebooks with something Apple, just not sure what, yet!
Time for the good old pro/con list
