Video Card Woes

[Devian]

Calling the Geekiest of Macintosh Geeks. I has a big problem! I have a 1st gen Macbook Pro and the vid card is going bad, causing a lot of overheating and freezing. How hard/expensive is this to replace? I'm good with technology and wouldn't be surprised if I could replace this by myself. I'm looking for a bit of advice though. Is it easy? How much? Should I just have a pro do it?

Dev

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Does this apply?
MacBook Pro: Distorted video or no video issues

The GPU is soldered onto the logic board, no way to replace it, unless you have access to a factory with the right equipment.

 

[Devian]

Well according to that, I should have brought it in when it started to freeze about a year ago. Crap...

 

[snaky69]

Well according to that, I should have brought it in when it started to freeze about a year ago. Crap...

If it's an actual, first gen MBP, you have the ATI X1600, which isn't covered under the recall, so bringing it in would do nothing.

If you do have the 8600GT, you may get lucky, a friend of mine who works at an Apple store told me that even though the policy is 4 years from date of purchase, his Apple store will honour the warranty even past the 4 years.

As with 99.99% of laptops, the graphics card is soldered onto the logicboard, thus it is not replaceable without replacing the whole logicboard.