Anyone have success w/forcing MBP to use integrated GPU instead of AMD chip?

BrianofNazareth

BrianofNazareth

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Have a 15" MacBook Pro early 2011 - known video failure. Missed the extended repair program by a few months. Wondering if anyone has a way to force the MBP to use just the integrated Intel video chip instead of the faulty AMD Radeon HD 6490M that is now preventing boot. Customer ignored the warning signs (vertical lines, crashes, etc.) and now it won't boot at all (safe mode, external drive, recovery, etc). Per usual, Apple Diagnostics run in extended tests report no problems.

The internet is awash with reports of people baking/overheating it - I am hoping to find a way to disable the AMD chip & have it run on just the integrated Intel chip. Thoughts?

Thank you all in advance.
 
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I think it would be a system board feature/option so you might be SOL but I would start looking in the BIOS or what ever its called now.
 
But if there is no display, I'm not sure you can do much of anything. I don't think open firmware will give the option to change the GPU. But you can try. I've never seen it to be honest. I know of an app called Graphics card switcher program that allows you to change it, but not sure about open firmware.
 
What's the actual processor? Not all processors include the integrated GPU.... but looking up the processors included in early-2011 MBP 15" it looks like they all included the Intel HD 3000 graphics.

According to Wikipedia those are also supposed to auto-switch between integrated and AMD graphics, which makes it more likely that there's an option to force it to one or the other.
 
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