MBP 1,1-10,2 Force 2011 MacBook Pro 8,2 with failed AMD GPU to ALWAYS use Intel integrated GPU (EFI variable fix)

[Queen6]

Is complex with the 15" 2011's as much depends on the HW and OS combination. My own is passing 11-1/2 years young with little to no issue. See no reason to change it unless it drops out, have M1 Mac's and newer PC's for the serious stuff. Barring the battery being toasted it runs really well with no indication of throttling.

Q-6

 

[dowser]

So Queen6, did you bypass the resistor on the board or whatever other hardware mod that have been documented ?

Did you see any glitch or artefact at the times you did the SW process that would let you think your GPU is actually toasted?

Mine has been activated a few times when i was running Mojave and i did not see what i witnessed on 2008/2009 iMacs with toasted ATI cards (no color on the boot screen Apple for instance).

Nonetheless, all those hacks have drastically reduced (maybe totally eradicated) the kernel_task timebomb.
It could have been induced by some system attempt to load something linked to the unloaded kext.

I find it weird that it could happen straight at login once in a while... i'll see if it happens again now that everything seems to be fixed.

I got back the Nightshiftpatcher, it seems to be alright once the OS is stabilized.

 

[Queen6]

So Queen6, did you bypass the resistor on the board or whatever other hardware mod that have been documented ?

Did you see any glitch or artefact at the times you did the SW process that would let you think your GPU is actually toasted?

Mine has been activated a few times when i was running Mojave and i did not see what i witnessed on 2008/2009 iMacs with toasted ATI cards (no color on the boot screen Apple for instance).

Nonetheless, all those hacks have drastically reduced (maybe totally eradicated) the kernel_task timebomb.
It could have been induced by some system attempt to load something linked to the unloaded kext.

I find it weird that it could happen straight at login once in a while... i'll see if it happens again now that everything seems to be fixed.

I got back the Nightshiftpatcher, it seems to be alright once the OS is stabilized.

No, yet it's dGPU is significantly restrained via SW. The dGPU is technically active. No glitch or artefact so I leave it be. I dont see the need to strip out the the Logic Board as it's a mid 2011. Not worth the hassle for an 11-1/2 year old notebook that continues to work.

I think if it was going to fry the dGPU, it would have done years ago. I hammered it professionally with with an external monitor, my daughter used it as a PlayStation. Came back to me as DOA, cleaned up the SW image (thx to time on hands due to COVID). It's now used as our media server and is pretty much up 24/7, only time it get's shutdown is when we move house.

Barring a fix SW for the dGPU fix it's 100% stock...

Q-6

 

[dowser]

No, yet it's dGPU is significantly restrained via SW. The dGPU is technically active. No glitch or artefact so I leave it be. I dont see the need to strip out the the Logic Board as it's a mid 2011. Not worth the hassle for an 11-1/2 year old notebook that continues to work.

I think if it was going to fry the dGPU, it would have done years ago. I hammered it professionally with with an external monitor, my daughter used it as a PlayStation. Came back to me as DOA, cleaned up the SW image (thx to time on hands due to COVID). It's now used as our media server and is pretty much up 24/7, only time it get's shutdown is when we move house.

Barring a fix SW for the dGPU fix it's 100% stock...

Q-6

100% stock? Do you mean it's running on original battery and hard disk ? 😮
It seems we are in the same lucky situation where the SW hack is sufficient.
I'm nearly reaching the point where i can say i also stabilized that MBP.
It's been running over 24h without any kernel_task invasion !

The culprit could have been be a broken temperature probe sending trashy datas to the SMC chip or something related...
I am going to get the Apple Software Diagnostic disc image for that model, maybe it will corner the guilty gizmo.

This magic trick may have been documented in this thread, i probably did read 75% of the content of this thread and i do not remember seeing anything about that hack.
So sorry if i don't quote an original poster.

The funny thing is that i now remember applyng that exact same trick to another friend machine loooong time ago.
If only i had a time Mahine for my brain!

How to stop kernel_task overwhelming your CPU for NO REASON AT ALL (ie: CPU throttling without MBP overheating) :

If not done already : Go to Recovery mode, Choose Utility. Turn on Terminal. Type "csrutil disable" to disable SIP.
Restart.

Then open terminal in normal session
cd /System/library/Extensions/IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext/contents/plugins/ACPI_SMC_PlatformPlugin.kext/contents/resources/

Then discard the plist corresponding to your model (mbp 15" 2011 is MacBookPro8_2.plist) :
mv MacBookPro8_2.plist MacBookPro8_2.bak
Reboot (in Recovery imode first if you need to fix SIP back).

Some people just discarded the whole .kext file, i would not trust that...

So far i don't see any difference in the way things are monitored, iStats and Macs Fan Control both show exactly the same list of t° listed. The GPU Die t° is missing, (t° is replaced by a "-"), but it was before discarding the plist file

I could see GPU Die t° in both softwares when i started the whole process, so i believe this is a consequence of the SW hack.
That is probably because i did the pmset -a gpuswitch 0 to keep the "intel only" setting after discarding gfxcardstatus. That app had led me to blackscreen at boot when my configuration was still dodgy...
I did not try to install it again since everything seemed to be under control on that side.

 

[Queen6]

Yeah 100% as from the factory. I used it professionally then moved on to a Retina. My daughter used it until it didnt. Came back to me after a year and a half in a box. I cleaned up the SW image and TBH it's never run better, last clean installed at the factory.

Depending on the model & OS you could try gSwitch which is from the same dev who produced gfxcardstatus which for me works as have zero instability on High Sierra. If you go past High Sierra gSwitch will likely present issue as I believe Apple retired the API.

My opinion is if you have a fully working 2011 15" and restrain the dGPU it will likely continue to run. TBH mine has ran for half it's life with the dGPU fully active pushing a second display. Some 2011's are clearly more resilient, to this day it hits the power limit before it with throttle doesn't even max out it's fans, so no reason to pull it apart

Since I've got it back up and running the only thing I do take the base plate off check the battery for swelling and clean out the fans/heat sync's one a year or two which isn't too shabby for a notebook that's passing 11-1/2 years old.

Q-6

 

[dowser]

No, yet it's dGPU is significantly restrained via SW. The dGPU is technically active. No glitch or artefact so I leave it be. I dont see the need to strip out the the Logic Board as it's a mid 2011.

Yes, i think that’s my situation as well. GPU is not even appearing in the "about this mac" main tab. I can see it in System Info hardware/graphics section (Cartes Video in my frech localization). And of course in iStats/Macs Fan Control temp° (never going over 35°c) and power sections : 0.45v on High Sierra and ...

0.90->0.92 with Mojave !

Depending on the model & OS you could try gSwitch which is from the same dev who produced gfxcardstatus which for me works as have zero instability on High Sierra. If you go past High Sierra gSwitch will likely present issue as I believe Apple retired the API.

I did not insist on GFXCardStatus after having to boot in safe mode to get it out of the way.
But i did not know about gSwitch at the times, redesigned for HS if i remember what i could read somewhere later.

Now i painfully managed to boot on Mojave dosdude1 patched, after discarding X3000.kext, some GL bundles from /S/L/E, backing up the MBP8,2 plist deep into API_SMC_PlatformPlugin.kext (within the IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext),.
Then i sudo cp -R’d the 2 bash scripts to where they belong during the post install process (again the last command of this process has to be done after a proper Mojave boot).

All backlights buttons are functionnal, i could fix NightShift and proper transparency.
It was a bit of a nightmare as the patching + update patching system interferes with the dGPU hacks somehow. A festival of black, white, flashing screens and reboot loops.
But i’m into this as other would enjoy some computer game. A kind of never ending quest ;-)
So i go online after every fail, searching and reading a lot, digging some tools, scripts and terminal code lines like some other would fetch weapons and spell scrolls to tame the bugs and get some experience points.

So far it does not wake from sleep, and, as with HS, it does not shutdown or reboot using the Apple Menu (moving cursor on black screen).
The force-shutdown with the terminal may be a bit harsh with Mojave and the hack appears to be less stable than with High Sierra. Choosing to log out of the account and then clicking buttons at the bottom of the login screen gives better results.

But it seems that is the best anybody could get from 10.4.6 on MBP8,2 model in this other macrumors thread saga (794 pages yet, as many machines are concerned, this thread seems a thin novel compared to that beast !).

gSwitch will likely present issue as I believe Apple retired the API

Which API does Apple just zapped from Mojave exactly ? Maybe it could be re-injected by some code wizard?

I find it weird that after doing exactly the same process on both system, i end up with opposite setting of the graphic switching option in the Energy System Preferences panel : unticked in HS, ticked in Mojave.

pmset -gbrings back the same line gpuswitch=0 on the two systems. Nonetheless, Mojave is feeding the GPU 2x the amount of volts that is measured in HS. Weird...

 

[Queen6]

Yes, i think that’s my situation as well. GPU is not even appearing in the "about this mac" main tab. I can see it in System Info hardware/graphics section (Cartes Video in my frech localization). And of course in iStats/Macs Fan Control temp° (never going over 35°c) and power sections : 0.45v on High Sierra and ...

0.90->0.92 with Mojave !



I did not insist on GFXCardStatus after having to boot in safe mode to get it out of the way.
But i did not know about gSwitch at the times, redesigned for HS if i remember what i could read somewhere later.

Now i painfully managed to boot on Mojave dosdude1 patched, after discarding X3000.kext, some GL bundles from /S/L/E, backing up the MBP8,2 plist deep into API_SMC_PlatformPlugin.kext (within the IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext),.
Then i sudo cp -R’d the 2 bash scripts to where they belong during the post install process (again the last command of this process has to be done after a proper Mojave boot).

All backlights buttons are functionnal, i could fix NightShift and proper transparency.
It was a bit of a nightmare as the patching + update patching system interferes with the dGPU hacks somehow. A festival of black, white, flashing screens and reboot loops.
But i’m into this as other would enjoy some computer game. A kind of never ending quest ;-)
So i go online after every fail, searching and reading a lot, digging some tools, scripts and terminal code lines like some other would fetch weapons and spell scrolls to tame the bugs and get some experience points.

So far it does not wake from sleep, and, as with HS, it does not shutdown or reboot using the Apple Menu (moving cursor on black screen).
The force-shutdown with the terminal may be a bit harsh with Mojave and the hack appears to be less stable than with High Sierra. Choosing to log out of the account and then clicking buttons at the bottom of the login screen gives better results.
But it seems that is the best anybody could get from 10.4.6 on MBP8,2 model in this other macrumors thread saga (794 pages yet, as many machines are concerned, this thread seems a thin novel compared to that beast !).



Which API does Apple just zapped from Mojave exactly ? Maybe it could be re-injected by some code wizard?

I find it weird that after doing exactly the same process on both system, i end up with opposite setting of the graphic switching option in the Energy System Preferences panel : unticked in HS, ticked in Mojave.

pmset -gbrings back the same line gpuswitch=0 on the two systems. Nonetheless, Mojave is feeding the GPU 2x the amount of volts that is measured in HS. Weird...

After owing the 2011 from day one I dont overly worry about it. The MBP will likely remain on High Serra as it's the simplest solution for my needs and it works without any issues or deficits. If I advance the OS it will only serve to create complications with few if any if any benefit.

The API may be mentioned on the gSwitch site, other than that would need to research. Think I would want to investigate the difference in voltage between High Sierra & Mojave, if the dGPU kicks in may raise issue. gSwitch was indeed designed for High Serra if memory serves and is a big improvement on the older GFXCardStatus.

The later 15" MBP 8.2 is more complex to deal with and to get full functionality will likely require HW modification. Detailed instructions are on dosdude1's site. As my own 8.2 has been well and truly used with the dGPU active for multiple years. gSwitch keeps the dGPU in it's idle state so I rather expect it to run until something eventually fails due to age.

Biggest concern is the battery as it's now below 50% of capacity,. Doubt many of the available replacements will be greatly better at this age. When the time comes may look to rebuild the battery pack as that may be the best option short of removing it. Right now I'm using a script to stop charging at 50% which seems to be helping to slow the wear rate on the battery.

Either ways been a great value at over 11.6 years old and never been much of a problem I have several other Mac's including an M1 MBP so the 2011 isn't a priority system for me, equally it serves purpose

Q-6

 

[dowser]

Thank you Queen6, the gSwitch site just says that the API is not available for macbooks older than 2011, and that the dev could not find neither create from scratch anything to fix/replace it as Apple does not document anything about the thang, as usual.

So it should be loaded on MBP8,2.

The pure NVRAM hack seems pretty unstable. On the first Mojave install attempt i used the Archlinux efivars edit, and after enduring the kernel_task plague i reformated the disk to try the pure SU mode/NVRAM hack to install High Sierra. Once it was done i found how to tame the plague, and installed Mojave on another SSD also with SU mode/NVRAM method.
I believe that i had less trouble to boot/reboot with the efivars configuration, but i started to get some when i tried to add gfxCardStatus to the startup items.

Let's hope i will be lucky and obtain the reversed effect from gSwitch with my unstable system !
I'm going to search this thread again first of all, to see what's already around about it...

🤞

 

[Queen6]

@dowser With the Late 2011 15" MBP you need to mod the HW if the dGPU is fully disabled in SW, hence the instability & loss of some functionality. The Early 2011 15" MBP is more forgiving with far more chance of retaining full functionality with a SW disabled dGPU. My 2011 is a Late model, it's dGPU is fully functional, yet is heavily restricted by gSwitch. Only time it's activated is on a cold boot, soon as gSwitch is loaded the Intel GPU is forced on in a matter of milliseconds.

I literally shut it down yesterday to check the battery, clean the fans & heatsinks. Likely the first time in over a year. It's up 24/7 as it's now our media server and maybe that's the key to it's longevity as it keeps a stable operating temperature.

The solution is to wipe and install High Sierra and use gSwitch if the dGPU is still good. If the dGPU is damaged is a very different story. As ever with a notebook of such age we're just buying time day by day. I deliberately kept the 2011 in the family as I was very much aware that they are timebombs. Ironically the 2011 has seen off multiple Retina Mac's, I fully expect my 2014 MBP to fold in the near future as it shows all the signs. The 2011 has never ran better, it's a 100% stock machine performance remains strong hitting the power limits way before TDP, never throttles even under extreme loads such as HandBrake, fans don't even pass 5K.

I'm guestimating it's way past 50K hours of up time. My 2008 15" MBP battery exploded at around 50K operating hours. My brother in-law bought the same 2011 model, gave him no end of trouble, battery swelled and resultantly broke the trackpad, eventually the dGPU let go...

Q-6

 

[kocoman]

is it possible to extract the vbt table for windows igpu driver use ? thx

 

[kambala]

is it possible to extract the vbt table for windows igpu driver use ? thx

I believe you can do it in EFI shell

 

[dosdude1]

is it possible to extract the vbt table for windows igpu driver use ? thx

My Coreboot build posted here contains the VBIOS extracted from the machine’s original BootROM. It can be extracted from a dump of the BootROM using UEFITool if required. This Coreboot build also includes my custom ACPI tables that get things like SMC, ALS, gMux, etc. working under Coreboot.

 

[kocoman]

does MS windows work with intel WDDM driver? anyone have a VBT file for it that they can share? thanks

 

[dosdude1]

does MS windows work with intel WDDM driver? anyone have a VBT file for it that they can share? thanks

Intel iGPU driver does work in Windows with this Coreboot build, if that’s what you’re asking. It uses VBIOS extracted from stock MBP9,1 ROM (which supports both Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge iGPUs).

 

[jowaju]

Just a quick data point since I skimmed the last few pages and didn't see any info on newer macOS versions on these old MacBookPo8,2 models. I successfully loaded Monterey 12.6.2 using OCLP 0.6.7 a few weeks ago and it was the easiest mbp8,2 I've ever done (I've done hundreds). I am guessing since Monterey doesn't have a driver for the Radeon cards at all it is easier to bypass it? I checked the NVRAM disable box on the OCLP installer, disabled the dGPU with the NVRAM command, cloned my Monterey image, and that was it. I did set a firmware password to make sure the dGPU couldn't be accidentally re-enabled with a PRAM reset. The dGPU doesn't even show up in System Information, just the Intel 3000. I've let it sleep, wake, hibernate, let the battery run completely dead, reboot, force power off and back on, nothing has caused a single glitch. 16GB ram and a 500gb SSD and it runs plenty fast enough. This one did still have a very good OEM battery, so that may have had something to do with it. I'm 99% sure I could put Ventura on it and it would have no issues.

When I say everything works I mean everything. Keyboard backlight, screen backlight, sleep, wake, youtube, webcam, SD card. Zero functional issues. This one is a 2.2Ghz Early 2011 model.

 

[borgward]

For anyone else, it might not be the GPU regardless of all the posts saying otherwise. The GPU on my iMac appeared to be bad. Gray screen. Won't boot. I booted a Linuxmint Live session DVD. All of a sudden the GPU was running. I then wiped the HDD and did a fresh OSX install over the internet and everything worked.

The Linux Live Session runs entirely in RAM. It won't do anything to your HDD until you press "Install" button on the Desktop.

 

[vorob]

Hi! I know that on the same chassis as mbp 15 2011 there was a model with geforce 650. is it 100% compatible with late 2011 model? Can i threw out amd motherboard and put geforce one?

 

[dosdude1]

Hi! I know that on the same chassis as mbp 15 2011 there was a model with geforce 650. is it 100% compatible with late 2011 model? Can i threw out amd motherboard and put geforce one?

You can (only on the 15” of course), though the only difference is the LVDS connector for the screen. It is possible to slightly modify the connector to plug the screen in.

 

[RoughDivide]

Hey guys, I'm still running an early 2011 27'' mbp with High Sierra. AMD gpu died around 2016, and the nvram "fix" and subsequent loading of AMDRadeonX3000.kext after boot had been working all these years just fine until December, when it simply stopped working no matter what I did and no matter how much I tried with sudo nvram fa4ce28d-b62f-4c99-9cc3-6815686e30f9:gpu-power-prefs=%01%00%00%00

I could not even shutdown or reboot through the menu, tried dosdude's disabler and nothing. I can't get it demux'd because I am not in the US. The only way it'd boot is through the same way it'd boot when the card first malfunctioned, by force-overheating the laptop, which seemed to make it ignore the AMD gpu at boot.

I could eventually be able to boot into single user recovery (recovery would load awfully slow and then just hang) even so, it'd crash right before the login screen no matter what.

After exhausting all options at trying to get this Mac to boot again what saved me was typing this in single user recovery:

nvram GfxMode=4

To my uneducated guess, this keeps the discrete gpu off from the get-go — I could be wrong, so take it with a grain of salt.

After that the GPU seems to be completely 100% off. the Mac is running much much colder now, using less power (a replacement battery I installed months before this happened actually lasts now) and kextstat | grep AMD shows nothing. The card is completely absent in System Report. I can once again shutdown and restart the laptop with no issues.

That means no brightness unless you use an app or closing the lid, but I can live with that. The gpu blasting heat nonstop, coupled with a very much worn thermal paste, meant that this device would thermal throttle quite easily and fast. I do need to replace the paste but that's quite a bit beyond my skillset and I don't presently have access to aid in this regard.

Now, I am unsure if I should attempt to use dosdude's patchers to upgrade MacOS or if I'm better off sticking to High Sierra for now. In any case, and if all goes well, I'll be finally travelling soon and might be able to get something newer at last (this is the only laptop I've ever had, and it's gone through a lot).

Sorry for any English mishaps, it is not my native language.

 

[borgward]

Try booting a Linux Live session from DVD or USB stick. I had the same problem with 2010 iMac. Everybody on this site said it was the AMD GPU. Booted to Linux and the AMD GPU worked. Next thing I did was wipe the drive completely and reinstall OSX from the Internet. AMD GPU worked with OSX after that. Been running 11 months now. Not saying the AMD GPU is not bad on yours but booting to a Linux live session is a lot easier than doing open heart surgery on a mac. I suspect it was a driver and not a hardware issue.

Try the latest Linuxmint Version from Linuxmint .com (or other distro)

Some mac's won't boot from a regular Linux Live media if so download one from https://mattgadient.com/linux-dvd-images-and-how-to-for-32-bit-efi-macs-late-2006-models/

 

[spn0381]

Hello, I've just installed ventura through OCLP on a MacBook pro 8.2 with broken AMD Video card.
I've followed the dortania suggestion following the command:

nvram FA4CE28D-B62F-4C99-9CC3-6815686E30F9:gpu-power-prefs=%01%00%00%00
This will disable the dGPU and allow the iGPU to function


I'm testing the system and I've found this problem:

1. the Brightness of the display doesn't work, the toggle bar is "trasparent".
2. the sleep won't work: the mac won't wake up

anyone has discovered how to fix this problem?

thank you

 

[Queen6]

Hello, I've just installed ventura through OCLP on a MacBook pro 8.2 with broken AMD Video card.
I've followed the dortania suggestion following the command:

nvram FA4CE28D-B62F-4C99-9CC3-6815686E30F9:gpu-power-prefs=%01%00%00%00
This will disable the dGPU and allow the iGPU to function


I'm testing the system and I've found this problem:

1. the Brightness of the display doesn't work, the toggle bar is "trasparent".
2. the sleep won't work: the mac won't wake up

anyone has discovered how to fix this problem?

thank you

Early (8.1) or Late (8.2) 2011 MBP? If the latter will likely need a HW mod which can be found on doddude1's site. There may be a SW fix, however it's a long read on this thread and multiple others on the subject.

My own 8.2 is still up and running with the dGPU enabled, just the luck of the draw with these models. I just keep the dGPU restrained as much as possible with gSwitch 1.9.7 on High Sierra (10.13.6).

Q-6

 

[spn0381]

Early (8.1) or Late (8.2) 2011 MBP? If the latter will likely need a HW mod which can be found on doddude1's site. There may be a SW fix, however it's a long read on this thread and multiple others on the subject.

My own 8.2 is still up and running with the dGPU enabled, just the luck of the draw with these models. I just keep the dGPU restrained as much as possible with gSwitch 1.9.7 on High Sierra (10.13.6).
View attachment 2298593

Q-6

I have an Early 2011...

I won't to solve only brightness and wake from sleep!

 

[Queen6]

I have an Early 2011...

I won't to solve only brightness and wake from sleep!

Early 2011's easier to deal with and I think can be dealt with in SW. A factor will be the version of macOS and it's firmware revisions.

I suggest you start at the 1st page as there is a good article there. dosdude1's site has a lot of info that can help you. As I have the Late 2011 I've no experience of the Early 2011 and mine is one of the few that seems to be holding up.

Q-6

 

[spn0381]

Hello, I've just installed ventura through OCLP on a MacBook pro 8.2 with broken AMD Video card.
I've followed the dortania suggestion following the command:

nvram FA4CE28D-B62F-4C99-9CC3-6815686E30F9:gpu-power-prefs=%01%00%00%00
This will disable the dGPU and allow the iGPU to function


I'm testing the system and I've found this problem:

1. the Brightness of the display doesn't work, the toggle bar is "trasparent".
2. the sleep won't work: the mac won't wake up

anyone has discovered how to fix this problem?

thank you

Nightly update

On my MacBook Pro Early 2011...

1. the Brightness of the display doesn't work, the toggle bar is "trasparent".

SOLVED: I have applied the Post-Install Root Patch of Open core Legacy Patcher v1.0.1 --> the brightness bar works properly!!!

2. the sleep won't work: the mac won't wake up

Actually I haven't checked if Post-Install Root Patch of Open core Legacy Patcher v1.0.1 fix also this problem

3. The LED of battery status doesn't work... Is clear that is a hw problem and not an OS problem... anyone have Idea about this problem?