Hello, I ended up in this thread because I was sure that my problem was on the dGPU. Tried the simple Mac proceedings, but didn't work out for me. I started reading the thread, tried some searching, but when I saw it was like 123 pages, I kind got anxiety and went forward with instructions.
Symptoms before trying were similar to what was described in first post: image with stripes, not booting into the system. When I got the MBP the battery was stuffed, so I took it out. Tried all the basic procedures with no success, without the battery.
- Apple diagnostics tested negative.
- Reset SMC doesn't even flicker the light. Tried both removable battery and non-removable battery techniques.
- Reset NVRAM seems odd - too long between restarts
- Wouldn't boot to safe mode.
- Recovery would boot up to selecting the wifi network, but blank screen after that
- Recovery with ALT would boot to selection boot volume, blank after that or after apple logo/progress bar
- USB Bootable Installer would boot to selection of volume, blank after that or after apple logo/progress bar
Odd things:
- I pluged an SSD from another MBP (7,1 2010 with Sonoma and OCLP), and it booted a couple of times. When booted, it recognized a 23inch screen.
- The apearance os the screen/display was absolutely normal at the times of these boots.
- Image with stripes is intermittent. Sometimes image seems fine.
- Tryed all the proceedings with external display, sometimes the faulty image would be on the MacBooks display, sometimes at the external display.
- Before startup, frontal led blinks 5 times.
- Mechanic noises upon startup seem more evident.
It is now with an internal HDD with High Sierra installed as external HDD on an Imac.
Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance and sorry if this is a little off topic or the answer is in the thread and I couldn't find via search.