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I've read endless threads about this issue, but there is something I haven't found yet and I hope somebody could suggest something. For what I've read so far, a considerable amount of MBPs manufactured during 2010 has a latent problem in the hardware that crashes the system. This problem has emerged usually after upgrading the OS to Lion or latter versions.

Question 1: it's not yet clear to me what it is bugged. Is it the GPU (Nvidia GeForce 300M) or the logic board? I've heard that many people had the logic board changed. I suppose a 'logic board' is the 'mother board', right?

Question 2: I'm the owner of a MBP manufactured in 2010, but I haven't upgraded the OS so far, so I'm happy with my Mac. But now I need to upgrade, and I'm afraid I could have a bad surprise. Is there a way to detect if my laptop is affected by this hardware bug before upgrading the OS? Maybe a testing tool to examine the hardware under stressing GPU switching? If anybody can suggest a proven test to run on Snow Leopard, I'll be grateful.

Question 3: being that a hardware related issue, it's not possible to be fixed by software patches. Why has it been latent on many Snow Leopard OS powered machines, then?

Thanks for your help

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  • I'm not sure about occurrence depending on OS. I can only answer Q1. Motherboard equals Logicboars equals mainboard. In the case of a MacBook (or most notebooks for that matter) the mainboard includes CPU and GPU meaning a mainboard swap means new Intel and NVidia chip
    – Kevin Grabher
    Apr 6, 2015 at 22:06

3 Answers 3

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I am posting this answer to 5 similar questions. I tried everything from the Kext changes to the Github patch. I also tried to use Gfx. However, here's what worked for me. The latest version of Gfx doesn't set the MBP to use the Integrated card permanently. However, GFx version v1.8.1 does. Open it and set it to use Intel.

gfx v1.8.1

My preferences

I have not had a GPU panic for 2 days. I also disabled SIP and installed the Github patch, but I still had Panics after that (however, this might be a solution thats GFx only, or maybe the patch also helped. Try Gfx 1.8.1 first)

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Try installing gfxCardStatus, which is a free/open-source utility that could solve the problem instead of a $2,300 graphics card. In addition to a zipped download, it can also be installed as a Homebrew Cask (source):

brew cask install gfxcardstatus

My system was severely affected with these panics, but that stopped happening after using that utility.

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i never had the problem with Snow Leopard, Lion or Mountain Lion. When I upgraded to Mavericks it started to crash the os..Kernel Panic after an hours use. I figured Mavericks was buggy and upgraded to Yosemite which caused the crash very rapidly and would crash even if there was no software installed (just the os installed)

There is a test you can do https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731

My understanding is every unit will have this problem after getting taxed by the higher demands of the new operating systems. The fact that Apple charges for a repair which was caused by their operating system blows my mind.

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