Troubleshooting a mid 2010 macbook pro 15 inch - apple says bad logicboard

[Nvidiaguy07]

My friend has been having some trouble with his 2010 mbp 15 inch. Its

Here are the specs:
mid 2010 mbp
running macOS Sierra 10.12.4
2.53 ghz intel core i5
4GB DDR3 memory
Nvidia Geforce GT 330M 256MB
Intel HD graphics 288MB

The problem he described was that it would just randomly restart when he has typing into a document, or watching a video at a rate of anywhere from 3-8 times an hour.

When he gave me the laptop, I could not reproduce the error by just normal usage. What I was able to finally do was install cinebench to see if the problem was with the CPU or GPU. When benchmarking the CPU there were no problems at all. When running the OpenGL test it crashed about 10 seconds in, and happened everytime I ran the test.

After doing some searching, I guess a common problem is dedicated graphics card related, so disabling the nvidia graphics and using the integrated might be an accettable solution for him - since he doesn't do anything besides browse the web and listen to music and stuff.

I looked up how to disable the graphics card, but it seemed pretty complicated in mac.

Decided to install linux to see if the problem also persusted there.

I installed Mint 18.1 MATE and it had no problems during normal usage while doing updates. I think installed the restricted drivers for the GPU, CPU, and wifi, and then the display completely cut out.

Currently re-installing mint MATE again, gonna pass on installing the GPU drivers.

Any ideas on what I could try next?

Ideally, i think hed like to be running OSX, and using the integrated graphics is perfectly fine. If I have to wipe it and run linux or windows permanently thats fine too.

Still not ruling anything else out as the cause of the problem, but this is what Ive got so far.

Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[Ketchup]

See if there is a way to disable the Nvidia graphics from the BIOS (There is on my 2012 Thinkpad). If you can't do that, I would tell him to get a new laptop. No way it isn't going to use the Nvidia card without forcibly telling it not to.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

See if there is a way to disable the Nvidia graphics from the BIOS (There is on my 2012 Thinkpad). If you can't do that, I would tell him to get a new laptop. No way it isn't going to use the Nvidia card without forcibly telling it not to.

I dont think theres a way to access mac bios - I could be wrong though (never work with macs).

And are you sure theres not a way to force it to use integrated? Within MacOS theres an option to use both, or just nvidia. I dont see why there wouldnt be a way to disable the dedicated graphics - maybe by not using MacOS though.

 

[Ketchup]

You're right. Forgot that MACs went to EFI years ago, and pretty much cut pre-OS level access, except what they allowed through the OS. They definitely "could" allow the use of just Intel, but that doesn't mean that they "would.

Now, feel free to ask a mod to move this thread over to the Apple subforum. They may know of something I don't, since I'm not an Apple person either.

 

[manly]

Read comments here:
https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View...ilure+due+to+Nvidia+Graphics+processor+GT330M

 

[dave_the_nerd]

https://github.com/0xbb/gpu-switch

 

[CuriousMike]

This worked for me
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ntegrated-gpu-efi-variable-fix.2037591/page-6