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Tiresias (the GPUkiller)

The Tiresias is a small board that can be soldered onto the motherboard of the MacBook Pro 15-inch or 17-inch 2011 (Early or Late) models.

These are all the models that have the 820-2914-A, 820-2914-B, 820-2915-A or 820-2915-B motherboard.

The 820-2914 and 820-2915 board has two GPUs. The internal (Intel) GPU that is part of the PCH, and an external (discrete) AMD GPU. It is the external GPU that fails in 'a small percentage of MacBook Pro systems' (Apple-speak for: 'very many'). The Tiresias writes the 'gpu-power-prefs' nvram-variable to the ROM so that the Mac does not use the (dead) external (discrete) AMD GPU anymore. If the user clears the NVRAM (PRAM) there is no problem as the Tiresias will write the record again, and the Mac will work again.

This makes this the ideal solution to bring a 820-2914 or 820-2915 with dead GPU back to life. Installation is easy (no wires to solder). You will need to mount a very small board onto the motherboard. An experienced technician can do this in minutes. Other than that R8911 should be removed to turn off power to the dead GPU. This saves energy, generating less heat and conserving battery life. Removing R8911 also prevents the Mac from getting confused by the dead GPU because even with the GPU turned off it will still try to talk to the dead GPU. Depending on what internal contacts in the GPU are ruptured this might confuse or even crash the Mac.

Mac OS X 10.13 High Sierra is also supported. To solve the issue of the backlight not coming back on after sleep also remove R9704 and connect R9704 pin 2 to C9711 pin 1.
 

Download list

TiresiasMounted.jpg
For GPU disable in MacBook Pro 2011 both 15-Inch and 17-Inch models.
Here is a Youtube movie to show the new version of the Tiresias that PRESERVES the backlight control in High Sierra:
 
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