This is somewhat Mac related, but I think it's more of a chip issue (esp on factory-assembled boards), so I figured I'd post here. Basically, I'm having repeated failures of an ATI 4850 graphics card ...
On some 2011 Macbook Pro models, there is a tendency for the Radeon GPU to fail. This should mean game over for the computer, but surprisingly salvation is offered by its having not one but two GPUs ...