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MacBook Pro models with a 15" display

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In serious need of a upgrade! logic board question, any advice?

Hello iFixit-ers,

first time here :)

i recently bought a late 2013 13" macbook pro retina and i love it! but I came across a 2006 15.4" MacBook pro with no hdd, battery, or charge cables and swooped it up!

i got a 2.5 sshd 1tb, some chinese battery(will replace later after its up and running) and the oem magsafe. its a 2.33ghz machine with 3gb of ram which is pretty good... total so far is less than 450 which is a steal in my eyes. I want this to be my everyday macbook and make the retina for special uses so it will last longer when i need it in the future.

Now for my question, sorry for the backstory, is it possible to upgrade the logic board so i can get a new graphics card in there? i really like the speed so far especially considering my new solid state hybrid drive, but a new graphics card would be nice....

would it be possible to change the logic board for something newer like in the 2009-2011 range or am i stuck?? Is it even worth it?

one more question, with the current set up can i run yosemite on it? the new hd has no content on it so i was wondering if i could set something up like that?

THANKS :]

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

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NO - you can not cross model years on most parts (there are a few exceptons e.g. wireless cards, cameras and optical drives that were used more than one year/model).

Think about it the processing architecture for the current graphics was only in theory at the time this box was produced.

Got to the parts catalogue look up a logic board and use the compatibility button on the right. If you have a that's less than the 2.33 board you could move to it and thats as far as you can go.

99% of all laptop GPUs are professionally (ball) soldered to the logic board. If by some chance you were able to install a different GPU it would have to be one that ran on the 06 board as OEM or you'd have EFI (aka BIOS) and extension (aka Drivers) problems getting it to run.

Even adding a SSD you have to have one that will run well at SATA I (1.5Gb/s) or you're wasting your time and money putting it in. (Some drives that tout being automagically backward compatible turn not not to be so automagic in practice). Generally SATA is one rev backward compatible reliably.

If this answer is acceptable please remember to return and mark it accepted.

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2 Comments:

hey machead3! thanks for your answer. I will no longer try this route of changing the logic board, but, as i do accept your answe, it is to some extent, i guess my question now is, can i install yosemite os x to this 06 macbook? if so, is there a guide? and will i be able to use my time machine backup to transfer data from device to device?

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No - it won't run see the list. And some of the early Mac's don't fully support all the features, for example Hand off needs a Bluetooth 4.0 card and just putting the hardware into the box won't make it work. Upgrading the Bluetooth card is only a partial solution. Since the Yosemite installer looks at machine ID's you will have to manually hack the OS each time you install or upgrade In order to keep the hack in effect, unless/until Apple builds in some sort of new "backward compliance" standards in the installer. (Not likely)

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