A warning about your MacBook Pro (Do not let this happen to you)

Question

If your MacBook Pro is nearing the end of its warranty do like be like me. Purchase the extended warranty!
Just before the warranty ran out on my 17" MacBook Pro in December of 2007 the NVIDEA Graphics chip set failed. (8600GT). As you will see below, this is a known issue that can affect your MacBook Pro. Since the machine was still under warranty the logic board was replaced at no cost to me. (Yay!)
Well, the new board came with a 6 month warranty. I decided (foolishly) not to purchase the extended Apple Care. Two weeks ago, it failed again. Apple claims that it ought to have failed (if it were ever going to) within 90 days. Obviously this is false since I had the first quite a while before it failed. They will not pay to fix it this time. So I am stuck with a broken machine since it would cost quite a bit out of pocket to replace the board.
Needless to say, Im very disappointed with this and have no where to turn. I should have bought the extended care even though at the time I hadn't researched enough to realize they are aware of these issues of the NVIDEA 8600 mobile sets randomly failing. I've been a loyal Apple customer all my life, owning many many different models since my first 512K "fat mac" in 1985.
So, be aware. If you own a MacBook Pro at any given time in its life the graphic chip set might fail you and if you are not covered under the extended care (even if the warranty ended a short month and half before it died) you will not get your board replaced.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/08/13/nvidia.loses.on.bad.chips/
NVIDIA takes rare loss on faulty chips, competition
Graphics chip builder NVIDIA has reported its first quarterly loss in almost five years, writes the Wall Street Journal. The company has taken a net loss of $120.9 million for its second financial quarter, admitting that materials used to package its mobile graphics chips caused unusually high failure rates. Third-party observers have suggested that the company's desktop processors could be affected as well, but this allegation has not been confirmed.
Chip failures could be responsible for an error with Apple's MacBook Pro, in which the display goes black but every other component keeps running.

Answer 1

Sorry Dave, have to chime in here as you're very wrong, and BermudaSeal has gone through a lot here and doesn't need to be fed false information, however good the intention.
When the Nvidia cards go wrong, what happens is exactly what BermudaSeal is experiencing, they get reported by the OS as an intel X3100 - which is the core card that forms part of the SR chipset, and coincidentally the graphics card in the MB. Basically the hardware is reporting no external graphics card (the nvidia card), and so assumes that the default one is present. It's a bit like PC motherboads that have built in GPU's, which can be bypased by adding in your own third party part. In this case , the third party part has failed, and unfortunately there is no built in GPU either - hence, black screen.
This is a classic case of a failed NVidia chip, and, depending on the country where Bermuda Seal lives, he/she should be able to get this sorted very swiftly by Apple, as it is a known defect with the hardware that can be proven - BermudaSeal should not have to foot the bill for this - keep trying and refer Apple to the multiple posts on this forum where folks out of warranty have got the issue fixed.
That plus the fact that Bermuda Seal clearly described his machine in the first post - haven't seen many 17" Macbooks around, have you?
Good Luck!