Hi Ken,

The video card on my 27" iMac (mid-2011) crapped out. Since it's a "vintage" machine (more than five years old), Apple won't repair it. I found a free-lance guy who says he can replace the AMD Radeon 6970 card for $600+ with a 90 day guarantee. Another repair guy said that it is a near impossible fix since the video card is part of the mother board and that I would better off with purchasing a new iMac. In 2014, when the computer was still under warranty, Apple replaced the original card. If it was done once before, could it not be done again by a competent technician?
Anybody have an opinion based on experience?

Thanks,
Phil

This is the one bad thing about Macs. Very difficult to repair. You can't just pop another video card in there like you can with a PC. This is why I long for the modular Mac Pros where you CAN simply replace the video card. I'm afraid those days are long gone with Apple products, however. Unless you build a Hackintosh which is becoming more and more appealing. Honestly Apple should support that concept.

It's finally fixed. The freelance repair guy replaced the video card for $600 and a new logic board as well at no extra charge. The only (slight) difference is the new logic board has a 3.1 GHz processor core i5. The original was 3.4 core i7. But all seems OK for now.