Mine was a ATI chip unfortunately. The problems were all in the end related to a broken latch - broken latch interfered with sleep mode, which meant that occasionally the laptop would spend a few hours in a laptop sleeve, fans going full blast, failing to go to sleep. I'm pretty that cooked the VRAM and DVD drive.

The non-unibody MBPs had a lot of functionality tied to the ridiculously complex lid latch. If the latch broke the laptop was SOL.